From skung at austin.utexas.edu Mon Jun 1 22:46:13 2020 From: skung at austin.utexas.edu (Kung, Susan S) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 02:46:13 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] DELAMAN Award: Nomination Deadline Extended to 15 July 2020 Message-ID: The deadline for nominations for the DELAMAN Award has been extended to 15 July 2020. The winner will be announced on 15 October 2020, and the award will be presented virtually at the 7th International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation (ICLDC 7) in March 2021. The call and nomination form for the DELAMAN Award are found at http://www.delaman.org/delaman-award/ The DELAMAN Award recognizes and honours early-career documenters who have done outstanding documentary work in creating a rich multimedia documentary collection of a particular language that is endangered or no longer spoken. “Early-career” is defined as (a) university-based documenters with a PhD awarded 01 January 2015 or later; or (b) non-university-based documenters who have been employed by or affiliated with a language-community based project since no earlier than 01 January 2015. If an entire team of documenters is nominated, all nominees must meet this definition of “early-career.” Self-nomination is permitted and encouraged. The award consists of a payment of $500 USD from DELAMAN, as well as an automatic slot for a 20-minute presentation at the 7th International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation and a $500 USD honorarium (subject to US taxation) from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa upon completion of the presentation. To be eligible, the language documentation collection must be archived and made accessible in a DELAMAN archive (with no or only minimal access restrictions), and it must provide rich audio and video documentation, keywords, comprehensive metadata, and explanatory material or guides, as well as transcription, translation and annotation of a subset of the AV collection. Nominations should include the following: -Name and email address of the nominee (i.e., the collector); -Name and email address of the nominator (if different from the nominee); -Name of the DELAMAN archive where the collection is located; -Link to the collection (URL, DOI or other persistent identifier); -Language(s) documented in the collection (including ISO 639-3 codes); -A brief description (< 500 words) of the contents / coverage of the collection, including types of documentation; genres; size of collection (hours/minutes of audio video); amount (hours/minutes) and level of transcription, translation & annotation; -If the collection is part of a larger group project, clearly indicate which part of the collection was created by the nominee (< 250 words); -An explanation (< 500 words) of the significance of the collection, identifying what makes the collection an outstanding example of an archival endangered language collection; -CV of the nominee. If awarded, the Awardee commits to writing a guide to the collection, to be published in Language Documentation & Conservation, following examples such as Franjieh (2019), Caballero (2017), and Salffner (2015). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ajrtallman at utexas.edu Wed Jun 3 06:06:58 2020 From: ajrtallman at utexas.edu (Adam James Ross Tallman) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2020 12:06:58 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic structure Message-ID: Hello all, I've been doing a lit. review (again) in prosodic phonology. Advocates of the prosodic hierarchy claim that prosodic levels map from specific morphosyntactic constituents like 'words' or 'phrases' or X0 and XP etc. However, I have been unable to find a single example of a paper that relates its analysis to the prosodic hierarchy that actually provides evidence for or defines the morphosyntactic categories that the prosodic domains relate to in the language under study. Of course, the fact that no evidence or definitions for X0 / XP and the like are provided does not mean there is no evidence - but the "phonology evidence only please" character of the literature makes it very difficult to come up with global assessment of how the quest for mapping rules has faired (the discussion in Scheer 2010 suggests it has been a total failure) or to distill some sort of testable hypothesis from the literature. I'm wondering if anyone has any examples at hand where such categories are provided with explicit empirical definitions. Perhaps this is just an oversight on my part. best, Adam -- Adam J.R. Tallman PhD, University of Texas at Austin Investigador del Museo de Etnografía y Folklore, la Paz ELDP -- Postdoctorante CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From khaude at uni-koeln.de Mon Jun 8 06:11:20 2020 From: khaude at uni-koeln.de (khaude at uni-koeln.de) Date: Mon, 08 Jun 2020 12:11:20 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] FieldLing Paris, Sep 7-11, 2020: extended registration deadline (14 June) In-Reply-To: <20200409145142.Horde.qHro6zjm_-1CMvhyzNH8dwe@webmail.uni-koeln.de> References: <20200219084949.Horde.ukeAKOIF4voj0vMBe_BHSCl@webmail.uni-koeln.de> <20200409145142.Horde.qHro6zjm_-1CMvhyzNH8dwe@webmail.uni-koeln.de> Message-ID: <20200608121120.Horde.S9jXi0HtFdhR_RwCkiaL9ye@webmail.uni-koeln.de> Cher.e.s collègues, cher.e.s étudiant.e.s, La pandémie étant en apparente régression en Europe, nous sommes optimistes qu'il sera possible de maintenir l'école d'été FieldLing en 2020 (voir ci-dessous pour l'annonce initiale). Nous prendros les précautions sanitaires (règles de distance, masques) nécessaires pour l’évènement en fonction des circonstances et les niveaux de restriction à ce moment-là. La date limite pour les inscriptions a été repoussée une dernièrne fois au 14 juin 2020 (minuit MET). ================= La 12e édition de FieldLing (séminaire d'initiation à la linguistique de terrain), organisé par le LLACAN (UMR 8135), le SeDyL (UMR8202) et le LACITO (UMR 7107) aura lieu du 7 au 11 septembre 2020 sur le campus du CNRS de Villejuif. FieldLing est une introduction à la recherche linguistique sur le terrain. Il s'adresse en priorité aux étudiant(e)s M2 et aux doctorant(e)s en linguistique générale, mais il peut également être intéressant pour les étudiant(e)s d'anthropologie envisageant du travail sur le terrain. Le cas échéant, des M1 en faisant la demande peuvent aussi être accueillis en fonction des places disponibles. Le séminaire est homologué par l'INALCO et Paris 3. Au programme 2020, des sessions de formation pour la linguistique générale (e.g., morphosyntaxe, typologie), la préparation au terrain (e.g., stimuli, enregistrement), le terrain lui-même (travaux pratiques avec des locuteurs de langues différentes) et la structuration des données (e.g., comment écrire un dictionnaire ou une grammaire). Pour plus d'informations, voir le site web de la formation au https://fieldling.sciencesconf.org/ (le site web sera complété au fur et à mesure pendant les mois qui viennent, connectez-vous régulièrement au site pour suivre les mises à jour). Les langues employeés durant la formation sont le français et l'anglais. Il est recommendé d'avoir des capacités linguistiques dans les deux langues. =============================== Cordialement, Le comité d'organisation Katharina Haude - SEDYL Nicolas Quint - LLACAN Lameen Souag - LACITO Marc Tang - DDL *********************************************************** Dear colleagues, dear students, As the pandemic situation seems to be in regression in Europe, we are optimistic that FieldLing 2020 can take place in September (see the original announcement below). We will take care of the sanitary safety measures (distancing, masks) that are necessary and required at that date. The deadline for registration has been extended for the last time until June 14th, 2020 (midnight MET). ================== The 12th edition of FieldLing, jointly organized by the research labs LLACAN , SeDyL, and LACITO, will take place on September 7th-11th, 2020, on the CNRS campus at Villejuif, near Paris. FieldLing is an introduction to linguistic fieldwork. It aims primarily at Master and doctoral students in General Linguistics, but may also be interesting to students in anthropology and other social sciences planning to do fieldwork. Fieldling is included in the studies program of INALCO and Paris 3. As in previous years, the programme of 2020 will include training sessions on general linguistics (e.g., morphosyntax and typology), fieldwork preparation (e.g., stimuli and recording), fieldwork itself (practice sessions with native speakers of different languages), and data structuring (e.g., how to write a dictionary or a grammar). Please refer to our official website for additional information: https://fieldling.sciencesconf.org/. The website will be updated regularly, so please follow our latest news on it. The languages of the summer school are English and French. Knowledge of both languages is recommended. ============================== Kind regards The organizing committee Katharina Haude - SEDYL Nicolas Quint - LLACAN Lameen Souag - LACITO Marc Tang- DDL From viviana.masia at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 05:27:37 2020 From: viviana.masia at gmail.com (Viviana Masia) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 11:27:37 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Workshop on The Pragmatics of Evidentiality to be held in Venice - postponed dates Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, I would like to share the following conference call with anyone who might be interested in the topic: https://linguistlist.org/issues/31/31-1648.html Please, note that - for those who might have problems travelling to Italy due to the COVD-19 emergency - also virtual presentations are warmly welcome! Thank you very much and kind regards, *Viviana Masia* Research Fellow University of Roma Tre -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Martine.VANHOVE at cnrs.fr Wed Jun 10 02:52:02 2020 From: Martine.VANHOVE at cnrs.fr (VANHOVE Martine) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 06:52:02 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] TR : Query: modality, copulas and possessive pronouns In-Reply-To: <980C9982DFDA214C844467E99B8EBC7B682F4243@CNREXCMBX08P.core-res.rootcore.local> References: <980C9982DFDA214C844467E99B8EBC7B682F4243@CNREXCMBX08P.core-res.rootcore.local> Message-ID: <980C9982DFDA214C844467E99B8EBC7B682F4B7D@CNREXCMBX08P.core-res.rootcore.local> Dear all, I hope this message finds you all well. I am currently working on modality in Beja (Cushitic) which shows two intriguing (at least for me) morpho-syntactic features, and I am wondering whether they occur in other languages as well (so far I have not seen anything like this in the literature on modality, but I may have overlooked something). The first feature is the cliticization of nominative POSSESSIVE bound pronouns (NOT the usual OBJECT pronouns) to finite verb forms to either (i) mark the protatis of a conditional clause as in example (1) wit the Aorist paradigm: (1) w=haˈwaːd jʔ-i=juːk majʔa rhatnija def.sg.m=night come-aor.3sg.m=poss.2sg.nom light see-ipfv.2sg.m ‘If night falls upon you, you'll see a light.’ (bej_mv_narr_05_eritrea_111-112) or (ii) a deontic modality of capacity as in example (2) with the negative Optative paradigm: (2) oː=kʷhaːn i=ba=a-hass-aj=uːk def.sg.m.acc=flood rel.m=opt=1sg-pass-neg.opt=poss.2sg.nom i-sanni=hoːk-a 3sg.m-wait\ipfv=obj.2sg-adrf.m ‘May you find the flooding river that can prevent you from crossing!’ (lit. the flood that (says) ‘I won’t let you pass’ is waiting) (bej_mv_narr_12_witch_133-134) The second feature concerns the citicization of the nominal copula to finite or non-finite verb forms, not for the expression of focus as I first thought, but to express epistemic and deontic modalities as in (3) and (4) (with a simultaneity converb): (3) diw-iːni winneːt saːlhi tak siːleːl=iːb sleep-IPFV.3SG.M plenty noble_man man prayer=LOC.SG gʷada-am-i=b=u=it splash-MID-AOR.3SG.M=INDF.M.ACC=COP.3SG=CSL ‘He slept, since he was a very noble man who would perform his ablutions before praying.’ (BEJ_MV_NARR_17_shoemaker_094-096) (1) doːr han naː=t baː=ʃuːm-eː=ji time also thing=INDF.F NEG.PROH=go_in-CVB.SMLT=COP.3SG ‘without even anything being able to go in, this time (…)’ (BEJ_MV_NARR_17_shoemaker_191) Thanks a lot in advance for your help! Best wishes and keep safe! Martine -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mcdonn at hawaii.edu Thu Jun 11 21:48:08 2020 From: mcdonn at hawaii.edu (Bradley McDonnell) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2020 15:48:08 -1000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Call for Proposals: 7th International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation (ICLDC 7) Message-ID: (Apologies for cross-posting) Recognizing RelationshipsThe 7th International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation (ICLDC)University of Hawai‘i at MānoaMarch 4-7, 2021 COVID-19 Statement Due to COVID-19, ICLDC 2021 will be held virtually. The ICLDC 7 organizers are excited about this year’s theme, and the possibilities for broad international discussion that an online conference can offer. We are currently investigating what technologies we will use and how the conference will take shape and how we can accommodate time zone differences for presenters, as well as family and work obligations. We look forward to your participation. Please “join” us! Conference Theme: Recognizing Relationships There are many critical challenges that endangered language documentation and conservation faces, some of which seem insurmountable, and despite linguists’ best efforts, many of the proposed solutions fall short. These challenges have been apparent to many communities, language activists and academic linguists since (or even before) the earliest public warnings of the “endangered language crisis” in the early 1990’s, and recognition of the great number of large-scale challenges has only become more apparent since. One reason that many of the current solutions have not reached the level of success to which they have aspired is that the need to identify and/or foster relationships is often minimized or even ignored completely. Identifying and fostering relationships by taking the time to build understanding between stakeholders, learning about needs and skills that can be offered, and developing shared goals and outcomes are central to sustainable solutions for language documentation and conservation. These relationships go beyond those between communities and linguists and extend to multi-party relationships among linguists, communities, other academic fields, governmental and non-governmental organizations, educational and funding agencies, and many other individuals invested in the future of the language. There are also important intra-group relationships within these stakeholding groups (e.g., between members of an Indigenous community, or language workers documenting signed languages and those documenting spoken languages) as well as inter-group relationships between different Indigenous communities. At ICLDC 2021 we propose to initiate a dialogue on how recognizing relationships can help overcome the many critical challenges in language documentation and language reclamation. We believe that this focus will lead to improved connections among academic linguists, various communities, researchers from other disciplines, educational practitioners, and many other stakeholders. We specifically aim to draw attention to the transformative power of recognizing relationships to overcome critical challenges. Submission Guidelines We have two calls for proposals with four different presentation formats. In the General Session, we have regular paper presentations and posters. We also have Workshop and Talk Story session proposals, which are due two months earlier than the General Session proposals. For more information on the requirements for each presentation type and their proposal submission form, please see the Call for Proposals section of our conference website . Timeline - June 2020: Call for Proposals announced - August 1, 2020: Proposals for Workshops and Talk Story Sessions deadline - September 1, 2020: Notification of acceptance to Workshops and Talk Story sessions - September 30, 2020: Proposal deadline for general papers and posters - November 1, 2020: Notification of acceptance for general papers and posters - November 1, 2020: Early registration opens - January 31, 2021: Early registration deadline; late registration opens February 1 - March 4 – March 7, 2021: 7th ICLDC Executive Committee - Bradley McDonnell , University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa - Andrea Berez-Kroeker , University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa - Ha‘alilio Williams-Solomon, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa - Jim Yoshioka , National Foreign Language Resource Center ContactAll questions about submissions should be emailed to icldc at hawaii.edu -- Bradley McDonnell Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Book Review Editor, Language Documentation & Conservation Organizer, International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation 2021 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From john at mccr.ae Sat Jun 13 03:00:00 2020 From: john at mccr.ae (John P. McCrae) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2020 08:00:00 +0100 Subject: [Lingtyp] Call for Participation: LDL-2020 Online Workshop Message-ID: Apologies for cross-posting ------ Due to the global situation and cancellation of the LREC 2020 conference, our workshop, Linked Data in Linguistics will take place virtually on June 22nd and 23rd. The program and details about participation can be found here: http://ldl2020.linguistic-lod.org/program.html soon. Meanwhile, the proceedings are already published on the LREC website: https://lrec2020.lrec-conf.org/en/workshops-and-tutorials/2020-workshops/ In order to participate in the workshop, please register in advance, a link to a registration form can be found here: https://forms.gle/cK8TqpiqDBEWQRk7A Information about the workshop: Since its establishment in 2012, the Linked Data in Linguistics (LDL) workshop series has become the major forum for presenting, discussing and disseminating technologies, vocabularies, resources and experiences regarding the application of semantic technologies and the Linked Open Data (LOD) paradigm to language resources in order to facilitate their visibility, accessibility, interoperability, reusability, enrichment, combined evaluation and integration. The LDL workshop series is organized by the Open Linguistics Working Group of the Open Knowledge Foundation and has contributed greatly to the emergence and growth of the Linguistic Linked Open Data (LLOD) cloud. LDL workshops contribute to the discussion, dissemination and establishment of community standards that drive this development, most notably the OntoLex-lemon model for lexical resources, as well as standards for other types of language resources still under development. Past years have seen a growing interest in the application of knowledge graphs and Semantic Web technologies to language resources, and their publication as linked data on the Web. As of today, a large number of language resources were either converted or created natively as linked data on the basis of data models specifically designed for the representation of linguistic content. Examples are wordnets, dictionaries, corpora — research papers describing the creation of these resources were presented at the previous editions of both LREC and LDL. At the same time, the growth of the LLOD cloud is far from over: new use-cases call for new data models and new resources to be created or converted. However, even though a critical mass of LLOD is already in place, there is still a pressing need for a robust ecosystem of tools that consume linguistic linked data. Recently started research networks and European projects, such as NexusLinguarum, ELEXIS, and Prêt-à-LLOD are working in the direction of building sustainable infrastructures around LRs, with linked data as one of the core technologies. By collocating the 7th edition of the workshop series with LREC, we encourage this interdisciplinary community to participate in the dialogue on these issues, to present and to discuss use cases, experiences, best practices, recommendations and technologies among each other and in interaction with the language resource community. The LDL workshop series has a general focus on LOD-based resources, vocabularies, infrastructures and technologies as means for managing, improving and using language resources on the Web. As technology and resources increasingly converge towards a LOD-based ecosystem, we particularly encourage submissions on Linked-Data Aware Tools and Services and Linked Language Resources Infrastructure, i.e. managing, curating and applying LLOD technologies and resources in a reliable and reproducible way for the needs of linguistics, NLP and digital humanities. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jb77 at buffalo.edu Mon Jun 15 21:48:08 2020 From: jb77 at buffalo.edu (Bohnemeyer, Juergen) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 01:48:08 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Message-ID: Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) From christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de Tue Jun 16 06:41:08 2020 From: christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de (Christian Lehmann) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 12:41:08 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> Dear Jürgen, the development of the definite article in Ancient Greek, which you mention, is probably a case in point. The development of a conditional form in the conjugation of Romance languages may be another. Numeral classifiers are apparently an innovation of the Viceitic and Naso branches of Chibcha, although this is not historically documented. Most of the aspectual auxiliaries found in the Mayan languages are produced in post-Proto-Mayan times in one or another of the branches. There was certainly contact among them both with respect to the idea of an aspectual auxiliary and with respect to one or another of the specific aspect features coded. Nevertheless, the latter do not coincide among the Mayan languages. For instance, the Yucatec predictive future seems to be an independent innovation (although I may be mistaken about this). Just a short comment on your generalization: The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. A more general (and rather defeatist) version of your hypothesis would be: Grammatical formatives and constructions contribute to structuring the message, thus enhancing expectability in it. This supports communication in general (Talmy Givón has been preaching this for decades); and to this extent, it is of secondary importance just which semantic features are coded by grammatical formatives, or which grammatical categories a language possesses. Best, Christian -- Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann Rudolfstr. 4 99092 Erfurt Deutschland Tel.: +49/361/2113417 E-Post: christianw_lehmann at arcor.de Web: https://www.christianlehmann.eu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hartmut at ruc.dk Tue Jun 16 08:28:34 2020 From: hartmut at ruc.dk (Hartmut Haberland) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 12:28:34 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813B4FE5@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> Dear Jürgen I just sent you a review I co-authored, Rie Obe and Hartmut Haberland 2018. “Review of Naomi Ogi, Involvement and Attitude in Japanese Discourse: Interactive Markers. Amsterdam: Benjamins." Nordic Journal of Linguistics 41 (1): 117–128. doi:10.1017/S0332586518000045. (I don’t know if it is advisable or even possible to send attachments to the List.) There we refer to a list of properties of modal particles in Russian (Arndt 1960), a list that reminds me much of the way you define functional categories, and even the last point “are omissible, i.e. convey no element of the objective message (in its factual or cognitive function), but convey the subjective emotional or mental attitude of the speaker to his interlocutor, to the objective message content, or to another element of the linguistic situation (emotive function).” is echoed in your claim that functional categories are redundant. (Arndt rather meant that these particles do not contribute to the (truth-conditional) meaning of an utterance.) So maybe Germanic ‘dialogical particles’ and East Asian ‘interactive markers’ belong to the elements you are looking for? English lacks any of these elements (as we know since Schubiger 1965), in Icelandic they are still normatively ostracized but well documented for on-line for the last over 100 years, so they could be a contact phenomenon (from Danish, maybe via Faroese). All the other Germanic languages have them, so they are a areal phenomenon, but the data for a sub-group in Vladimir Panov 2020. “The marking of uncontroversial information in Europe: presenting the Enimitive.” Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 52(1): 1-44 https://doi.org/10.1080/03740463.2020.1745618 do not make them likely to be a contact phenomenon (at least direct borrowing is in most cases excluded). (Panov will be on-line in a few days.) For East Asia, interactive markers are an areal phenomenon, but hardly contact-induced (note though that they are much more common in Cantonese than in Putonghua). Lewin 1959 has a lot about the history of the Japanese markers. Bruno Lewin 1959. Abriß der japanischen Grammatik. Wiesbaden: Harassowitz. Hartmut -----Oprindelig meddelelse----- Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af Bohnemeyer, Juergen Sendt: 16. juni 2020 03:48 Til: LINGTYP Emne: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jb77 at buffalo.edu Tue Jun 16 09:44:02 2020 From: jb77 at buffalo.edu (Bohnemeyer, Juergen) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 13:44:02 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> Message-ID: <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> Dear Christian — Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I’d just like to try a clarification: > On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann wrote: > > > To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. I’m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much inferencing the hearer has to do. Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still facilitates processing by further boosting the predictability of the referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing the gender information is minimal (that’s where grammaticalization comes in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage. Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech communities that get by happily without them), so that can’t be the reason why we grammaticalize them (that’s my thinking, anyway). (As to Givón, yes, absolutely, I’m well aware that I’m merely trying to retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of functionalism :-)) Best — Juergen -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) From oesten at ling.su.se Tue Jun 16 12:25:58 2020 From: oesten at ling.su.se (=?utf-8?B?w5ZzdGVuIERhaGw=?=) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 16:25:58 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> Message-ID: <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> This topic happened to come up in my recent conversation with Martin Haspelmath on his blog (https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361). There are also some references there to earlier literature. I would not bet on the definite article in Ancient Greek as an independent development. After all, definite articles were around in the neighbouring Semitic languages. If the Greeks got their alphabet from the Semitic-speaking peoples, they could also get the article from them, I think. - Östen -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Från: Lingtyp För Bohnemeyer, Juergen Skickat: den 16 juni 2020 15:44 Till: LINGTYP Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Christian — Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I’d just like to try a clarification: > On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann wrote: > > > To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. I’m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much inferencing the hearer has to do. Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still facilitates processing by further boosting the predictability of the referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing the gender information is minimal (that’s where grammaticalization comes in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage. Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech communities that get by happily without them), so that can’t be the reason why we grammaticalize them (that’s my thinking, anyway). (As to Givón, yes, absolutely, I’m well aware that I’m merely trying to retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of functionalism :-)) Best — Juergen -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp From paolo.ramat at unipv.it Tue Jun 16 12:42:22 2020 From: paolo.ramat at unipv.it (paolo Ramat) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 18:42:22 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> Message-ID: A propos of Dahl's remarks on Greek defin. art. and the Semitic lgs. it might be interesting to have a look at Ignazio *Putzu *& Paolo *Ramat*, *Articles and quantifiers in the Mediterranean languages: a typological-diachronic analysis*, in Walter Bisang (ed.) "Aspects of Typology and Universals", Beihefte zu *STUF* 1, Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2001. prof. dr. Paolo Ramat Università di Pavia (retired) Istituto Universitario Studi Superiori (IUSS Pavia) (retired) Accademia dei Lincei, Socio corrispondente 'Academia Europaea' 'Societas Linguistica Europaea', Honorary Member piazzetta Arduino 11 - I 27100 Pavia ##39 0382 27027 347 044 98 44 Mail priva di virus. www.avast.com <#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2> Il giorno mar 16 giu 2020 alle ore 18:26 Östen Dahl ha scritto: > This topic happened to come up in my recent conversation with Martin > Haspelmath on his blog (https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361). There are also > some references there to earlier literature. > > I would not bet on the definite article in Ancient Greek as an independent > development. After all, definite articles were around in the neighbouring > Semitic languages. If the Greeks got their alphabet from the > Semitic-speaking peoples, they could also get the article from them, I > think. > > - Östen > > > -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- > Från: Lingtyp För Bohnemeyer, > Juergen > Skickat: den 16 juni 2020 15:44 > Till: LINGTYP > Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Christian — Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much > more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I’d just like to try a > clarification: > > > On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann < > christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> wrote: > > > > > > To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the > sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective > information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there > would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. > > > I’m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely > inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much > inferencing the hearer has to do. > > Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement > morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed > for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still > facilitates processing by further boosting the predictability of the > referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing > the gender information is minimal (that’s where grammaticalization comes > in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage. > > Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense > markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech > communities that get by happily without them), so that can’t be the reason > why we grammaticalize them (that’s my thinking, anyway). > > (As to Givón, yes, absolutely, I’m well aware that I’m merely trying to > retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of > functionalism :-)) > > Best — Juergen > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and > Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. > Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu > 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard > Cohen) > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > Mail priva di virus. www.avast.com <#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From piermarco.bertinetto at sns.it Tue Jun 16 12:46:42 2020 From: piermarco.bertinetto at sns.it (Pier Marco Bertinetto) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 18:46:42 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear Jürgen, in a paper of mine, in which I took as starting point Neele Mueller's dissertation on TAM markers in South American Indigenous Languages, I developed a similar reasoning with respect to the arousal of TAM features in those languages: *PMB* 2014. Tenselessness in Southamerican indigenous languages with focus on Ayoreo (Zamuco), *LIAMES* (*L**ínguas Indígenas Americanas*) 14. 149-171 (e-ISSN2177-7160). http://revistas.iel.unicamp.br/index.php/liames/article/view/4269 There is evidence that these languages grammaticalized modal/evidential markers first, then aspect, finally markers of temporality. Apparently, with some grammatical categories language users have to decide what should and what shouldn't be explicitly marked. There seems to be a trade-off between how much speakers want to put the burden of inferencing on hearers, and how much they make the hearers' life easier by flagging such grammatical categories. Which indeed shows that their marking is not strictly needed. Best Pier Marco Il giorno mar 16 giu 2020 alle ore 03:48 Bohnemeyer, Juergen < jb77 at buffalo.edu> ha scritto: > Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional > categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ > of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I > propose a more technical definition below. > > Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in which > the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more > members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the > balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former > languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no > obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in > question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based > innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of > functional categories in the absence of contact models.) > > I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not > most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of > definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the > “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation > event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some > of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors > of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what > role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as > Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to > be unclear. > > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of > innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest > here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not > present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > > As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a > superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might > be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical > category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional > combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very > broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of > great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform > in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of > the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every > single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of > quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for > languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential > predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for > universal quantification). > > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly > interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, > and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two > thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My > hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the > communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, > number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in > which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative > intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. > The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently > serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining > feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t > translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively > advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as > negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in > turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in > question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, > and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a > sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies > Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science > University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. > Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu > 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In > (Leonard Cohen) > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -- ========================================================= |||| Pier Marco Bertinetto ------ professore emerito /////// Scuola Normale Superiore ------- p.za dei Cavalieri 7 /////// I-56126 PISA ------- phone: +39 050 509111 /////// ------- HOME /////// via Matteotti 197 ------- I-55049 Viareggio LU /////// phone: +39 0584 652417 ------- cell.: +39 368 3830251 ========================================================= editor of "Italian Journal of Linguistics" webpage "Laboratorio di Linguistica" ========================================================= -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From adamsingerman at uchicago.edu Tue Jun 16 13:22:44 2020 From: adamsingerman at uchicago.edu (Adam Singerman) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 12:22:44 -0500 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear Juergen, Tuparí has resultative and evidential morphology that lacks clear cognates in related languages within the Tupían family; as far as I know, the closest relatives to Tuparí (Sakurabiát/Mekens, Akuntsú, Makurap, Wayoró) don't have anything comparable. It is probable that this resultative and evidential morphology developed due to multilingual contact but since the other languages from the Rio Branco region (southern Rondônia, near the Brazil-Bolivia border) are generally quite underdocumented, we can't convincingly point to contact as the explanation. I have an article on this in the July 2019 issue of IJAL (can send you the PDF if you want). All the best, Adam From susanne.michaelis at uni-leipzig.de Tue Jun 16 14:24:43 2020 From: susanne.michaelis at uni-leipzig.de (Susanne Michaelis) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 20:24:43 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1b015106-b09e-5b96-f2b8-76d4389bd06f@uni-leipzig.de> Dear Jürgen, Many thanks for this interesting discussion. > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. Apparently your interpretation of the role of contact in creolization seems to be reduced to scenarios where we can clearly trace a functional category to either being adopted from the lexifer or imposed by the substrate. You seem to say that if some grammaticalized functional category in a creole is purely innovated such a process shouldn’t be linked to language contact. But I think that the role of language contact in creoles cannot be restricted in such a way because language contact and multilingualism is key throughout every creolization scenario and beyond: societies where creoles were created consisted at various times to various degrees of second/third language users. Therefore, *extra transparency* is a major driving communicative force in understanding the functional grammatical make-up of creole languages. It leads to multiple accelerated functionalization and grammaticalization processes irrespectively of whether they continue lexifier/substrate functional categories or show innovated functional categories (see Michaelis & Haspelmath 2021, I'm happy to send you the paper if you are interested).Therefore, creole cases of innovated functional categories that you are interested in will *always* reflect language contact and should therefore be excluded given your condition (iv). There is very little large-scale comparative *qualitative* work in creole studies (but see e.g. Gil 2014, Michaelis 2019, Daval-Markussen 2018), but from my knowledge of the data in WALS and APiCS, it is indeed the case that instances, such as the innovative indefinite article in Juba Arabic against both lexifier and substrate patterns lacking an indefinite article, seem to be rare (see Daval-Markussen 2018), as you suggest. But in my view, this whole discussion crucially depends on the finegrainedness of your definition of the functional category in question and on the criteria for measuring whether a functional category in a given language/variety is*the same* or *a different one* compared to its parent/sister languages' functional categories. What we often see in creoles, is that grammatical markers expressing functional categories are inspired by one or more of their parent languages, but are certainly always innovated to some degree in the creole itself. > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. Tense and aspect are both widely grammaticalized in creoles (largely inspired by substrates). I'm wondering what your prediction for creoles would be given your "hearer's inference load approach"? Because what is needed and what is not needed to express the speaker/signer's communicative intention crucially depends on the sociolinguistics of the communication setting. I think of language contact in a much more radical way (something along the line of Croft 2000): Every speaker/signer has their ideolect giving rise to multiple layers of variation in all speech/sign communities, and in this sense language contact is rampant even in so-called homogeneous speech communities. Your constraint (iv) says: " (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.)" I would say that there is no innovation of functional categories without language contact or contact models in the first place. Best wishes, Susanne > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen > -- Plant new trees while searching the internet: https://www.ecosia.org/ Susanne Maria Michaelis Universität Leipzig Institut für Anglistik (IPF 141199) 04081 Leipzig https://research.uni-leipzig.de/unicodas/susanne-maria-michaelis/ Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History Kahlaische Str. 10 07745 Jena http://www.shh.mpg.de/person/42386/25522 Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures: http://apics-online.info/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de Tue Jun 16 18:04:12 2020 From: frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de (Uni KN) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 00:04:12 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> Message-ID: Close, Östen: they got it from Egyptian. Or so argues Carsten Peust, in Göttinger Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 2, 1999, S. 99-120 Fälle von strukturellem Einfluss des Ägyptischen auf europäische Sprachen (1) Die Herausbildung des definiten Artikels, (2) Die Entwicklung des grammatischen femininen Genus, (3) Die inklusive Zählweise von Zeitintervallen https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/2274/1/Peust_Faelle_von_strukturellen_Einfluessen_1999.pdf Similarly LEVIN, Saul 1992: Studies in comparative grammar: I. The definite article, an Egyptian/Semitic/Indo­European etymology, in General Linguistics 32:1­-15. FEHLING, Detlev 1980: The origins of European syntax, in Folia Linguistica Historica 1:353-387. Frans > On 16. Jun 2020, at 18:25, Östen Dahl wrote: > > This topic happened to come up in my recent conversation with Martin Haspelmath on his blog (https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361). There are also some references there to earlier literature. > > I would not bet on the definite article in Ancient Greek as an independent development. After all, definite articles were around in the neighbouring Semitic languages. If the Greeks got their alphabet from the Semitic-speaking peoples, they could also get the article from them, I think. > > - Östen > > > -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- > Från: Lingtyp För Bohnemeyer, Juergen > Skickat: den 16 juni 2020 15:44 > Till: LINGTYP > Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Christian — Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I’d just like to try a clarification: > >> On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann wrote: >> >> >> To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. > > > I’m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much inferencing the hearer has to do. > > Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still facilitates processing by further boosting the predictability of the referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing the gender information is minimal (that’s where grammaticalization comes in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage. > > Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech communities that get by happily without them), so that can’t be the reason why we grammaticalize them (that’s my thinking, anyway). > > (As to Givón, yes, absolutely, I’m well aware that I’m merely trying to retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of functionalism :-)) > > Best — Juergen > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johanna at berkeley.edu Tue Jun 16 21:02:46 2020 From: johanna at berkeley.edu (Johanna Nichols) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 18:02:46 -0700 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> Message-ID: I think also Kahane & Kahane, maybe in their Language 1979 or 1986 article. Johanna On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 3:04 PM Uni KN wrote: > > Close, Östen: they got it from Egyptian. Or so argues Carsten Peust, in Göttinger Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 2, 1999, S. 99-120 > > Fälle von strukturellem Einfluss des Ägyptischen auf europäische Sprachen > (1) Die Herausbildung des definiten Artikels, (2) Die Entwicklung des grammatischen femininen Genus, (3) Die inklusive Zählweise von Zeitintervallen > > https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/2274/1/Peust_Faelle_von_strukturellen_Einfluessen_1999.pdf > > Similarly > LEVIN, Saul 1992: Studies in comparative grammar: I. The definite article, an Egyptian/Semitic/Indo­European etymology, in General Linguistics 32:1­-15. > FEHLING, Detlev 1980: The origins of European syntax, in Folia Linguistica Historica 1:353-387. > > Frans > > > On 16. Jun 2020, at 18:25, Östen Dahl wrote: > > This topic happened to come up in my recent conversation with Martin Haspelmath on his blog (https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361). There are also some references there to earlier literature. > > I would not bet on the definite article in Ancient Greek as an independent development. After all, definite articles were around in the neighbouring Semitic languages. If the Greeks got their alphabet from the Semitic-speaking peoples, they could also get the article from them, I think. > > - Östen > > > -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- > Från: Lingtyp För Bohnemeyer, Juergen > Skickat: den 16 juni 2020 15:44 > Till: LINGTYP > Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Christian — Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I’d just like to try a clarification: > > On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann wrote: > > > To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. > > > > I’m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much inferencing the hearer has to do. > > Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still facilitates processing by further boosting the predictability of the referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing the gender information is minimal (that’s where grammaticalization comes in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage. > > Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech communities that get by happily without them), so that can’t be the reason why we grammaticalize them (that’s my thinking, anyway). > > (As to Givón, yes, absolutely, I’m well aware that I’m merely trying to retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of functionalism :-)) > > Best — Juergen > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp From oesten at ling.su.se Wed Jun 17 02:25:09 2020 From: oesten at ling.su.se (=?utf-8?B?w5ZzdGVuIERhaGw=?=) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 06:25:09 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> Message-ID: <04f0ac16ca8d4776816aaca299524fdf@ling.su.se> Thanks, Frans, for the link to this paper, which I had not seen. (I did read Fehling’s paper, however, quite long ago.) For the record, though: although Peust claims (reasonably, it seems) that Egyptian is the ultimate source, he doesn’t say that Greek got it straight from there. Instead, he says that it is remarkable that the definite article shows up in Greek in the same time period as the Greeks took over the Phoenician script, thus suggesting Phoenician, a Semitic language, as the proximate source for the Greek definite article. In light of Peust’s claims, it is maybe Egyptian that is most relevant for Jürgen’s project. Although who knows if they didn’t get the article from somebody else? * Östen Från: Uni KN Skickat: den 17 juni 2020 00:04 Till: Östen Dahl Kopia: LINGTYP Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Close, Östen: they got it from Egyptian. Or so argues Carsten Peust, in Göttinger Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 2, 1999, S. 99-120 Fälle von strukturellem Einfluss des Ägyptischen auf europäische Sprachen (1) Die Herausbildung des definiten Artikels, (2) Die Entwicklung des grammatischen femininen Genus, (3) Die inklusive Zählweise von Zeitintervallen https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/2274/1/Peust_Faelle_von_strukturellen_Einfluessen_1999.pdf Similarly LEVIN, Saul 1992: Studies in comparative grammar: I. The definite article, an Egyptian/Semitic/Indo­European etymology, in General Linguistics 32:1­-15. FEHLING, Detlev 1980: The origins of European syntax, in Folia Linguistica Historica 1:353-387. Frans On 16. Jun 2020, at 18:25, Östen Dahl > wrote: This topic happened to come up in my recent conversation with Martin Haspelmath on his blog (https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361). There are also some references there to earlier literature. I would not bet on the definite article in Ancient Greek as an independent development. After all, definite articles were around in the neighbouring Semitic languages. If the Greeks got their alphabet from the Semitic-speaking peoples, they could also get the article from them, I think. - Östen -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Från: Lingtyp > För Bohnemeyer, Juergen Skickat: den 16 juni 2020 15:44 Till: LINGTYP > Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Christian — Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I’d just like to try a clarification: On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann > wrote: To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. I’m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much inferencing the hearer has to do. Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still facilitates processing by further boosting the predictability of the referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing the gender information is minimal (that’s where grammaticalization comes in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage. Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech communities that get by happily without them), so that can’t be the reason why we grammaticalize them (that’s my thinking, anyway). (As to Givón, yes, absolutely, I’m well aware that I’m merely trying to retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of functionalism :-)) Best — Juergen -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eitan.grossman at mail.huji.ac.il Wed Jun 17 02:58:17 2020 From: eitan.grossman at mail.huji.ac.il (Eitan Grossman) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 09:58:17 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <04f0ac16ca8d4776816aaca299524fdf@ling.su.se> References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> <04f0ac16ca8d4776816aaca299524fdf@ling.su.se> Message-ID: Right, the idea is that it spreads from Egyptian to Canaanite and from there onwards. As for Ancient Egyptian, the development of the definite article (and later, the indefinite article) is documented extensively and has been written about quite a lot. It's pretty clear that the definite article emerges relatively late in the history of the language, first in more colloquial texts and then later in higher-register ones. Interestingly, there have also been claims that Egyptian got the definite article from Canaanites who lived in Egypt. Whether within Egyptian it comes from a substrate or adstrate or something else, it's virtually impossible to tell. It's not impossible but also not straightforward -- the contemporary languages, whatever they were, aren't really documented. On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 9:26 AM Östen Dahl wrote: > Thanks, Frans, for the link to this paper, which I had not seen. (I did > read Fehling’s paper, however, quite long ago.) For the record, though: > although Peust claims (reasonably, it seems) that Egyptian is the ultimate > source, he doesn’t say that Greek got it straight from there. Instead, he > says that it is remarkable that the definite article shows up in Greek in > the same time period as the Greeks took over the Phoenician script, thus > suggesting Phoenician, a Semitic language, as the proximate source for the > Greek definite article. > > > > In light of Peust’s claims, it is maybe Egyptian that is most relevant for > Jürgen’s project. Although who knows if they didn’t get the article from > somebody else? > > > > - Östen > > > > > > *Från:* Uni KN > *Skickat:* den 17 juni 2020 00:04 > *Till:* Östen Dahl > *Kopia:* LINGTYP > *Ämne:* Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > > > Close, Östen: they got it from Egyptian. Or so argues Carsten Peust, in Göttinger > Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 2, 1999, S. 99-120 > > > > Fälle von strukturellem Einfluss des Ägyptischen auf europäische Sprachen > > > (1) Die Herausbildung des definiten Artikels, (2) Die Entwicklung des grammatischen femininen Genus, (3) Die inklusive Zählweise von Zeitintervallen > > > > > https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/2274/1/Peust_Faelle_von_strukturellen_Einfluessen_1999.pdf > > > > Similarly > > > LEVIN, Saul 1992: Studies in comparative grammar: I. The definite article, an Egyptian/Semitic/Indo­European etymology, in General Linguistics 32:1­-15. > > > FEHLING, Detlev 1980: The origins of European syntax, in Folia Linguistica Historica 1:353-387. > > > > Frans > > > > > > On 16. Jun 2020, at 18:25, Östen Dahl wrote: > > > > This topic happened to come up in my recent conversation with Martin > Haspelmath on his blog (https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361). There are also > some references there to earlier literature. > > I would not bet on the definite article in Ancient Greek as an independent > development. After all, definite articles were around in the neighbouring > Semitic languages. If the Greeks got their alphabet from the > Semitic-speaking peoples, they could also get the article from them, I > think. > > - Östen > > > -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- > Från: Lingtyp För Bohnemeyer, > Juergen > Skickat: den 16 juni 2020 15:44 > Till: LINGTYP > Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Christian — Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much > more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I’d just like to try a > clarification: > > > On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann < > christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> wrote: > > > To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the > sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective > information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there > would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. > > > > I’m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely > inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much > inferencing the hearer has to do. > > Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement > morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed > for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still > facilitates processing by further boosting the predictability of the > referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing > the gender information is minimal (that’s where grammaticalization comes > in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage. > > Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense > markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech > communities that get by happily without them), so that can’t be the reason > why we grammaticalize them (that’s my thinking, anyway). > > (As to Givón, yes, absolutely, I’m well aware that I’m merely trying to > retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of > functionalism :-)) > > Best — Juergen > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and > Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email > me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 > and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard > Cohen) > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ajrtallman at utexas.edu Wed Jun 17 03:22:18 2020 From: ajrtallman at utexas.edu (Adam James Ross Tallman) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 09:22:18 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <04f0ac16ca8d4776816aaca299524fdf@ling.su.se> References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> <04f0ac16ca8d4776816aaca299524fdf@ling.su.se> Message-ID: Dear Juergen, Just a clarifying question (I'm interested because I've attempted to develop a method to quantify the degree to which some set of morphemes is morphologized and I have struggled with defining "functional" in a consistent fashion, and actually I have just given up) Wouldn't your definition imply that anything that was not an open lexical class would be "functional"? There's plenty of languages that have a closed class of adjectives - shouldn't these be "functional" in your sense? Maybe adjectives could be added to your class of morphemes that tend to become functional regardless of contact [?]... but just in case they are not a lexical class. But do adjectives express redundant information or not? I'm also skeptical that an easy decision can be made regarding the lexical vs. functional status of classifiers, but this is perhaps outside the scope of your research question. (I would take a close look at Krasnoukhova's dissertation on the Noun Phrase in South American languages for both of these issues) best, Adam On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 8:25 AM Östen Dahl wrote: > Thanks, Frans, for the link to this paper, which I had not seen. (I did > read Fehling’s paper, however, quite long ago.) For the record, though: > although Peust claims (reasonably, it seems) that Egyptian is the ultimate > source, he doesn’t say that Greek got it straight from there. Instead, he > says that it is remarkable that the definite article shows up in Greek in > the same time period as the Greeks took over the Phoenician script, thus > suggesting Phoenician, a Semitic language, as the proximate source for the > Greek definite article. > > > > In light of Peust’s claims, it is maybe Egyptian that is most relevant for > Jürgen’s project. Although who knows if they didn’t get the article from > somebody else? > > > > - Östen > > > > > > *Från:* Uni KN > *Skickat:* den 17 juni 2020 00:04 > *Till:* Östen Dahl > *Kopia:* LINGTYP > *Ämne:* Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > > > Close, Östen: they got it from Egyptian. Or so argues Carsten Peust, in Göttinger > Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 2, 1999, S. 99-120 > > > > Fälle von strukturellem Einfluss des Ägyptischen auf europäische Sprachen > > > (1) Die Herausbildung des definiten Artikels, (2) Die Entwicklung des grammatischen femininen Genus, (3) Die inklusive Zählweise von Zeitintervallen > > > > > https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/2274/1/Peust_Faelle_von_strukturellen_Einfluessen_1999.pdf > > > > Similarly > > > LEVIN, Saul 1992: Studies in comparative grammar: I. The definite article, an Egyptian/Semitic/Indo­European etymology, in General Linguistics 32:1­-15. > > > FEHLING, Detlev 1980: The origins of European syntax, in Folia Linguistica Historica 1:353-387. > > > > Frans > > > > > > On 16. Jun 2020, at 18:25, Östen Dahl wrote: > > > > This topic happened to come up in my recent conversation with Martin > Haspelmath on his blog (https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361). There are also > some references there to earlier literature. > > I would not bet on the definite article in Ancient Greek as an independent > development. After all, definite articles were around in the neighbouring > Semitic languages. If the Greeks got their alphabet from the > Semitic-speaking peoples, they could also get the article from them, I > think. > > - Östen > > > -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- > Från: Lingtyp För Bohnemeyer, > Juergen > Skickat: den 16 juni 2020 15:44 > Till: LINGTYP > Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Christian — Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much > more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I’d just like to try a > clarification: > > > On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann < > christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> wrote: > > > To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the > sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective > information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there > would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. > > > > I’m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely > inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much > inferencing the hearer has to do. > > Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement > morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed > for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still > facilitates processing by further boosting the predictability of the > referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing > the gender information is minimal (that’s where grammaticalization comes > in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage. > > Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense > markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech > communities that get by happily without them), so that can’t be the reason > why we grammaticalize them (that’s my thinking, anyway). > > (As to Givón, yes, absolutely, I’m well aware that I’m merely trying to > retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of > functionalism :-)) > > Best — Juergen > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and > Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email > me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 > and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard > Cohen) > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -- Adam J.R. Tallman PhD, University of Texas at Austin Investigador del Museo de Etnografía y Folklore, la Paz ELDP -- Postdoctorante CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From npatel at austin.utexas.edu Wed Jun 17 06:29:56 2020 From: npatel at austin.utexas.edu (Pat-El, Na'ama) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 10:29:56 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> <04f0ac16ca8d4776816aaca299524fdf@ling.su.se> Message-ID: <1732D7ED-CC2E-4C0E-A476-64FE9C91D12F@austin.utexas.edu> The definite article in Semitic developed also in Arabic, Aramaic, and Old South Arabian, languages that were not in contact with Egyptian in the relevant period and likely did not borrow their article from Canaanite. We know that either because they weren’t in contact with Canaanite (Old South Arabian), or because the development of the article is attested (Arabic, Aramaic). Additionally, Semitic had already a nascent article, which only fully developed in Ethiopic (bibliographical details below). This is all to say that I doubt Egyptian is the catalyst. Huehnergard, John and Na’ama Pat-El. 2012. Third Person Possessive Suffixes as Definite Articles in Semitic. Journal of Historical Linguistics 2: 25-51. Na'ama On Jun 17, 2020, at 01:58, Eitan Grossman > wrote: Right, the idea is that it spreads from Egyptian to Canaanite and from there onwards. As for Ancient Egyptian, the development of the definite article (and later, the indefinite article) is documented extensively and has been written about quite a lot. It's pretty clear that the definite article emerges relatively late in the history of the language, first in more colloquial texts and then later in higher-register ones. Interestingly, there have also been claims that Egyptian got the definite article from Canaanites who lived in Egypt. Whether within Egyptian it comes from a substrate or adstrate or something else, it's virtually impossible to tell. It's not impossible but also not straightforward -- the contemporary languages, whatever they were, aren't really documented. On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 9:26 AM Östen Dahl > wrote: Thanks, Frans, for the link to this paper, which I had not seen. (I did read Fehling’s paper, however, quite long ago.) For the record, though: although Peust claims (reasonably, it seems) that Egyptian is the ultimate source, he doesn’t say that Greek got it straight from there. Instead, he says that it is remarkable that the definite article shows up in Greek in the same time period as the Greeks took over the Phoenician script, thus suggesting Phoenician, a Semitic language, as the proximate source for the Greek definite article. In light of Peust’s claims, it is maybe Egyptian that is most relevant for Jürgen’s project. Although who knows if they didn’t get the article from somebody else? * Östen Från: Uni KN > Skickat: den 17 juni 2020 00:04 Till: Östen Dahl > Kopia: LINGTYP > Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Close, Östen: they got it from Egyptian. Or so argues Carsten Peust, in Göttinger Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 2, 1999, S. 99-120 Fälle von strukturellem Einfluss des Ägyptischen auf europäische Sprachen (1) Die Herausbildung des definiten Artikels, (2) Die Entwicklung des grammatischen femininen Genus, (3) Die inklusive Zählweise von Zeitintervallen https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/2274/1/Peust_Faelle_von_strukturellen_Einfluessen_1999.pdf Similarly LEVIN, Saul 1992: Studies in comparative grammar: I. The definite article, an Egyptian/Semitic/Indo­European etymology, in General Linguistics 32:1­-15. FEHLING, Detlev 1980: The origins of European syntax, in Folia Linguistica Historica 1:353-387. Frans On 16. Jun 2020, at 18:25, Östen Dahl > wrote: This topic happened to come up in my recent conversation with Martin Haspelmath on his blog (https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361). There are also some references there to earlier literature. I would not bet on the definite article in Ancient Greek as an independent development. After all, definite articles were around in the neighbouring Semitic languages. If the Greeks got their alphabet from the Semitic-speaking peoples, they could also get the article from them, I think. - Östen -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Från: Lingtyp > För Bohnemeyer, Juergen Skickat: den 16 juni 2020 15:44 Till: LINGTYP > Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Christian — Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I’d just like to try a clarification: On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann > wrote: To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. I’m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much inferencing the hearer has to do. Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still facilitates processing by further boosting the predictability of the referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing the gender information is minimal (that’s where grammaticalization comes in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage. Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech communities that get by happily without them), so that can’t be the reason why we grammaticalize them (that’s my thinking, anyway). (As to Givón, yes, absolutely, I’m well aware that I’m merely trying to retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of functionalism :-)) Best — Juergen -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp This message is from an external sender. Learn more about why this << matters at https://links.utexas.edu/rtyclf. << -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aminatamajigeen at yahoo.com Tue Jun 16 17:30:28 2020 From: aminatamajigeen at yahoo.com (Majigeen Aminata) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 21:30:28 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> Dear all, I am currently workingon what are called “adverbs” (see words un bold) in wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (WestAfrica) has specific words that only work with some colors: white, black, red and eachword-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. weextàll:extremely white (it can't be whiter) ñuulkukk:extremely black (it can't be more black) xonqcoyy:extremely red (it can't be more red) Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. They are not commutable. baax lool: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) bees tàq:really new (nobody has ever used it) dëgër këcc:extremely hard (it can't be harder) diis gann:really heavy (very difficult to carry) fatt taraj:extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) fess dell:extremely full (it can't be fuller) forox toll:really acidic (it can't be more acidic) gàtt ndugur:really short (he can't be shorter) jeex tàkk:completely finished, ... In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude.I would like to knowif there are languages ​​that work like that and what is the terminology usedfor this kind of construction. Can someone also recommend me new documentationon the definition of the concepts of verbs, adverbs, adjectives… in Africanlanguages? Thanks and regards. Aminata  -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aminatamajigeen at yahoo.com Tue Jun 16 17:55:58 2020 From: aminatamajigeen at yahoo.com (Majigeen Aminata) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 21:55:58 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs References: <1952472239.1338554.1592344558843.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1952472239.1338554.1592344558843@mail.yahoo.com> Dear all, I am currently workingon what are called “adverbs” (see words un bold) in wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (WestAfrica) has specific words that only work with some colors: white, black, red and eachword-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. weextàll:extremely white (it can't be whiter) ñuulkukk:extremely black (it can't be more black) xonqcoyy:extremely red (it can't be more red) Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. They are not commutable. baax lool: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) bees tàq:really new (nobody has ever used it) dëgër këcc:extremely hard (it can't be harder) diis gann:really heavy (very difficult to carry) fatt taraj:extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) fess dell:extremely full (it can't be fuller) forox toll:really acidic (it can't be more acidic) gàtt ndugur:really short (he can't be shorter) jeex tàkk:completely finished, ... In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude. They are not onomatopoeias,Wolof also has them and they are different. tàkk jëppet: catch fire abruptly on the wayup (jëppet expresses the way of catching fire suddenly on the way up njool tàlli: to be straight tàlli ñare: to be stiffly straight, Thanks and regards. Aminata Bonjour,  Je suis entrain de travailler sur ce qu’onappelle adverbes dans la littérature.Le wolof a par exemple des mots spécifiques qui ne marchent qu’avec certainescouleurs :  blanc, noir, rouge etchaque mot-adverbe ne marche qu’avec sa couleur, ils ne sont pasinterchangeables. weex tàll :                   extrêmement blanc (on ne pas êtreplus blanc) ñuul kukk :               extrêmementnoir (on ne pas être plus noir) xonq coyy :                extrêmement D’autres vontavec des verbes d’états et leur sont spécifiques aussi. Ils ne sont pasinterchangeables. baax lool:                   extrêmement gentil (onne pas être plus gentil) bees tàq:                    vraimentnouveau (personne ne l’a jamais utilisé) dëgër këcc :                extrêmement dur (on ne pas être plusdur) diis gann:                  vraiment lourd (tresdifficile de le soulever) fatt taraj :                   extrêmementbouché (on ne pas être plus bouché) fess dell:                     extrêmement plein (onne pas être plus plein) forox toll:                   vraiment acide (on ne pas être plus acide) gàtt ndugur:               vraimentcourt (on ne pas être plus court) jeex tàkk:                  tout à fait terminé, etc… En wolof on les appelledes intensifieurs ou intensificateurs mais ce terme ne me convainc pas car ilpeut porter à confusion. Ils n’intensifient pas. Ces mots veulent dirent que l’étatou l’action du verbe est à son extrémité. Ce ne sont pasdes onomatopées. Le wolof a aussi des onomatopées différentes de ces mots. Je voudrais savoirs’il existe des langues qui fonctionnent comme ça et quelle est la terminologieemployée pour ce genre de construction Est-ce quelqu’un peut aussi me recommanderde la documentation nouvelle sur la définition des notions de verbes, adverbes,adjectifs… dans les langues africaines ? Merci Aminata -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From a.y.aikhenvald at live.com Wed Jun 17 00:12:54 2020 From: a.y.aikhenvald at live.com (Alexandra Aikhenvald) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 04:12:54 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] PhD scholarships at the Language and Culture Research Centre, JCU In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ________________________________ From: Alexandra Aikhenvald Sent: Wednesday, 17 June 2020 2:11 PM To: Lingtyp at listserv.linguistilist.org Subject: PhD scholarships at the Language and Culture Research Centre, JCU Announcement PhD scholarships at the language and culture research centre Come and work in an exotic location, investigating a language which has never previously been described! Applications are invited, from suitably qualified students, to enter the PhD program of the Language and Culture Research Centre at James Cook University Australia. Supervision will be provided by Professor Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Professor R. M. W. Dixon, Professor Rosita Henry, Dr Luca Ciucci, and Dr Michael Wood, all highly experienced in documenting languages and cultures of the tropics and with a substantial record of publications in the relevant fields. Our PhD candidates generally undertake extensive immersion fieldwork on a previously undescribed (or scarcely described) language and write a comprehensive grammar of it for their dissertation. They are expected to work on a language which is still actively spoken, and to establish a field situation within a community in which it is the first language. Their first fieldtrip lasts for six to nine months. After completing a first draft of the grammar, back in Cairns, they undertake a second fieldtrip of two to three months. Fieldwork methodology centres on the collection, transcription and analysis of texts, together with participant observation, and — at a later stage — judicious grammatical elicitation in the language under description (not through the lingua franca of the country). Our main priority areas are the Papuan and Austronesian languages of New Guinea and surrounding areas, and the languages of tropical Amazonia. However, we do not exclude applicants who have an established interest in languages from other areas (which need not necessarily lie within the tropics). PhDs in Australian universities involve some coursework and a substantial dissertation. Candidates must thus have had thorough coursework training before embarking on this PhD program. This should have included courses on morphology, syntax, semantics, and phonology/phonetics, taught from a non-formalist perspective. We place emphasis on work that has a sound empirical basis but also shows a firm theoretical orientation (in terms of general typological theory, or what has recently come to be called basic linguistic theory). Distinguished Professor Alexandra (Sasha) Aikhenvald is Australian Laureate Fellow and Research Leader for People and Societies of the Tropics. Together with Professor R. M. W. Dixon, she heads the Language and Culture Research Centre, which includes Research Fellows and a growing number of doctoral students. In addition, senior scholars from across the world opt to spend their sabbatical at the Language and Culture Research Centre. The LCRC has strong links with anthropologists, archaeologists and educationalists, and with scholars working on environmental issues, all within James Cook University. Further information is available at http://www.jcu.edu.au/lcrc/ The scholarship will be at the standard James Cook University rate, Australian $27.082 pa. Students coming from overseas are liable for a tuition fee; but this will be waived if scholarship is awarded. A small relocation allowance may be provided on taking up the scholarship. In addition, an adequate allowance will be made to cover fieldwork expenses and conference attendance. The scholarship is for three and a half years. The deadline for application (starting in 2021) is 30 September 2020. Successful applicants would take up their PhD scholarships between January and June 2021. (The academic year in Australia runs from February to November.) Application form and procedures for international students can be found at: https://www.jcu.edu.au/graduate-research-school/candidates/postgraduate-research-scholarships (JCUPRS scholarships). The applications are expected to be open in July 2020. Prospective applicants are invited, in the first place, to get in touch with Professor Alexandra Aikhenvald at Alexandra.Aikhenvald at jcu.edu.au, providing details of their background, qualifications and interests (including a curriculum vitae). Applicants are advised to send samples of their written work in linguistics (at least some of this should be in English). Best wishes Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, PhD, DLitt, FAHA Distinguished Professor and Australian Laureate Fellow Director of the Language and Culture Research Centre James Cook University PO Box 6811, Cairns, Queensland 4870, Australia http://www.jcu.edu.au/faess/JCUPRD_043649.html mobile 0400 305315, office 61-7-40421117 fax 61-7-4042 1880 http://www.aikhenvaldlinguistics.com/ https://research.jcu.edu.au/researchatjcu/research/lcrc -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: PhD announcement LCRC JCU.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 608957 bytes Desc: PhD announcement LCRC JCU.pdf URL: From linjr at cc.au.dk Wed Jun 17 07:50:26 2020 From: linjr at cc.au.dk (Jan Rijkhoff) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 11:50:26 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> <04f0ac16ca8d4776816aaca299524fdf@ling.su.se>, Message-ID: Adam Tallman wrote: Wouldn't your definition imply that anything that was not an open lexical class would be "functional"? Indeed, to call grammatical (non-lexical) items ’functional’ elements is confusing and perpetuates the use of a misnomer (esp. popular in syntactico-centric circles). This can easily be illustrated by the fact that the ’functions’ (see below) of grammatical elements like articles and TAM markers can also be expressed in other ways: e.g. lexically (with adverbs like ‘yesterday’ or ‘probably’), syntactically or phonologically (as when definiteness is expressed by word order or tone) - not to mention non-verbal means of expression (like pointing in the case of deixis). For a good example, see: Beier, C., Hansen, C., Lai, I-W., Michael, L., 2011. Exploiting word order to express an inflectional category: reality status in Iquito. Linguistic Typology 15, 65-99. The terminological confusion is solved when we recognise that morphosyntactic units (such as clauses, phrases, words and free or bound morphemes) can all be characterised in terms of formal, semantic and functional (communicative, interpersonal) properties. Consequently, morphosyntactic units can simultaneously belong to a formal, a semantic and a functional category. Formal categories are, for example, ‘NP’ or ‘affix’; examples of semantic categories are ‘Agent ‘or ‘Transitive’). Since Adam questioned the use of the label ‘functional categories’ in this context, here is how I defined them in an article in LT in 2016: Members of functional categories are the products of a speech act. Speech acts come in four main types. In the table below these functional categories are called: Illocutions, Theticals, Propositions, and Pragmaticals. They are all products of an interpersonal or communicative speech, i.e. an Illocutionary, a Thetical, a Propositional, or a Pragmatic act. Hopefully the format of the Table stays intact (else see Rijkhoff 2016: 348): = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Speech Act. Functional Category Main Subtypes Illocutionary Act Illocutions Declarative, Imperative, Interrogative, … Thetical Act Theticals Address, Summons, Greeting, Leave-taking, afterthought, … Propositional Act Propositionals Predicate, Referential Phrase (‘noun phrase’, complement clause, etc.), Modifier (adjective, relative clause, genitive, adverb, adverbial, prepositional phrase, article, demonstrative, numeral; also TAM affixes, number affixes, …) Pragmatic Act. Pragmaticals Topic, Focus Table 1. Speech acts, functional categories and some of their main subtypes. = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Propositional acts consist of three main subtypes - and their functional categories: (i) acts of predication, (ii) acts of referring, and (iii) acts of modification - which can be formally realised as e.g. TAM markers, manner adverbs, adjectives, genitives, to mention just a few (see also e.g. Croft 1990 on propositional acts and modification). Notice that both lexical (adjectives) and grammatical elements (like article and TAM markers) can be members of a functional category In this approach, both definite articles and TAM markers are expressions of acts of modification (i.e. a subtype of one of the speech act types: Propositionals). Notice that each subtype has its own ‘minigrammar’. In brief, I think ’grammatical (non-lexical) elements' is the correct label here. References Beier, C., Hansen, C., Lai, I-W., Michael, L., 2011. Exploiting word order to express an inflectional category: reality status in Iquito. Linguistic Typology 15, 65-99. Croft, William. 1990. A conceptual framework for grammatical categories (or: a taxonomy of Propositional Acts). Journal of Semantics 7-3, 245-279. Rijkhoff, Jan. 2014. Modification as a propositional act. In María de los Ángeles Gómez González et al. (eds.), Theory and Practice in Functional-Cognitive Space (Studies in Functional and Structural Linguistics, 68), 129-150. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Rijkhoff, Jan. 2016. Crosslinguistic categories in morphosyntactic typology: Problems and prospects. Linguistic Typology 20-2, 333-363. Jan R J. Rijkhoff - Associate Professor, Linguistics School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University Jens Chr. Skous Vej 2, Building 1485-621 DK-8000 Aarhus C, DENMARK Phone: (+45) 87162143 URL: http://pure.au.dk/portal/en/linjr at cc.au.dk ________________________________________ From: Lingtyp on behalf of Adam James Ross Tallman Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2020 9:22 AM To: LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Juergen, Just a clarifying question (I'm interested because I've attempted to develop a method to quantify the degree to which some set of morphemes is morphologized and I have struggled with defining "functional" in a consistent fashion, and actually I have just given up) Wouldn't your definition imply that anything that was not an open lexical class would be "functional"? There's plenty of languages that have a closed class of adjectives - shouldn't these be "functional" in your sense? Maybe adjectives could be added to your class of morphemes that tend to become functional regardless of contact [?]... but just in case they are not a lexical class. But do adjectives express redundant information or not? I'm also skeptical that an easy decision can be made regarding the lexical vs. functional status of classifiers, but this is perhaps outside the scope of your research question. (I would take a close look at Krasnoukhova's dissertation on the Noun Phrase in South American languages for both of these issues) best, Adam On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 8:25 AM Östen Dahl > wrote: Thanks, Frans, for the link to this paper, which I had not seen. (I did read Fehling’s paper, however, quite long ago.) For the record, though: although Peust claims (reasonably, it seems) that Egyptian is the ultimate source, he doesn’t say that Greek got it straight from there. Instead, he says that it is remarkable that the definite article shows up in Greek in the same time period as the Greeks took over the Phoenician script, thus suggesting Phoenician, a Semitic language, as the proximate source for the Greek definite article. In light of Peust’s claims, it is maybe Egyptian that is most relevant for Jürgen’s project. Although who knows if they didn’t get the article from somebody else? * Östen Från: Uni KN > Skickat: den 17 juni 2020 00:04 Till: Östen Dahl > Kopia: LINGTYP > Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Close, Östen: they got it from Egyptian. Or so argues Carsten Peust, in Göttinger Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 2, 1999, S. 99-120 Fälle von strukturellem Einfluss des Ägyptischen auf europäische Sprachen (1) Die Herausbildung des definiten Artikels, (2) Die Entwicklung des grammatischen femininen Genus, (3) Die inklusive Zählweise von Zeitintervallen https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/2274/1/Peust_Faelle_von_strukturellen_Einfluessen_1999.pdf Similarly LEVIN, Saul 1992: Studies in comparative grammar: I. The definite article, an Egyptian/Semitic/Indo­European etymology, in General Linguistics 32:1­-15. FEHLING, Detlev 1980: The origins of European syntax, in Folia Linguistica Historica 1:353-387. Frans On 16. Jun 2020, at 18:25, Östen Dahl > wrote: This topic happened to come up in my recent conversation with Martin Haspelmath on his blog (https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361). There are also some references there to earlier literature. I would not bet on the definite article in Ancient Greek as an independent development. After all, definite articles were around in the neighbouring Semitic languages. If the Greeks got their alphabet from the Semitic-speaking peoples, they could also get the article from them, I think. - Östen -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Från: Lingtyp > För Bohnemeyer, Juergen Skickat: den 16 juni 2020 15:44 Till: LINGTYP > Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Christian — Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I’d just like to try a clarification: On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann > wrote: To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. I’m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much inferencing the hearer has to do. Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still facilitates processing by further boosting the predictability of the referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing the gender information is minimal (that’s where grammaticalization comes in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage. Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech communities that get by happily without them), so that can’t be the reason why we grammaticalize them (that’s my thinking, anyway). (As to Givón, yes, absolutely, I’m well aware that I’m merely trying to retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of functionalism :-)) Best — Juergen -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Adam J.R. Tallman PhD, University of Texas at Austin Investigador del Museo de Etnografía y Folklore, la Paz ELDP -- Postdoctorante CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) From gil at shh.mpg.de Wed Jun 17 08:14:00 2020 From: gil at shh.mpg.de (David Gil) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 15:14:00 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> Dear Juergen and all, My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below.  For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite.  McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form//(cognate to Standard Malay /nya/). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. Best, David McKinnon, Timothy (2011) /The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations/, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, /Language/ 87.4:715–750. McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., /Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics/, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371.DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", /Linguistik Indonesia/ 33.1:1-19. On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. > > Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) > > I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. > > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > > As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). > > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen > -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From koenig at zedat.fu-berlin.de Wed Jun 17 08:22:18 2020 From: koenig at zedat.fu-berlin.de (=?utf-8?B?IkVra2VoYXJkIEvDtm5pZyI=?=) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 14:22:18 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <53258.217.238.217.61.1592396538.webmail@webmail.zedat.fu-berlin.de> Dear Aminata, I have never seen adverbs of this kind before. Incidentally, I think the term "degree adverb" would be a good designation. In English and European languages upgrading expressions of this kind are usually called 'BOOSTERS'. Even though very different, your data remind me of the formation of adjectival compounds in Germanic languages (ice-cold, crystal clear, pitch-black, etc.). These are certainly based on comparisons, but spelling out the comparison might no longer make sense. I haven given you some English examples, but the phenomenon is much more wide-spread in German. Here are a few examples, with literal translations into English: bärenstark 'bear-strong', hundemüde 'dog-tired', brühwarm 'broth-warm', sauschlecht 'sow-bad', stockdunkel 'stickdark', etc. What is similar to your cases is that each adjective takes a different noun as booster, even though some may come to be used for several adjectives. (cf. Koenig, E. (2017) "The comparative basis of identification". In: M. Napoli & M. Ravetto (eds.) Exploring Intensification. Amsterdam: Benjamins.) So, here is a potentially related phenomenon, though not exactly what you are looking for. Very best, Ekkehard > Dear all, > I am currently workingon what are called “adverbs” (see words un bold) in > wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (WestAfrica) has specific words > that only work with some colors: white, black, red and eachword-adverb > match only with its color, they are not commutable. > > weextàll:extremely white (it can't be whiter) > > ñuulkukk:extremely black (it can't be more black) > > xonqcoyy:extremely red (it can't be more red) > > Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. > They are not commutable. > > > baax lool: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) > > bees tàq:really new (nobody has ever used it) > > dëgër këcc:extremely hard (it can't be harder) > > diis gann:really heavy (very difficult to carry) > > fatt taraj:extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) > > fess dell:extremely full (it can't be fuller) > > forox toll:really acidic (it can't be more acidic) > > gàtt ndugur:really short (he can't be shorter) > > jeex tàkk:completely finished, ... > > > In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me > because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words > mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude.I > would like to knowif there are languages ​​that work like that and what is > the terminology usedfor this kind of construction. Can someone also > recommend me new documentationon the definition of the concepts of verbs, > adverbs, adjectives… in Africanlanguages? > > Thanks and regards. > > Aminata  > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > From gil at shh.mpg.de Wed Jun 17 08:37:29 2020 From: gil at shh.mpg.de (David Gil) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 15:37:29 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> <04f0ac16ca8d4776816aaca299524fdf@ling.su.se> Message-ID: Dear all, I sympathize with Adam Tallman's struggling with the notion of "functional": On 17/06/2020 10:22, Adam James Ross Tallman wrote: > Dear Juergen, > > Just a clarifying question (I'm interested because I've attempted to > develop a method to quantify the degree to which some set of morphemes > is morphologized and I have struggled with defining "functional" in a > consistent fashion, and actually I have just given up) I have also struggled with the related notion of "grammatical". In my 2015 paper (reference below), I argued that languages of the Mekong-Mamberamo linguistic area are characterized by "Low Grammatical Morpheme Density".  While I remain convinced that this is a really central core property of these languages, I was painfully aware of the difficulties in objectively defining the notion of grammatical morpheme.  In an earlier draft of the paper I proposed a semantically-based definition, but in the final version it got whittled down to a single lengthy footnote (no. 26), which I have reproduced below for those who are interested. It's a topic that I am hoping to work on more in the future. Best, David Gil, David (2015) "The Mekong-Mamberamo Linguistic Area", in N.J. Enfield and B. Comrie eds., /Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia, The State of the Art/, Pacific Linguistics, DeGruyter Mouton, Berlin, 266-355. Footnote 26: It must be acknowledged that the distinction between contentives and grammatical markers is itself somewhat problematical, not least because it conflates two orthogonal dimensions, formal and semantic. In part, the distinction is of a formal nature: whereas contentives are typically independent words or word stems belonging to open word classes, grammatical markers are usually either words or word stems belonging to closed classes or else bound morphemes, often exhibiting idiosyncratic morphosyntactic behaviour. Nevertheless, the formal distinction exhibits a strong empirical correlation to a logically-independent semantic distinction, between different kinds of concepts. For example, within the domain of time, days of the week are the kind of concept expressed by contentives such as English /Tuesday/, whereas past is the kind of concept typically expressed by grammatical morphemes such as English /-ed/, though exceptions do exist (e.g. the Riau Indonesian proximate past expression /tadi,/ a separate word belonging to the single open word-class of the language and exhibiting no idiosyncratic grammatical properties whatsoever). These two kinds of concepts may be characterized with reference to /encyclopaedic knowledge/, that is to say, our structured and highly detailed understanding of the way things are in the world around us. Particular concepts may be said to be encyclopaedic to the extent that they draw upon such encyclopaedic knowledge, resulting in a classification of concepts as either /encyclopaedically-rich/ or /encyclopaedically-poor/. Examples of encyclopaedically-rich concepts are ‘Tuesday’, ‘dog’, and ‘buy’, which make reference to complex and detailed knowledge in various domains of human activity and experience. In contrast, encyclopaedically-poor concepts are ones like past, plural and locative, typically of a more abstract, logical and relational nature, with little or no reference to such detailed real-world knowledge. For the most part, encyclopaedically-rich concepts are expressed by words and larger phrases, while encyclopaedically-poor concepts are encoded by grammatical markers, but there are exceptions (e.g. the non-grammatical but encyclopaedically-poor Riau Indonesian /tadi/ above). This points towards a possible alternative semantically-based characterization of Mekong-Mamberamo languages as displaying /low encyclopaedically-poor-concept articulation/, in that the expression of encyclopaedically-poor concepts by means of overt morphemes is impoverished, that is to say, paradigmatically optional and syntagmatically infrequent. -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alex.francois.cnrs at gmail.com Wed Jun 17 10:01:18 2020 From: alex.francois.cnrs at gmail.com (Alex Francois) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 16:01:18 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: dear Aminata, Thanks for an interesting query. *Mwotlap*, an Oceanic language of northern Vanuatu, has several strategies for intensifying its stative predicates (adjectives). Some are general strategies, that apply to any adjective: for ex. *meh* 'too much' can combine with any predicate (*too big, too heavy...*) But Mwotlap also has a whole set of *lexically-specific intensifiers*, very similar to what you describe for Wolof: - thus the intensifier *len̄* [lɛŋ] is only used with two adjectives meaning 'big, large', namely *liwo *and *kēkēn *→ *kēkēn len̄ * "super-large" - the intensifier *ton̄ton̄* [tɔŋtɔŋ] only goes with the stative verb *sis* 'swell, be full' → *sis ton̄ton̄* "chock-full" - the intensifier *tewiwi* [tɛwiwi] goes with *yeh *'remote' → *yeh tewiwi* "really far" - etc. I guess I would call them *lexically-specific intensifiers*. I found 69 of them in Mwotlap; you can find a list in my grammatical description (p.266-267 , reference below), under the label *intensifs spécifiques*. - François, Alexandre. 2001. Contraintes de structures et liberté dans l'organisation du discours. Une description du mwotlap, langue océanienne du Vanuatu. PhD dissertation in Linguistics, Université Paris-IV Sorbonne. (link ) When their etymology can be reconstructed, these intensifiers may originate in a former noun, or adjective, or verb: - *gagah* 'ribs' → *newkah gagah* 'rib-skinny' = 'very skinny' - *lam* 'ocean' → *nōqōqō lam* 'ocean-deep' = 'very deep' - *mēlēglēg * 'dark' → *nemyēpyēp mēlēglēg* 'dark-blurry' = 'very blurry' - *mōdō* 'orphan' → *nemgaysēn mōdō* 'orphan-sad' = 'really sad' - *yeyey* 'quiver' → *tamayge yeyey* 'quiver-old' = 'very old' - *lawlaw* 'shiny' → *nēmnay lawlaw* 'shiny-smart' = 'very smart, brilliant' - … Some languages would use ideophones for such intensifying uses. But I don't believe that the Mwotlap intensifiers qualify as ideophones. These words are indeed – as Ekkehard rightly points out – reminiscent of the lexically-specific intensifiers of English, such as *brand new*, *chock full*, *boiling hot*... French also has *rouge sang* (intensely red), and phrases like *fier comme Artaban*, *riche comme Crésus*... best Alex ------------------------------ Alex François LaTTiCe — CNRS– ENS –Sorbonne nouvelle Australian National University Academia page – Personal homepage ------------------------------ On Wed, 17 Jun 2020 at 13:06, Majigeen Aminata wrote: > Dear all, > > I am currently working on what are called “adverbs” (see words un bold) in > wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (West Africa) has specific words > that only work with some colors: *white*, *black*, *red* and each > word-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. > > weex* tàll*: extremely white (it can't be whiter) > > ñuul *kukk*: extremely black (it can't be more black) > > xonq *coyy*: extremely red (it can't be more red) > > Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. > They are not commutable. > > baax *lool*: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) > > bees* tàq:* really new (nobody has ever used it) > > dëg*ër këcc*: extremely hard (it can't be harder) > > diis* gann*: really heavy (very difficult to carry) > > fatt* taraj*: extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) > > fess *dell*: extremely full (it can't be fuller) > > forox* toll*: really acidic (it can't be more acidic) > > gàtt *ndugur*: really short (he can't be shorter) > > jeex* tàkk*: completely finished, ... > > In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me > because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words > mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude. I > would like to know if there are languages ​​that work like that and what is > the terminology used for this kind of construction. Can someone also > recommend me new documentation on the definition of the concepts of verbs, > adverbs, adjectives… in African languages? > > Thanks and regards. > > Aminata > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jussi.ylikoski at oulu.fi Wed Jun 17 10:31:04 2020 From: jussi.ylikoski at oulu.fi (Jussi Ylikoski) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 14:31:04 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com>, Message-ID: Dear Aminata, The following source and my examples take us away from the adverbs of the Wolof type, but Kamil Stachowski's (2014) thesis Standard Turkic C-Type Reduplications at http://info.filg.uj.edu.pl/zhjij/~stachowski.kamil/store/pub/stachowski_k-standard_turkic_c_type_reduplications.pdf might be of interest. As the title tells us, his study is on reduplication, but on pages 20 and 22 he fleetingly refers to Finnish and Estonian analogues, which probably (implicitly but seldom explicitly) are usually regarded as a kind of reduplication and compounding. However, now that I am able to look at my native language from a Wolof perspective, it might also be possible to think that Finnish expressions like upouusi 'extremely new', supisuomalainen 'extremely Finnish' could consist of adverbial intensifiers of adjective; in fact, non-standard spellings like upo uusi and supi suomalainen also occur and suggest this alternative interpretation. Best regards, Jussi ________________________________ Saatja: Lingtyp Alex Francois nimel Saadetud: kolmapäev, 17. juuni 2020 17:01 Adressaat: Majigeen Aminata Koopia: Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Teema: Re: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs dear Aminata, Thanks for an interesting query. Mwotlap, an Oceanic language of northern Vanuatu, has several strategies for intensifying its stative predicates (adjectives). Some are general strategies, that apply to any adjective: for ex. meh 'too much' can combine with any predicate (too big, too heavy...) But Mwotlap also has a whole set of lexically-specific intensifiers, very similar to what you describe for Wolof: * thus the intensifier len̄ [lɛŋ] is only used with two adjectives meaning 'big, large', namely liwo and kēkēn → kēkēn len̄ "super-large" * the intensifier ton̄ton̄ [tɔŋtɔŋ] only goes with the stative verb sis 'swell, be full' → sis ton̄ton̄ "chock-full" * the intensifier tewiwi [tɛwiwi] goes with yeh 'remote' → yeh tewiwi "really far" * etc. I guess I would call them lexically-specific intensifiers. I found 69 of them in Mwotlap; you can find a list in my grammatical description (p.266-267, reference below), under the label intensifs spécifiques. * François, Alexandre. 2001. Contraintes de structures et liberté dans l'organisation du discours. Une description du mwotlap, langue océanienne du Vanuatu. PhD dissertation in Linguistics, Université Paris-IV Sorbonne. (link) When their etymology can be reconstructed, these intensifiers may originate in a former noun, or adjective, or verb: * gagah 'ribs' → newkah gagah 'rib-skinny' = 'very skinny' * lam 'ocean' → nōqōqō lam 'ocean-deep' = 'very deep' * mēlēglēg 'dark' → nemyēpyēp mēlēglēg 'dark-blurry' = 'very blurry' * mōdō 'orphan' → nemgaysēn mōdō 'orphan-sad' = 'really sad' * yeyey 'quiver' → tamayge yeyey 'quiver-old' = 'very old' * lawlaw 'shiny' → nēmnay lawlaw 'shiny-smart' = 'very smart, brilliant' * … Some languages would use ideophones for such intensifying uses. But I don't believe that the Mwotlap intensifiers qualify as ideophones. These words are indeed – as Ekkehard rightly points out – reminiscent of the lexically-specific intensifiers of English, such as brand new, chock full, boiling hot... French also has rouge sang (intensely red), and phrases like fier comme Artaban, riche comme Crésus... best Alex ________________________________ Alex François LaTTiCe — CNRS–ENS–Sorbonne nouvelle Australian National University Academia page – Personal homepage ________________________________ On Wed, 17 Jun 2020 at 13:06, Majigeen Aminata > wrote: Dear all, I am currently working on what are called “adverbs” (see words un bold) in wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (West Africa) has specific words that only work with some colors: white, black, red and each word-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. weex tàll: extremely white (it can't be whiter) ñuul kukk: extremely black (it can't be more black) xonq coyy: extremely red (it can't be more red) Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. They are not commutable. baax lool: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) bees tàq: really new (nobody has ever used it) dëgër këcc: extremely hard (it can't be harder) diis gann: really heavy (very difficult to carry) fatt taraj: extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) fess dell: extremely full (it can't be fuller) forox toll: really acidic (it can't be more acidic) gàtt ndugur: really short (he can't be shorter) jeex tàkk: completely finished, ... In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude. I would like to know if there are languages ​​that work like that and what is the terminology used for this kind of construction. Can someone also recommend me new documentation on the definition of the concepts of verbs, adverbs, adjectives… in African languages? Thanks and regards. Aminata _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From honohiiri at yandex.ru Wed Jun 17 10:42:13 2020 From: honohiiri at yandex.ru (Idiatov Dmitry) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 17:42:13 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <141931592404496@mail.yandex.ru> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natalevs at gmail.com Wed Jun 17 12:42:10 2020 From: natalevs at gmail.com (Natalia Levshina) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 18:42:10 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: <53258.217.238.217.61.1592396538.webmail@webmail.zedat.fu-berlin.de> References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> <53258.217.238.217.61.1592396538.webmail@webmail.zedat.fu-berlin.de> Message-ID: Dear Aminata, I think it might be useful to check Carita Paradis's study of English degree modifiers: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256398339_Degree_Modifiers_of_Adjectives_in_Spoken_British_English It has nothing to do with African languages, but it offers a few useful terminological distinctions. I fully agree with you that the term "intensifiers" is too vague here. Adjectives that represent an ultimate point on a scale are called "extreme" adjectives. Examples in English are excellent, huge, minute, terrible, disastrous and brilliant. They have a "superlative" meaning component in them and therefore are normally not used in the superlative form, e.g. *hugest or *the most disastrous. I also wanted to mention that the semantics of expressions like "completely finished" and "extremely hard" from your list of examples is slightly different. I don't know how well the English translations match the original examples, but in English the modifier "completely" means the total presence of some quality ("all or nothing", e.g. finished or not finished). In Paradis' framework, such degree adverbs are called "maximizers". Other examples are absolutely, perfectly, totally, entirely, utterly and (sometimes) quite. In contrast, "extremely" presupposes a scale (a bit hard, very hard, extremely hard). Reinforcing adverbs of this type are called "boosters". In addition to extremely, this class includes very, awfully, frightfully, highly, jolly, most and terribly. So there can be subtle differences between the expressions in that regard. By the way, Russian has expressions with colour adjectives (and some others), such as "whiter than white", "darker than dark", which represent the extreme degree (nothing can't be whiter or darker). They are used in poetic contexts or idiomatically (turn whiter than white = turn very pale with fear or other emotions). Best wishes, Natalia On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 2:33 PM "Ekkehard König" wrote: > Dear Aminata, > > I have never seen adverbs of this kind before. Incidentally, I think the > term "degree adverb" would be a good designation. In English and European > languages upgrading expressions of this kind are usually called > 'BOOSTERS'. > > Even though very different, your data remind me of the formation of > adjectival compounds in Germanic languages (ice-cold, crystal clear, > pitch-black, etc.). These are certainly based on comparisons, but spelling > out the comparison might no longer make sense. I haven given you some > English examples, but the phenomenon is much more wide-spread in German. > Here are a few examples, with literal translations into English: > bärenstark 'bear-strong', hundemüde 'dog-tired', brühwarm 'broth-warm', > sauschlecht 'sow-bad', stockdunkel 'stickdark', etc. What is similar to > your cases is that each adjective takes a different noun as booster, even > though some may come to be used for several adjectives. > (cf. Koenig, E. (2017) "The comparative basis of identification". In: M. > Napoli & M. Ravetto (eds.) Exploring Intensification. Amsterdam: > Benjamins.) > > So, here is a potentially related phenomenon, though not exactly what you > are looking for. > > Very best, > > Ekkehard > > > > > > > Dear all, > > I am currently workingon what are called “adverbs” (see words un bold) in > > wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (WestAfrica) has specific > words > > that only work with some colors: white, black, red and eachword-adverb > > match only with its color, they are not commutable. > > > > weextàll:extremely white (it can't be whiter) > > > > ñuulkukk:extremely black (it can't be more black) > > > > xonqcoyy:extremely red (it can't be more red) > > > > Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as > well. > > They are not commutable. > > > > > > baax lool: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) > > > > bees tàq:really new (nobody has ever used it) > > > > dëgër këcc:extremely hard (it can't be harder) > > > > diis gann:really heavy (very difficult to carry) > > > > fatt taraj:extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) > > > > fess dell:extremely full (it can't be fuller) > > > > forox toll:really acidic (it can't be more acidic) > > > > gàtt ndugur:really short (he can't be shorter) > > > > jeex tàkk:completely finished, ... > > > > > > In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me > > because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words > > mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude.I > > would like to knowif there are languages that work like that and what is > > the terminology usedfor this kind of construction. Can someone also > > recommend me new documentationon the definition of the concepts of verbs, > > adverbs, adjectives… in Africanlanguages? > > > > Thanks and regards. > > > > Aminata > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Lingtyp mailing list > > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -- Natalia Levshina Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Wundtlaan 1, 6525 XD Nijmegen The Netherlands -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jb77 at buffalo.edu Wed Jun 17 12:51:35 2020 From: jb77 at buffalo.edu (Bohnemeyer, Juergen) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 16:51:35 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> <04f0ac16ca8d4776816aaca299524fdf@ling.su.se> Message-ID: <252F1B6A-D5E4-4BD6-ADBB-660397690EF2@buffalo.edu> Dear Adam — Thanks for your questions! My sense is that some languages have a productive open class of adverbs and others do not. In the latter kind of language (e.g., Mayan languages), expressions that one would traditionally treat as adverbs because they combine directly with the verb or some verbal projection are functional expressions of varying subtypes. In the former - and here I would include all Indo-European languages as far as I know - the vast majority of adverbs are not functional expressions. The problem is that since we traditionally treat all non-phrasal adverbial modifiers as adverbs, the open adverb class will in such languages swallow up a lot of adverbial or adsentential particles that are semantically clearly functional elements - e.g., focus particles, adverbial quantifiers, and all kinds of interjections. So the (or one?) inherent weakness of my definition is that I would like to exclude those particles from getting sucked into the adverb category, but unfortunately I do not know how. In my thinking, this is an instance of the general “leakiness” (to borrow Sally Rice’ phrase) of grammars. (It seems that some Generative Grammarians would do away altogether with the adverb as a lexical category, but that strikes me too broad a brush.) As to closed classes of adjectives, I would still want to treat those as lexical categories, so I was wrong to include _major_ (in “major lexical category”) in my definition. The definition of ‘lexical category’ carries a lot of weight in my definition of ‘functional expression’ - really the bulk of it. So the question is can we independently define ‘lexical category’ in order to avoid circularity? Let me try: a ‘lexical category’ is a class of expressions defined in terms of shared morphosyntactic properties. The members of lexical categories are inherently suitable for expressing ‘at-issue’ content and are backgrounded only when they appear in certain syntactic positions (e.g., attributive as opposed to predicative adjectives). Their combinatorial types (e.g., in a Categorial Grammar framework) are relatively simple. They express concepts of basic ontological categories. (On this approach, lexical categories share the property of expressing primarily at-issue content with functional expressions that are not pragmatically redundant, such as modals, negation, demonstratives, etc.. They differ from those functional expressions in their combinatorial properties.) It might be best to treat this list of properties as defining the notion of ‘lexical category’ as a cluster/radio/prototype concept. As to classifiers. Mayan languages have two flavors of numeral classifiers, first distinguished by Berlin (1968) in Tseltal. He calls them ‘inherent’ vs. ‘temporary’ classifiers. Inherent classifiers are redundant and thus fall into the class of functional expressions I call ‘restrictors’ - the class that also contains tense, viewpoint aspect, gender, noun class, and definiteness. Yucatec has only three of these - one for humans and animals, one for plants and hair, and one for inanimates. OTOH the so-called temporary classifiers form a very large set and are in Yucatec actually primarily used in nonverbal predication. They are non-redundant and I consider them to belong to the same class of functional expressions as negation, modals, and do on. Best — Juergen > On Jun 17, 2020, at 3:22 AM, Adam James Ross Tallman wrote: > > Dear Juergen, > > Just a clarifying question (I'm interested because I've attempted to develop a method to quantify the degree to which some set of morphemes is morphologized and I have struggled with defining "functional" in a consistent fashion, and actually I have just given up) > > Wouldn't your definition imply that anything that was not an open lexical class would be "functional"? > > There's plenty of languages that have a closed class of adjectives - shouldn't these be "functional" in your sense? > > Maybe adjectives could be added to your class of morphemes that tend to become functional regardless of contact [?]... but just in case they are not a lexical class. But do adjectives express redundant information or not? > I'm also skeptical that an easy decision can be made regarding the lexical vs. functional status of classifiers, but this is perhaps outside the scope of your research question. > (I would take a close look at Krasnoukhova's dissertation on the Noun Phrase in South American languages for both of these issues) > > best, > > Adam > > > > On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 8:25 AM Östen Dahl wrote: > Thanks, Frans, for the link to this paper, which I had not seen. (I did read Fehling’s paper, however, quite long ago.) For the record, though: although Peust claims (reasonably, it seems) that Egyptian is the ultimate source, he doesn’t say that Greek got it straight from there. Instead, he says that it is remarkable that the definite article shows up in Greek in the same time period as the Greeks took over the Phoenician script, thus suggesting Phoenician, a Semitic language, as the proximate source for the Greek definite article. > > > > In light of Peust’s claims, it is maybe Egyptian that is most relevant for Jürgen’s project. Although who knows if they didn’t get the article from somebody else? > > > > • Östen > > > > > Från: Uni KN > Skickat: den 17 juni 2020 00:04 > Till: Östen Dahl > Kopia: LINGTYP > Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > > > Close, Östen: they got it from Egyptian. Or so argues Carsten Peust, in Göttinger Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 2, 1999, S. 99-120 > > > > Fälle von strukturellem Einfluss des Ägyptischen auf europäische Sprachen > > (1) Die Herausbildung des definiten Artikels, (2) Die Entwicklung des grammatischen femininen Genus, (3) Die inklusive Zählweise von Zeitintervallen > > > > https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/2274/1/Peust_Faelle_von_strukturellen_Einfluessen_1999.pdf > > > > Similarly > > LEVIN, Saul 1992: Studies in comparative grammar: I. The definite article, an Egyptian/Semitic/Indo­European etymology, in General Linguistics 32:1­-15. > > FEHLING, Detlev 1980: The origins of European syntax, in Folia Linguistica Historica 1:353-387. > > > > Frans > > > > > > > On 16. Jun 2020, at 18:25, Östen Dahl wrote: > > > > This topic happened to come up in my recent conversation with Martin Haspelmath on his blog (https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361). There are also some references there to earlier literature. > > I would not bet on the definite article in Ancient Greek as an independent development. After all, definite articles were around in the neighbouring Semitic languages. If the Greeks got their alphabet from the Semitic-speaking peoples, they could also get the article from them, I think. > > - Östen > > > -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- > Från: Lingtyp För Bohnemeyer, Juergen > Skickat: den 16 juni 2020 15:44 > Till: LINGTYP > Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Christian — Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I’d just like to try a clarification: > > > > On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann wrote: > > > To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. > > > > I’m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much inferencing the hearer has to do. > > Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still facilitates processing by further boosting the predictability of the referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing the gender information is minimal (that’s where grammaticalization comes in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage. > > Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech communities that get by happily without them), so that can’t be the reason why we grammaticalize them (that’s my thinking, anyway). > > (As to Givón, yes, absolutely, I’m well aware that I’m merely trying to retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of functionalism :-)) > > Best — Juergen > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > -- > Adam J.R. Tallman > PhD, University of Texas at Austin > Investigador del Museo de Etnografía y Folklore, la Paz > ELDP -- Postdoctorante > CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) From boye at hum.ku.dk Wed Jun 17 13:10:39 2020 From: boye at hum.ku.dk (Kasper Boye) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 17:10:39 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: Dear all, I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas about the job grammatical items do. There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ”grammatical” on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar’s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. With best wishes, Kasper References Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af David Gil Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Juergen and all, My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. Best, David McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bernhard at ling.su.se Wed Jun 17 16:10:00 2020 From: bernhard at ling.su.se (=?Windows-1252?Q?Bernhard_W=E4lchli?=) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 20:10:00 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de>, Message-ID: <4009d510b53e48bd8d524276121981f5@ling.su.se> Dear all, Several of the ideas mentioned have in some or other form been around for a very long time. Consider, for instance, Anton Marty’s distinction between autosemantic and synsemantic expressions. https://stanford.library.sydney.edu.au/entries/marty/ and G. K. Zipf’s findings that frequency correlates with the number of meanings of an expression. [And, of course, also Marty and Zipf have their predecessors.] Zipf, George Kingsley. 1945. The meaning-frequency relationship of words. The Journal of General Psychology 33:2, 251-256 “If we postulate (A) that man is always economical in his speech, and if we assume (B) that there are M number of different meanings to be verbalized by a given vocabulary, then we see the emergence of two conflicting economies in allocating meanings to words. One economy (a) will be the speaker's economy which would favor a single word of 100 per cent frequency with M different meanings; although such an arrangement would cause the auditor extreme work in understanding, it would save the speaker the work of selecting particular words with particular meanings. On the other hand (b) there will be an auditor's economy which, for the auditor's greater ease of comprehension and to the disadvantage of the speaker, would favor a different word for each different meaning, and therefore favor a vocabulary of M different words with a much lower average relative frequency. Hence there are two opposing drives: the one (a) making for a vocabulary of a single word with M meanings and 100 per cent frequency, and the other (b) making for a vocabulary of M different words with one meaning per word and with a lower average relative frequency. As a result (C) of the above opposing drives we may expect to find in a sizeable sample of running speech some sort of balance between the n-number of different words on the one hand and their frequency of occurrence on the other.” (1945: 255) [Alas, linguistic terms are subject to Zipf’s meaning-frequency relationship as much as expressions of natural languages. “Fore-/background(ing)” are good examples of terms that are used in quite different senses in the literature.] Given that linguistic items vastly differ in frequency (incidentally, another of Zipf’s findings), it is not particularly surprising that some items will always be more synsemantic than others (to different extents in different languages or proto-proto-languages). It seems to me that it does not speak against these and similar ideas that these wheels are constantly reinvented in linguistics – with slight variations. Bernhard ________________________________ From: Lingtyp on behalf of Kasper Boye Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2020 7:10:39 PM To: David Gil; lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Cc: Peter Harder Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear all, I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas about the job grammatical items do. There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ”grammatical” on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar’s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. With best wishes, Kasper References Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af David Gil Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Juergen and all, My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. Best, David McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ebender at uw.edu Wed Jun 17 16:40:04 2020 From: ebender at uw.edu (Emily M. Bender) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 13:40:04 -0700 Subject: [Lingtyp] Overview paper for Terraling Message-ID: Dear all, Is there an overview paper for the Terraling project ( http://www.terraling.com/)? A student and I would like to get a better sense of how it conceptualizes language properties, and how that relates to the conceptualization in other resources such as WALS or the Grammar Matrix. Thanks! Emily -- Emily M. Bender (she/her) Howard and Frances Nostrand Endowed Professor Department of Linguistics Faculty Director, CLMS University of Washington Twitter: @emilymbender -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From boye at hum.ku.dk Wed Jun 17 17:00:48 2020 From: boye at hum.ku.dk (Kasper Boye) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 21:00:48 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <4009d510b53e48bd8d524276121981f5@ling.su.se> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de>, <4009d510b53e48bd8d524276121981f5@ling.su.se> Message-ID: Dear Bernhard and all, The idea that Jürgen Bohnemeyer cited (viz. that grammatical items are those that are conventionalized as carriers of background information) certainly has predecessors, but I believe it presents a rather new take on the problem of defining grammatical items. Firstly, the auto- vs. synsemantic (or categorematic vs. syncategorematic) distinction, which can indeed be traced back at least to Aristotle, captures only the fact that grammatical items depend on host items, not the fact that they contribute to prioritizing the parts of complex messages. Secondly, while frequency unquestionably plays a role in grammaticalization, grammar and grammaticalization cannot be reduced to frequency (perhaps this is also not what you were saying, Bernhard). For one thing, individuals with agrammatic aphasia have problems producing grammatical items, but no problems producing frequent items (e.g. Hachard 2015; Martìnez-Ferreiro et al. 2019). Best wishes, Kasper References Hatchard, R. (2015). A construction-based approach to spoken language in aphasia. University of Sheffield thesis. Martínez-Ferreiro, S., R. Bastiaanse & K. Boye. 2019. "Functional and usage-based approaches to aphasia: the grammatical-lexical distinction and the role of frequency". Aphasiology, DOI: 10.1080/02687038.2019.1615335. Fra: Bernhard Wälchli Sendt: 17. juni 2020 22:10 Til: Kasper Boye ; David Gil ; lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Cc: Peter Harder Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear all, Several of the ideas mentioned have in some or other form been around for a very long time. Consider, for instance, Anton Marty's distinction between autosemantic and synsemantic expressions. https://stanford.library.sydney.edu.au/entries/marty/ and G. K. Zipf's findings that frequency correlates with the number of meanings of an expression. [And, of course, also Marty and Zipf have their predecessors.] Zipf, George Kingsley. 1945. The meaning-frequency relationship of words. The Journal of General Psychology 33:2, 251-256 "If we postulate (A) that man is always economical in his speech, and if we assume (B) that there are M number of different meanings to be verbalized by a given vocabulary, then we see the emergence of two conflicting economies in allocating meanings to words. One economy (a) will be the speaker's economy which would favor a single word of 100 per cent frequency with M different meanings; although such an arrangement would cause the auditor extreme work in understanding, it would save the speaker the work of selecting particular words with particular meanings. On the other hand (b) there will be an auditor's economy which, for the auditor's greater ease of comprehension and to the disadvantage of the speaker, would favor a different word for each different meaning, and therefore favor a vocabulary of M different words with a much lower average relative frequency. Hence there are two opposing drives: the one (a) making for a vocabulary of a single word with M meanings and 100 per cent frequency, and the other (b) making for a vocabulary of M different words with one meaning per word and with a lower average relative frequency. As a result (C) of the above opposing drives we may expect to find in a sizeable sample of running speech some sort of balance between the n-number of different words on the one hand and their frequency of occurrence on the other." (1945: 255) [Alas, linguistic terms are subject to Zipf's meaning-frequency relationship as much as expressions of natural languages. "Fore-/background(ing)" are good examples of terms that are used in quite different senses in the literature.] Given that linguistic items vastly differ in frequency (incidentally, another of Zipf's findings), it is not particularly surprising that some items will always be more synsemantic than others (to different extents in different languages or proto-proto-languages). It seems to me that it does not speak against these and similar ideas that these wheels are constantly reinvented in linguistics - with slight variations. Bernhard ________________________________ From: Lingtyp > on behalf of Kasper Boye > Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2020 7:10:39 PM To: David Gil; lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Cc: Peter Harder Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear all, I would like to first respond to David Gil's comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer's ideas about the job grammatical items do. There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining "grammatical" on the market. One is Christian Lehmann's (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder's and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d'être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann's remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of 'audience design': the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) - it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar's schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. With best wishes, Kasper References Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca's aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 Fra: Lingtyp > På vegne af David Gil Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Juergen and all, My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra - see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. Best, David McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and 'pro-drop' in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715-750. McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: Dear colleagues - I'm looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By 'functional categories', I mean the 'grammatical categories' of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. Here is what I mean by 'innovation': language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the "Dark Ages". In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn't. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I'm particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker's communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer's inference load. This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn't translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express "at issue" content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. I hope that wasn't too convoluted ;-) Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. - Best - Juergen -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kofi at hku.hk Thu Jun 18 04:56:19 2020 From: kofi at hku.hk (Kofi Yakpo) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 16:56:19 +0800 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Dear Aminata, As Dmitry points out, these words would normally be referred to as ideophones in African linguistics. Most ideophones in "African languages" (they are more of an areal than a genetic feature) are lexically/constructionally restricted in one or the other way, so there is not much need to invent a new label for them besides "ideophone". Colour-specific ideophones can be found in all Atlantic-Congo languages I am familiarity with, and the European-lexifier creoles of Africa incl. Kriyol (Casamance, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde). You could check the work of Mark Dingemanse and the works he cites for an overview of most of the literature. Best, Kofi ———— Dr Kofi Yakpo • Associate Professor University of Hong Kong • Linguistics • Scholars Hub Resident Scholar: Chi Sun College My publications @ zenodo On the Outcomes of Prosodic Contact A Grammar of Pichi On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 7:07 PM Majigeen Aminata wrote: > Dear all, > > I am currently working on what are called “adverbs” (see words un bold) in > wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (West Africa) has specific words > that only work with some colors: *white*, *black*, *red* and each > word-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. > > weex* tàll*: extremely white (it can't be whiter) > > ñuul *kukk*: extremely black (it can't be more black) > > xonq *coyy*: extremely red (it can't be more red) > > Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. > They are not commutable. > > baax *lool*: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) > > bees* tàq:* really new (nobody has ever used it) > > dëg*ër këcc*: extremely hard (it can't be harder) > > diis* gann*: really heavy (very difficult to carry) > > fatt* taraj*: extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) > > fess *dell*: extremely full (it can't be fuller) > > forox* toll*: really acidic (it can't be more acidic) > > gàtt *ndugur*: really short (he can't be shorter) > > jeex* tàkk*: completely finished, ... > > In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me > because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words > mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude. I > would like to know if there are languages ​​that work like that and what is > the terminology used for this kind of construction. Can someone also > recommend me new documentation on the definition of the concepts of verbs, > adverbs, adjectives… in African languages? > > Thanks and regards. > > Aminata > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From haspelmath at shh.mpg.de Thu Jun 18 05:21:08 2020 From: haspelmath at shh.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 11:21:08 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Yes, they remind one of ideophones, but it seems that Alex François's term "lexically specific intensifiers" captures best what these forms are (though I would prefer "degree modifiers", to avoid confusion with self-intensifiers). It seems that "ideophones" are generally understood more broadly, because they do not have to be degree modifiers (and maybe more narrowly at the same time, because they have to be "marked", and "depict sensory imagery", according to Dingemanse: http://ideophone.org/working-definition/). It may be worth studying lexically specific degree modifiers more systematically across languages. Ekkehard König mentioned English "ice-cold", "crystal clear", "pitch-black", and German "hunde-müde" [dog-tired], "stock-dunkel" [stick-dark], and Jussi Ylikoski mentioned Finnish "upo-uusi" (extremeley new) – these are usually treated as marginal phenomena, but the fact that such lexically specific degree modifiers are found on at least three different continents (Wolof, Mwotlap, English) may point to something more general. Martin P.S. The term "adverb" is not wrong, but I try to avoid it, because it has been applied to a very heterogeneous range of phenomena. Am 18.06.20 um 10:56 schrieb Kofi Yakpo: > Dear Aminata, > > As Dmitry points out, these words would normally be referred to as > ideophones in African linguistics. Most ideophones in "African > languages" (they are more of an areal than a genetic feature) are > lexically/constructionally restricted in one or the other way, so > there is not much need to invent a new label for them besides > "ideophone". Colour-specific ideophones can be found in all > Atlantic-Congo languages I am familiarity with, and the > European-lexifier creoles of Africa incl. Kriyol (Casamance, > Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde). > > You could check the work of Mark Dingemanse and the works he cites for > an overview of most of the literature. > > Best, > Kofi > ———— > Dr Kofi Yakpo • Associate Professor > University of Hong Kong • Linguistics > • Scholars Hub > > Resident Scholar:Chi Sun College > > > My publications @ zenodo > > On the Outcomes of Prosodic Contact > A Grammar of Pichi > > > On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 7:07 PM Majigeen Aminata > > wrote: > > Dear all, > > I am currently working on what are called “adverbs” (see words un > bold) in wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (West Africa) > has specific words that only work with some colors: /white/, > /black/, /red/ and each word-adverb match only with its color, > they are not commutable. > > weex*tàll*: extremely white (it can't be whiter) > > ñuul *kukk*: extremely black (it can't be more black) > > xonq *coyy*: extremely red (it can't be more red) > > Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them > as well. They are not commutable. > > baax *lool*: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) > > bees*tàq:* really new (nobody has ever used it) > > dëg*ër këcc*: extremely hard (it can't be harder) > > diis*gann*: really heavy (very difficult to carry) > > fatt*taraj*: extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) > > fess *dell*: extremely full (it can't be fuller) > > forox*toll*: really acidic (it can't be more acidic) > > gàtt *ndugur*: really short (he can't be shorter) > > jeex*tàkk*: completely finished, ... > > In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not > convince me because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the > verbs. These words mean that the state or action of the verb is at > its end of completude. I would like to know if there are languages > ​​that work like that and what is the terminology used for this > kind of construction. Can someone also recommend me new > documentation on the definition of the concepts of verbs, adverbs, > adjectives… in African languages? > > Thanks and regards. > > Aminata > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Martin Haspelmath (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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From henrik at ling.su.se Thu Jun 18 08:18:29 2020 From: henrik at ling.su.se (Henrik Liljegren) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 12:18:29 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: <1952472239.1338554.1592344558843@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1952472239.1338554.1592344558843.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1952472239.1338554.1592344558843@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <83077a82f9284a5abc515a3618bbc274@ling.su.se> Dear Majigeen and all, What you describe is strikingly similar to what I have found in Indo-Aryan Palula (Pakistan). I refer to them as co-lexicalised intensifiers (I quote from my own grammar below, p. 184): “There is a number of more or less standard compounds with an adjective/adverb and a matching intensifying element, not much different from the effect other degree adverbs have on the modified constituent. Such an intensifier is either uniquely occurring with a particular adjective/adverb, or occurs only with a limited set of adjectives/adverbs. It seems those elements are mostly made up of a single closed syllable, as can be seen in Table 8.9. Table 8.9: Examples of co-lexicalised intensifiers phaṣ paṇáaru ‘white as a sheet’ tap c̣hiṇ ‘pitch dark’ kham kiṣíṇu ‘pitch black’ bak práal ‘shining bright’ čáu lhóilu ‘bright red’ ḍanɡ khilayí ‘all alone’ tak zeṛ ‘bright yellow’ čap mhoóru ‘extremely sweet’ pak kaantíiru ‘mad as a hat’ šam šidáalu ‘ice-cold’ pak bíidri ‘completely clear’ šam níilu ‘deep green/blue’ Strikingly similar compounds have been observed in several other languages in the region, some of them even involving similar or identical forms as those found in Palula: e.g., in Dameli (Perder 2013: 163) and Khowar (Elena Bashir, pc, and own field notes).” Liljegren, Henrik. A Grammar of Palula. Studies in Diversity Linguistics 8. Berlin: Language Science Press, 2016. The region I refer to above is the mountainous Hindu Kush-Karakorum of northern Pakistan and surrounding areas in adjacent countries (Afghanistan and India), but the phenomenon miɡht very well be more widespread in South and West Asia. Best, Henrik From: Lingtyp On Behalf Of Majigeen Aminata Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2020 11:56 PM To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs Dear all, I am currently working on what are called “adverbs” (see words un bold) in wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (West Africa) has specific words that only work with some colors: white, black, red and each word-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. weex tàll: extremely white (it can't be whiter) ñuul kukk: extremely black (it can't be more black) xonq coyy: extremely red (it can't be more red) Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. They are not commutable. baax lool: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) bees tàq: really new (nobody has ever used it) dëgër këcc: extremely hard (it can't be harder) diis gann: really heavy (very difficult to carry) fatt taraj: extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) fess dell: extremely full (it can't be fuller) forox toll: really acidic (it can't be more acidic) gàtt ndugur: really short (he can't be shorter) jeex tàkk: completely finished, ... In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude. They are not onomatopoeias, Wolof also has them and they are different. tàkk jëppet: catch fire abruptly on the way up (jëppet expresses the way of catching fire suddenly on the way up njool tàlli: to be straight tàlli ñare: to be stiffly straight, Thanks and regards. Aminata Bonjour, Je suis entrain de travailler sur ce qu’on appelle adverbes dans la littérature. Le wolof a par exemple des mots spécifiques qui ne marchent qu’avec certaines couleurs : blanc, noir, rouge et chaque mot-adverbe ne marche qu’avec sa couleur, ils ne sont pas interchangeables. weex tàll : extrêmement blanc (on ne pas être plus blanc) ñuul kukk : extrêmement noir (on ne pas être plus noir) xonq coyy : extrêmement D’autres vont avec des verbes d’états et leur sont spécifiques aussi. Ils ne sont pas interchangeables. baax lool : extrêmement gentil (on ne pas être plus gentil) bees tàq : vraiment nouveau (personne ne l’a jamais utilisé) dëgër këcc : extrêmement dur (on ne pas être plus dur) diis gann: vraiment lourd (tres difficile de le soulever) fatt taraj : extrêmement bouché (on ne pas être plus bouché) fess dell: extrêmement plein (on ne pas être plus plein) forox toll: vraiment acide (on ne pas être plus acide) gàtt ndugur: vraiment court (on ne pas être plus court) jeex tàkk: tout à fait terminé, etc… En wolof on les appelle des intensifieurs ou intensificateurs mais ce terme ne me convainc pas car il peut porter à confusion. Ils n’intensifient pas. Ces mots veulent dirent que l’état ou l’action du verbe est à son extrémité. Ce ne sont pas des onomatopées. Le wolof a aussi des onomatopées différentes de ces mots. Je voudrais savoir s’il existe des langues qui fonctionnent comme ça et quelle est la terminologie employée pour ce genre de construction Est-ce quelqu’un peut aussi me recommander de la documentation nouvelle sur la définition des notions de verbes, adverbes, adjectifs… dans les langues africaines ? Merci Aminata -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From oesten at ling.su.se Thu Jun 18 08:29:00 2020 From: oesten at ling.su.se (=?utf-8?B?w5ZzdGVuIERhaGw=?=) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 12:29:00 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I would agree with Martin here. I think ideophones can have different functions, so just calling them “ideophones” would be only half the story anyway. It is also worth mentioning that lexically specific intensifiers may start out with a transparent meaning which is later bleached as the intensifier generalizes. In spoken Swedish, the noun jätte ’giant’ was prefixed to stor ’big’ as a lexically specific intensifier, but is now frequently used with just any adjective, e.g. jättebra ‘very good’. Prescriptivists were not happy with combinations such as jätteliten ‘(lit.) giant small’. * Östen Från: Lingtyp För Martin Haspelmath Skickat: den 18 juni 2020 11:21 Till: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs Yes, they remind one of ideophones, but it seems that Alex François's term "lexically specific intensifiers" captures best what these forms are (though I would prefer "degree modifiers", to avoid confusion with self-intensifiers). It seems that "ideophones" are generally understood more broadly, because they do not have to be degree modifiers (and maybe more narrowly at the same time, because they have to be "marked", and "depict sensory imagery", according to Dingemanse: http://ideophone.org/working-definition/). It may be worth studying lexically specific degree modifiers more systematically across languages. Ekkehard König mentioned English "ice-cold", "crystal clear", "pitch-black", and German "hunde-müde" [dog-tired], "stock-dunkel" [stick-dark], and Jussi Ylikoski mentioned Finnish "upo-uusi" (extremeley new) – these are usually treated as marginal phenomena, but the fact that such lexically specific degree modifiers are found on at least three different continents (Wolof, Mwotlap, English) may point to something more general. Martin P.S. The term "adverb" is not wrong, but I try to avoid it, because it has been applied to a very heterogeneous range of phenomena. Am 18.06.20 um 10:56 schrieb Kofi Yakpo: Dear Aminata, As Dmitry points out, these words would normally be referred to as ideophones in African linguistics. Most ideophones in "African languages" (they are more of an areal than a genetic feature) are lexically/constructionally restricted in one or the other way, so there is not much need to invent a new label for them besides "ideophone". Colour-specific ideophones can be found in all Atlantic-Congo languages I am familiarity with, and the European-lexifier creoles of Africa incl. Kriyol (Casamance, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde). You could check the work of Mark Dingemanse and the works he cites for an overview of most of the literature. Best, Kofi ———— Dr Kofi Yakpo • Associate Professor University of Hong Kong • Linguistics • Scholars Hub Resident Scholar: Chi Sun College My publications @ zenodo On the Outcomes of Prosodic Contact A Grammar of Pichi On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 7:07 PM Majigeen Aminata > wrote: Dear all, I am currently working on what are called “adverbs” (see words un bold) in wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (West Africa) has specific words that only work with some colors: white, black, red and each word-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. weex tàll: extremely white (it can't be whiter) ñuul kukk: extremely black (it can't be more black) xonq coyy: extremely red (it can't be more red) Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. They are not commutable. baax lool: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) bees tàq: really new (nobody has ever used it) dëgër këcc: extremely hard (it can't be harder) diis gann: really heavy (very difficult to carry) fatt taraj: extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) fess dell: extremely full (it can't be fuller) forox toll: really acidic (it can't be more acidic) gàtt ndugur: really short (he can't be shorter) jeex tàkk: completely finished, ... In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude. I would like to know if there are languages ​​that work like that and what is the terminology used for this kind of construction. Can someone also recommend me new documentation on the definition of the concepts of verbs, adverbs, adjectives… in African languages? Thanks and regards. Aminata _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Martin Haspelmath (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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellenparker at gmail.com Thu Jun 18 08:43:47 2020 From: kellenparker at gmail.com (Kellen Parker van Dam) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 14:43:47 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: <83077a82f9284a5abc515a3618bbc274@ling.su.se> References: <1952472239.1338554.1592344558843.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1952472239.1338554.1592344558843@mail.yahoo.com> <83077a82f9284a5abc515a3618bbc274@ling.su.se> Message-ID: Dear all, Very interesting! This also looks incredibly similar to something which I've described for Tangsa-Nocte (Northern Naga) varieties within Tibeto-Burman. I also was hesitant to call them intensifiers for the same reasons mentioned. In the case of Tangsa-Noctem there is also a metrically constricted reduplication of the modifier itself, but otherwise looks very much like this same sort of thing. They are not commutable (although some terms do share modifier shapes, e.g. *black, hard, rough* all have the most common of the modifiers shared between them, and they are also generally only found in more "basic" descriptive terms. An older write up of mine on this is here , which is limited only to the colour terms, but they occur for a much wider range of meanings than just that. Quite happy to see these examples, thank you for sharing. Kellen On Thu, 18 Jun 2020 at 14:19, Henrik Liljegren wrote: > Dear Majigeen and all, > > What you describe is strikingly similar to what I have found in Indo-Aryan > Palula (Pakistan). I refer to them as co-lexicalised intensifiers (I quote > from my own grammar below, p. 184): > > > > “There is a number of more or less standard compounds with an > adjective/adverb and a matching intensifying element, not much different > from the effect other > > degree adverbs have on the modified constituent. Such an intensifier is > either uniquely occurring with a particular adjective/adverb, or occurs > only with a limited > > set of adjectives/adverbs. It seems those elements are mostly made up of a > single closed syllable, as can be seen in Table 8.9. > > > > Table 8.9: Examples of co-lexicalised intensifiers > > *phaṣ paṇáaru *‘white as a sheet’ *tap **c̣h**iṇ *‘pitch > dark’ > > *kham kiṣíṇu *‘pitch black’ *bak práal *‘shining > bright’ > > *čáu lhóilu *‘bright red’ *ḍanɡ khilayí > *‘all alone’ > > *tak zeṛ *‘bright yellow’ *čap mhoóru *‘extremely > sweet’ > > *pak kaantíiru *‘mad as a hat’ *šam šidáalu * > ‘ice-cold’ > > *pak bíidri *‘completely clear’ *šam níilu *‘deep > green/blue’ > > > > Strikingly similar compounds have been observed in several other languages > in the region, some of them even involving similar or identical forms as > those found in Palula: e.g., in Dameli (Perder 2013: 163) and Khowar (Elena > Bashir, pc, and own field notes).” > > > > Liljegren, Henrik. *A Grammar of Palula*. Studies in Diversity > Linguistics 8. Berlin: Language Science Press, 2016. > > > > The region I refer to above is the mountainous Hindu Kush-Karakorum of > northern Pakistan and surrounding areas in adjacent countries (Afghanistan > and India), but the phenomenon miɡht very well be more widespread in South > and West Asia. > > > > Best, > > Henrik > > > > > > *From:* Lingtyp *On Behalf Of > *Majigeen Aminata > *Sent:* Tuesday, June 16, 2020 11:56 PM > *To:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > *Subject:* [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs > > > > Dear all, > > I am currently working on what are called “adverbs” (see words un bold) in > wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (West Africa) has specific words > that only work with some colors: *white*, *black*, *red* and each > word-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. > > weex* tàll*: extremely white (it can't be whiter) > > ñuul *kukk*: extremely black (it can't be more black) > > xonq *coyy*: extremely red (it can't be more red) > > Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. > They are not commutable. > > baax *lool*: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) > > bees* tàq:* really new (nobody has ever used it) > > dëg*ër këcc*: extremely hard (it can't be harder) > > diis* gann*: really heavy (very difficult to carry) > > fatt* taraj*: extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) > > fess *dell*: extremely full (it can't be fuller) > > forox* toll*: really acidic (it can't be more acidic) > > gàtt *ndugur*: really short (he can't be shorter) > > jeex* tàkk*: completely finished, ... > > In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me > because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words > mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude. > > They are not onomatopoeias, Wolof also has them and they are different. > > tàkk *jëppet:* catch fire abruptly on the way up (jëppet expresses the > way of catching fire suddenly on the way up > njool *tàlli*: to be straight > tàlli *ñare*: to be stiffly straight, > > Thanks and regards. > > Aminata > > Bonjour, > > Je suis entrain de travailler sur ce qu’on appelle *adverbes* dans la > littérature. Le wolof a par exemple des mots spécifiques qui ne marchent > qu’avec certaines couleurs : blanc, noir, rouge et chaque mot-adverbe ne > marche qu’avec sa couleur, ils ne sont pas interchangeables. > > *weex tàll *: extrêmement blanc (on ne pas être plus > blanc) > > *ñuul kukk* : extrêmement noir (on ne pas être plus noir) > > *xonq coyy* : extrêmement > > D’autres vont avec des verbes d’états et leur sont spécifiques aussi. Ils > ne sont pas interchangeables. > > *baax lool* : extrêmement gentil (on ne pas être plus > gentil) > > *bees tàq* : vraiment nouveau (personne ne l’a jamais > utilisé) > > *dëgër këcc* : extrêmement dur (on ne pas être plus dur) > > *diis gann*: vraiment lourd (tres difficile de le > soulever) > > *fatt taraj* : extrêmement bouché (on ne pas être plus > bouché) > > *fess dell*: extrêmement plein (on ne pas être plus > plein) > > *forox toll:* vraiment acide (on ne pas être plus acide) > > *gàtt ndugur*: vraiment court (on ne pas être plus court) > > *jeex tàkk*: tout à fait terminé, etc… > > En wolof on les appelle des intensifieurs ou intensificateurs mais ce > terme ne me convainc pas car il peut porter à confusion. Ils n’intensifient > pas. Ces mots veulent dirent que l’état ou l’action du verbe est à son > extrémité. > > Ce ne sont pas des onomatopées. Le wolof a aussi des onomatopées > différentes de ces mots. Je voudrais savoir s’il existe des langues qui > fonctionnent comme ça et quelle est la terminologie employée pour ce genre > de construction Est-ce quelqu’un peut aussi me recommander de la > documentation nouvelle sur la définition des notions de verbes, adverbes, > adjectifs… dans les langues africaines ? > > Merci > > Aminata > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From joeylovestrand at gmail.com Thu Jun 18 09:25:24 2020 From: joeylovestrand at gmail.com (Joey Lovestrand) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 14:25:24 +0100 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: There are similar "ideophones” in Chadic languages. Newman (1968) calls them “adjectival intensifiers” in Hausa. Blench (2013) refers to “colour intensifiers” in Mwaghavul. I treat them as a type of ideophone in Barayin (Lovestrand 2019). Note that “ideophones” in Chadic languages typically have adverb-like morphosyntactic properties. -Joey Blench, R. (2013). Mwaghavul expressives. In H. Tourneux (Ed.), Topics in Chadic Linguistics VII: papers from the 6th Biennial International Colloquium on the Chadic Languages, Villejuif, September 22-23, 2011 (pp. 53–75). Cologne: Köppe. Lovestrand, Joseph. (2019). Ideophones in Barayin. In *Topics in Chadic Linguistics X: Papers from the 9th Biennial International Colloquium on the Chadic Languages*. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. Newman, P. (1968). Ideophones from a syntactic point of view. Journal of West African Languages, 2, 107–117. -- Joseph Lovestrand British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics SOAS University of London On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 1:29 PM Östen Dahl wrote: > I would agree with Martin here. I think ideophones can have different > functions, so just calling them “ideophones” would be only half the story > anyway. > > It is also worth mentioning that lexically specific intensifiers may start > out with a transparent meaning which is later bleached as the intensifier > generalizes. In spoken Swedish, the noun *jätte *’giant’ was prefixed to > *stor* ’big’ as a lexically specific intensifier, but is now frequently > used with just any adjective, e.g. *jättebra* ‘very good’. > Prescriptivists were not happy with combinations such as *jätteliten* > ‘(lit.) giant small’. > > > > - Östen > > > > *Från:* Lingtyp *För *Martin > Haspelmath > *Skickat:* den 18 juni 2020 11:21 > *Till:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > *Ämne:* Re: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs > > > > Yes, they remind one of ideophones, but it seems that Alex François's term > "lexically specific intensifiers" captures best what these forms are > (though I would prefer "degree modifiers", to avoid confusion with > self-intensifiers). > > It seems that "ideophones" are generally understood more broadly, because > they do not have to be degree modifiers (and maybe more narrowly at the > same time, because they have to be "marked", and "depict sensory imagery", > according to Dingemanse: http://ideophone.org/working-definition/). > > It may be worth studying lexically specific degree modifiers more > systematically across languages. Ekkehard König mentioned English > "ice-cold", "crystal clear", "pitch-black", and German "hunde-müde" > [dog-tired], "stock-dunkel" [stick-dark], and Jussi Ylikoski mentioned > Finnish "upo-uusi" (extremeley new) – these are usually treated as marginal > phenomena, but the fact that such lexically specific degree modifiers are > found on at least three different continents (Wolof, Mwotlap, English) may > point to something more general. > > Martin > > P.S. The term "adverb" is not wrong, but I try to avoid it, because it has > been applied to a very heterogeneous range of phenomena. > > Am 18.06.20 um 10:56 schrieb Kofi Yakpo: > > Dear Aminata, > > > > As Dmitry points out, these words would normally be referred to as > ideophones in African linguistics. Most ideophones in "African languages" > (they are more of an areal than a genetic feature) are > lexically/constructionally restricted in one or the other way, so there is > not much need to invent a new label for them besides "ideophone". > Colour-specific ideophones can be found in all Atlantic-Congo languages I > am familiarity with, and the European-lexifier creoles of Africa incl. > Kriyol (Casamance, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde). > > > > You could check the work of Mark Dingemanse and the works he cites for an > overview of most of the literature. > > > > Best, > > Kofi > > ———— > > Dr Kofi Yakpo • Associate Professor > > University of Hong Kong • Linguistics > • Scholars Hub > > > Resident Scholar: Chi Sun College > > > > > My publications @ zenodo > > > On the Outcomes of Prosodic Contact > > A Grammar of Pichi > > > > > > On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 7:07 PM Majigeen Aminata < > aminatamajigeen at yahoo.com> wrote: > > Dear all, > > I am currently working on what are called “adverbs” (see words un bold) in > wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (West Africa) has specific words > that only work with some colors: *white*, *black*, *red* and each > word-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. > > weex* tàll*: extremely white (it can't be whiter) > > ñuul *kukk*: extremely black (it can't be more black) > > xonq *coyy*: extremely red (it can't be more red) > > Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. > They are not commutable. > > baax *lool*: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) > > bees* tàq:* really new (nobody has ever used it) > > dëg*ër këcc*: extremely hard (it can't be harder) > > diis* gann*: really heavy (very difficult to carry) > > fatt* taraj*: extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) > > fess *dell*: extremely full (it can't be fuller) > > forox* toll*: really acidic (it can't be more acidic) > > gàtt *ndugur*: really short (he can't be shorter) > > jeex* tàkk*: completely finished, ... > > In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me > because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words > mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude. I > would like to know if there are languages ​​that work like that and what is > the terminology used for this kind of construction. Can someone also > recommend me new documentation on the definition of the concepts of verbs, > adverbs, adjectives… in African languages? > > Thanks and regards. > > Aminata > > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Lingtyp mailing list > > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > > Martin Haspelmath (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 > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From haspelmath at shh.mpg.de Thu Jun 18 09:58:41 2020 From: haspelmath at shh.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 15:58:41 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Overview paper for Terraling In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6c049ab1-a86e-68eb-6a59-fb63ca6ed654@shh.mpg.de> It seems that some of the people behind Terraling are: • Hilda Koopman (see https://linguistics.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Navigating-Terraling-1.pdf) • Chris Collins (see https://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/tools-at-lingboard/questionnaire/syntactic_structures.php) • Dominique Sportiche (see https://grantome.com/grant/NSF/BCS-1424336) But they do not seem to have produced a general document. I was invited to a kickoff meeting for SSWL at NYU in 2007, so I have known about the SSWL part for quite some time, but it hasn't been developed very much. Martin Am 17.06.20 um 22:40 schrieb Emily M. Bender: > Dear all, > > Is there an overview paper for the Terraling project > (http://www.terraling.com/)? A student and I would like to get a > better sense of how it conceptualizes language properties, and how > that relates to the conceptualization in other resources such as > WALS or the Grammar Matrix. > > Thanks! > Emily > > -- > Emily M. Bender (she/her) > Howard and Frances Nostrand Endowed Professor > Department of Linguistics > Faculty Director, CLMS > University of Washington > Twitter: @emilymbender > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Martin Haspelmath (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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From arppe at ualberta.ca Wed Jun 17 13:29:43 2020 From: arppe at ualberta.ca (Antti Arppe) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 11:29:43 -0600 Subject: [Lingtyp] ComputEL-4: 2nd Call-for-Papers (REVISED: virtual workshop + timeline) Message-ID: [Apologies for cross-postings] ComputEL-4 Fourth Workshop on the Use of Computational Methods in the Study of Endangered Languages 2nd Call-for-Papers -- WITH IMPORTANT CHANGES (VIRTUAL WORKSHOP + REVISED TIMELINE) The ComputEL-4 workshop will focus on the use of computational methods in the study, support, and revitalization of endangered languages. The primary aim of the workshop is to continue narrowing the gap between computational linguists interested in working on methods for endangered languages, field linguists working on documenting these languages, and the language communities who are striving to maintain their languages. We take seriously the goal of reaching all relevant communities. To support this goal, ComputEL aims to alternate co-location with computational linguistics conferences and language documentation conferences. Workshop format/venue and the COVID-19 pandemic ComputEL-4 will take place on March 2-3, 2021, immediately preceding the 7th International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC7) hosted by the University of Hawaii. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and in line with the current plans for ICLDC7, we expect that ComputEL-4 will be held as a fully virtual workshop. Submission and notification deadlines have changed to reflect this. Call for Papers Papers are invited which explore the interface and intersection of computational linguistics, documentary linguistics, and community-based language revitalization and conservation efforts. The committee encourages submissions which: (i) examine the use of specific methods in the analysis of data from low-resource languages, with a focus on endangered languages, or propose new methods for analysis of such data, (ii) propose new models for the collection, management, and deployment of data in endangered language settings, or (iii) consider what concrete steps are required to allow for a more fruitful interaction between computer scientists, documentary linguists, and language communities. The intention of the workshop is not merely to allow for the presentation of research, but also to continue building a network of computational linguists, documentary linguists, and community language activists who are able to effectively join together and serve their common interests. Presentations We will have both oral presentation sessions and a poster session, but we will be working on how these are realized in practice in our now virtual workshop. The decision on whether a presentation will be oral or poster will be made by the Organizing Committee on the advice of the Program Committee, taking into account the subject matter and how the content might be best conveyed. Oral and poster presentations will not be distinguished in the Proceedings. Submissions In line with our goal of reaching different academic communities, we offer two different modes of submission: extended abstract and full paper. Either can be submitted to our two tracks: (a) language community perspective and (b) academic perspective. The mode of submission does not influence likelihood of acceptance. Submissions must be uploaded via Easychair (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=computel4) no later than September 30, 2020, 11:59PM (UTC-11, time zone of American Samoa). Please indicate clearly (in the Abstract) which of the two modes (Extended abstractor Full paper) you are submitting to. All submissions must be anonymous and will be peer-reviewed by the scientific committee. Notification of acceptance will be sent out by mid-November 2020. A. Extended abstract: Please submit anonymous abstracts of up to 1500 words. B. Full paper: Please submit anonymously either a) long papers (max. 8 pages plus references) or b) short papers (max. 4 pages plus references) according to the style and formatting guidelines provided our ComputeEL Style Files (with template files for both LaTeX and Microsoft Word: see: https://computel-workshop.org/computel4-submissions/). Authors will be allowed one extra page for the final version (altogether 5 and 9 pages) excluding references. Proceedings The authors of selected accepted full papers (long or short) will be invited by the Organizing Committee to submit their papers for online publication via the open-access ACL Anthology. All other accepted full papers (long and short) and extended abstracts will be published electronically in University of Colorado Boulder Scholar (https://scholar.colorado.edu/scil-cmel/). Final versions of long and short papers will be allotted one additional page (altogether 5 and 9 pages) excluding references. Extended abstracts will be allotted up to 5 pages (according to the short paper format) excluding references. Any revisionsshould concern responses to reviewer comments or the addition of relevant details and clarifications, but not entirely new, unreviewed content.Proceedings papers should be revised and improved versions of the version that was submitted for, and which underwent, review. Camera-ready versions of the articles for publication will be due on January 25, 2021. Important Dates (REVISED): Mon30-September-2020  Deadline for submission of papers or short abstracts Wed15-November-2020  Notification of acceptance Tue-Wed 2-3-March-2021  Workshop Endorsements: ComputEL-4 is endorsed by the ACL Special Interest Group for Endangered Languages (SIGEL: https://acl-sigel.github.io/), and the ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group for Under-resources Languages (SIGUL: http://www.elra.info/en/sig/sigul/). Organizing Committee Antti Arppe (University of Alberta) Jeff Good (University at Buffalo) Atticus Harrigan (University of Alberta): community track Mans Hulden (University Colorado Boulder) Jordan Lachler (University Alberta) Sarah Moeller (University of Colorado Boulder): general/computational track Alexis Palmer (University of North Texas) Lane Schwartz (University of Illinois) Miikka Silfverberg (University of British Columbia) Contact - website and email For further information, please consult our website: https://computel-workshop.org/computel-4/ or email us at: computel.workshop at gmail.com Previous workshops The first ComputEL workshop was co-located with ACL in June 2014 in Baltimore; ComputEL-2 was co-located with the 5th International Conference of Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC5) in Honolulu, Hawai’i, in March 2017; ComputEL-3 was co-located with the 6th International Conference of Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC6) in Honolulu, Hawai’i, in March 2019. The proceedings of the previous ComputEL workshops have been published online by ACL and University of Colorado Boulder Scholar. For further information, see: https://computel-workshop.org/ From fleischhauer at phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de Thu Jun 18 01:07:29 2020 From: fleischhauer at phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de (fleischhauer at phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 05:07:29 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20200618050729.Horde.qCmCcNTNoQyso6j1fybPr-U@webmail.phil.hhu.de> Dear Aminata, I analyze expressions similar to those you mentioned from Wolof as intensifiers/degree adverbs (https://www.academia.edu/25454456/Degree_Gradation_of_Verbs). Why do you think that the Wolof intensifiers do not intensify the verb? You might have a look at my thesis (link below), there I present an analyse of verb gradation/intensification that might be helpful for the analysis of your data. It is not uncommon that that certain intensifiers/degree adverbs are restricted to specific verbs. Some German verbs, for example, take the degree adverb 'sehr' (very): 'Der Hund stinkt sehr' (The dog really stinks, lit. The dog stinks very). Others do not license 'sehr' but require others intensifiers like 'viel': 'Das Buch kostet viel' (The book costs a lot, lit. The book costs much). English is also a good example of a language showing lexical variation with respect to the choice of intensifiers/degree adverbs. Of course, the restrictions you mention seem to be much stricter than those we observe in German or English. Best, Jens Zitat von Majigeen Aminata : > Dear all, > I am currently workingon what are called “adverbs” (see words un > bold) in wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (WestAfrica) has > specific words that only work with some colors: white, black, red > and eachword-adverb match only with its color, they are not > commutable. > > weextàll:extremely white (it can't be whiter) > > ñuulkukk:extremely black (it can't be more black) > > xonqcoyy:extremely red (it can't be more red) > > Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as > well. They are not commutable. > > > baax lool: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) > > bees tàq:really new (nobody has ever used it) > > dëgër këcc:extremely hard (it can't be harder) > > diis gann:really heavy (very difficult to carry) > > fatt taraj:extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) > > fess dell:extremely full (it can't be fuller) > > forox toll:really acidic (it can't be more acidic) > > gàtt ndugur:really short (he can't be shorter) > > jeex tàkk:completely finished, ... > > > In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not > convince me because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the > verbs. These words mean that the state or action of the verb is at > its end of completude.I would like to knowif there are languages > ​​that work like that and what is the terminology usedfor this kind > of construction. Can someone also recommend me new documentationon > the definition of the concepts of verbs, adverbs, adjectives… in > Africanlanguages? > > Thanks and regards. > > Aminata  -- Dr. Jens Helfer-Fleischhauer Vertretungsprofessur für Linguistik Heinrich-Heine Universität Düsseldorf Institut für Sprache und Information Abteilung für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Universitätsstraße 1 Gebäude 24.53.00.89 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany e-mail: fleischhauer at phil.uni-duesseldorf.de https://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/asw/personal/jens-fleischhauer/ tel.: +49-211-81-10717; fax: +49-211-81-11325 From joo at shh.mpg.de Thu Jun 18 18:39:51 2020 From: joo at shh.mpg.de (joo at shh.mpg.de) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 07:39:51 +0900 Subject: [Lingtyp] Semantic role of body parts References: <65d86211-1396-4a19-ae8a-4731b3392af2@Spark> Message-ID: <7c90a6ae-ca55-497b-ab62-f9bb0e7b65bf@Spark> Dear all, What is the semantic role of the object NP “my hand” in the phrase “I moved my hand”? Is it the patient (because it is affected by the agent’s movement) or the agent (because it is the inalienable part of the agent who moves)? Regards, Ian -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jb77 at buffalo.edu Thu Jun 18 20:29:20 2020 From: jb77 at buffalo.edu (Bohnemeyer, Juergen) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 00:29:20 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Semantic role of body parts In-Reply-To: <7c90a6ae-ca55-497b-ab62-f9bb0e7b65bf@Spark> References: <65d86211-1396-4a19-ae8a-4731b3392af2@Spark> <7c90a6ae-ca55-497b-ab62-f9bb0e7b65bf@Spark> Message-ID: <98320EDC-90CC-4768-99AB-4B74F0179F6C@buffalo.edu> Dear Ian — The figure of motion events is most commonly classified as a theme, which in turn is of course a kind of undergoer. It’s arguably not really a patient since it isn’t causally affected: (1) ?What I did to my hand was move it As to the second part of your question, semantic roles are (defined by) semantic relations between the referents of expressions, in this case between the referents of the verb _move_ and the object NP _my hand_. In English, at least, the fact that the subject is coreferential with the possessor of the object in (1) has no discernible impact on the behavior of (1). It would be interesting to see whether this is different in other languages. Languages with inverse alignment constraints tend to disfavor the use of transitive active voice forms for possessed acting on possessor, as in (2) and (3): (2) His wife left him (3) My knee was bothering me In such languages, inverse voice or some other construction would be used to avoid the constraint violation in (2) and (3). Best — Juergen > On Jun 18, 2020, at 6:39 PM, joo at shh.mpg.de wrote: > > Dear all, > > What is the semantic role of the object NP “my hand” in the phrase “I moved my hand”? > Is it the patient (because it is affected by the agent’s movement) or the agent (because it is the inalienable part of the agent who moves)? > > Regards, > Ian > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) From mark.post at sydney.edu.au Thu Jun 18 21:38:17 2020 From: mark.post at sydney.edu.au (Mark Post) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 01:38:17 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40D4ED4F-0EA5-4DA8-B394-E80E1A8EAE0A@sydney.edu.au> Hi folks, To add to Kellen’s remarks, we also find these things in Adi and Milang, two Trans-Himalayan languages spoken in Arunachal Pradesh, India. We call them “expressive intensifiers”, to capture their ideophone-like expressive quality, but distinguish them both from the “four-syllable-expression”-type expressive one often finds in Southeast Asia (which also exist in Adi and Milang), and from ideophones proper (which also exist in Adi and Milang). It would of course be possible to expand either the class of expressives or the class of ideophones (on a mostly functional basis) to include expressive intensifiers, but, well - they are certainly distributionally well-distinguished. https://www.academia.edu/35372326/The_functional_value_of_formal_exuberance_Expressive_intensification_in_Adi_and_Milang It’s remarkable to see such a similar (almost identical) phenomenon in Wolof. We found the Adi and Milang cases striking since these languages are geographically close, but not genealogically close, while languages that are genealogically closer to Adi (such as Galo) seem to lack this construction. In principle therefore, it looks contagious. Cheers Mark Modi, Y. and M. W. Post. In press 2020. ‘The functional value of formal exuberance: Expressive intensification in Adi and Milang.‘ In Jeffrey P. Williams, Ed., Expressive Morphology in the Languages of South Asia. London, Routledge. On 18 Jun 2020, at 23:25, Joey Lovestrand > wrote: There are similar "ideophones” in Chadic languages. Newman (1968) calls them “adjectival intensifiers” in Hausa. Blench (2013) refers to “colour intensifiers” in Mwaghavul. I treat them as a type of ideophone in Barayin (Lovestrand 2019). Note that “ideophones” in Chadic languages typically have adverb-like morphosyntactic properties. -Joey Blench, R. (2013). Mwaghavul expressives. In H. Tourneux (Ed.), Topics in Chadic Linguistics VII: papers from the 6th Biennial International Colloquium on the Chadic Languages, Villejuif, September 22-23, 2011 (pp. 53–75). Cologne: Köppe. Lovestrand, Joseph. (2019). Ideophones in Barayin. In Topics in Chadic Linguistics X: Papers from the 9th Biennial International Colloquium on the Chadic Languages. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. Newman, P. (1968). Ideophones from a syntactic point of view. Journal of West African Languages, 2, 107–117. -- Joseph Lovestrand British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics SOAS University of London On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 1:29 PM Östen Dahl > wrote: I would agree with Martin here. I think ideophones can have different functions, so just calling them “ideophones” would be only half the story anyway. It is also worth mentioning that lexically specific intensifiers may start out with a transparent meaning which is later bleached as the intensifier generalizes. In spoken Swedish, the noun jätte ’giant’ was prefixed to stor ’big’ as a lexically specific intensifier, but is now frequently used with just any adjective, e.g. jättebra ‘very good’. Prescriptivists were not happy with combinations such as jätteliten ‘(lit.) giant small’. * Östen Från: Lingtyp > För Martin Haspelmath Skickat: den 18 juni 2020 11:21 Till: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs Yes, they remind one of ideophones, but it seems that Alex François's term "lexically specific intensifiers" captures best what these forms are (though I would prefer "degree modifiers", to avoid confusion with self-intensifiers). It seems that "ideophones" are generally understood more broadly, because they do not have to be degree modifiers (and maybe more narrowly at the same time, because they have to be "marked", and "depict sensory imagery", according to Dingemanse: http://ideophone.org/working-definition/). It may be worth studying lexically specific degree modifiers more systematically across languages. Ekkehard König mentioned English "ice-cold", "crystal clear", "pitch-black", and German "hunde-müde" [dog-tired], "stock-dunkel" [stick-dark], and Jussi Ylikoski mentioned Finnish "upo-uusi" (extremeley new) – these are usually treated as marginal phenomena, but the fact that such lexically specific degree modifiers are found on at least three different continents (Wolof, Mwotlap, English) may point to something more general. Martin P.S. The term "adverb" is not wrong, but I try to avoid it, because it has been applied to a very heterogeneous range of phenomena. Am 18.06.20 um 10:56 schrieb Kofi Yakpo: Dear Aminata, As Dmitry points out, these words would normally be referred to as ideophones in African linguistics. Most ideophones in "African languages" (they are more of an areal than a genetic feature) are lexically/constructionally restricted in one or the other way, so there is not much need to invent a new label for them besides "ideophone". Colour-specific ideophones can be found in all Atlantic-Congo languages I am familiarity with, and the European-lexifier creoles of Africa incl. Kriyol (Casamance, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde). You could check the work of Mark Dingemanse and the works he cites for an overview of most of the literature. Best, Kofi ———— Dr Kofi Yakpo • Associate Professor University of Hong Kong • Linguistics • Scholars Hub Resident Scholar: Chi Sun College My publications @ zenodo On the Outcomes of Prosodic Contact A Grammar of Pichi On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 7:07 PM Majigeen Aminata > wrote: Dear all, I am currently working on what are called “adverbs” (see words un bold) in wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (West Africa) has specific words that only work with some colors: white, black, red and each word-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. weex tàll: extremely white (it can't be whiter) ñuul kukk: extremely black (it can't be more black) xonq coyy: extremely red (it can't be more red) Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. They are not commutable. baax lool: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) bees tàq: really new (nobody has ever used it) dëgër këcc: extremely hard (it can't be harder) diis gann: really heavy (very difficult to carry) fatt taraj: extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) fess dell: extremely full (it can't be fuller) forox toll: really acidic (it can't be more acidic) gàtt ndugur: really short (he can't be shorter) jeex tàkk: completely finished, ... In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude. I would like to know if there are languages ​​that work like that and what is the terminology used for this kind of construction. Can someone also recommend me new documentation on the definition of the concepts of verbs, adverbs, adjectives… in African languages? Thanks and regards. Aminata _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Martin Haspelmath (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 _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/UM8tCMwGxOtEGq37hOe0N1?domain=listserv.linguistlist.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de Fri Jun 19 03:13:48 2020 From: christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de (Christian Lehmann) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 09:13:48 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Semantic role of body parts In-Reply-To: <7c90a6ae-ca55-497b-ab62-f9bb0e7b65bf@Spark> References: <65d86211-1396-4a19-ae8a-4731b3392af2@Spark> <7c90a6ae-ca55-497b-ab62-f9bb0e7b65bf@Spark> Message-ID: Dear Ian, a recent paper of mine (bound to be published for some years now) https://www.christianlehmann.eu/publ/lehmann_body.pdf discusses your question at some length. Cheers, Christian --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Am 19.06.20 um 00:39 schrieb joo at shh.mpg.de: > Dear all, > > What is the semantic role of the object NP “my hand” in the phrase “I > moved my hand”? > Is it the patient (because it is affected by the agent’s movement) or > the agent (because it is the inalienable part of the agent who moves)? > > Regards, > Ian > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann Rudolfstr. 4 99092 Erfurt Deutschland Tel.: +49/361/2113417 E-Post: christianw_lehmann at arcor.de Web: https://www.christianlehmann.eu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jussi.ylikoski at oulu.fi Fri Jun 19 04:19:49 2020 From: jussi.ylikoski at oulu.fi (Jussi Ylikoski) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 08:19:49 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: <40D4ED4F-0EA5-4DA8-B394-E80E1A8EAE0A@sydney.edu.au> References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> , <40D4ED4F-0EA5-4DA8-B394-E80E1A8EAE0A@sydney.edu.au> Message-ID: Dear all, A follow-up to my previous comments on Finnish and Estonian: It appears that the self-published (and partly idiosyncratic) Handbook of Finnish by Jukka K. Korpela quite nicely captures the essence of the Finnish phenomenon: https://books.google.com/books?id=VE2NCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT386 Best regards, Jussi ________________________________ Saatja: Lingtyp Mark Post nimel Saadetud: reede, 19. juuni 2020 04:38 Adressaat: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Teema: Re: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs Hi folks, To add to Kellen’s remarks, we also find these things in Adi and Milang, two Trans-Himalayan languages spoken in Arunachal Pradesh, India. We call them “expressive intensifiers”, to capture their ideophone-like expressive quality, but distinguish them both from the “four-syllable-expression”-type expressive one often finds in Southeast Asia (which also exist in Adi and Milang), and from ideophones proper (which also exist in Adi and Milang). It would of course be possible to expand either the class of expressives or the class of ideophones (on a mostly functional basis) to include expressive intensifiers, but, well - they are certainly distributionally well-distinguished. https://www.academia.edu/35372326/The_functional_value_of_formal_exuberance_Expressive_intensification_in_Adi_and_Milang It’s remarkable to see such a similar (almost identical) phenomenon in Wolof. We found the Adi and Milang cases striking since these languages are geographically close, but not genealogically close, while languages that are genealogically closer to Adi (such as Galo) seem to lack this construction. In principle therefore, it looks contagious. Cheers Mark Modi, Y. and M. W. Post. In press 2020. ‘The functional value of formal exuberance: Expressive intensification in Adi and Milang.‘ In Jeffrey P. Williams, Ed., Expressive Morphology in the Languages of South Asia. London, Routledge. On 18 Jun 2020, at 23:25, Joey Lovestrand > wrote: There are similar "ideophones” in Chadic languages. Newman (1968) calls them “adjectival intensifiers” in Hausa. Blench (2013) refers to “colour intensifiers” in Mwaghavul. I treat them as a type of ideophone in Barayin (Lovestrand 2019). Note that “ideophones” in Chadic languages typically have adverb-like morphosyntactic properties. -Joey Blench, R. (2013). Mwaghavul expressives. In H. Tourneux (Ed.), Topics in Chadic Linguistics VII: papers from the 6th Biennial International Colloquium on the Chadic Languages, Villejuif, September 22-23, 2011 (pp. 53–75). Cologne: Köppe. Lovestrand, Joseph. (2019). Ideophones in Barayin. In Topics in Chadic Linguistics X: Papers from the 9th Biennial International Colloquium on the Chadic Languages. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. Newman, P. (1968). Ideophones from a syntactic point of view. Journal of West African Languages, 2, 107–117. -- Joseph Lovestrand British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics SOAS University of London On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 1:29 PM Östen Dahl > wrote: I would agree with Martin here. I think ideophones can have different functions, so just calling them “ideophones” would be only half the story anyway. It is also worth mentioning that lexically specific intensifiers may start out with a transparent meaning which is later bleached as the intensifier generalizes. In spoken Swedish, the noun jätte ’giant’ was prefixed to stor ’big’ as a lexically specific intensifier, but is now frequently used with just any adjective, e.g. jättebra ‘very good’. Prescriptivists were not happy with combinations such as jätteliten ‘(lit.) giant small’. * Östen Från: Lingtyp > För Martin Haspelmath Skickat: den 18 juni 2020 11:21 Till: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs Yes, they remind one of ideophones, but it seems that Alex François's term "lexically specific intensifiers" captures best what these forms are (though I would prefer "degree modifiers", to avoid confusion with self-intensifiers). It seems that "ideophones" are generally understood more broadly, because they do not have to be degree modifiers (and maybe more narrowly at the same time, because they have to be "marked", and "depict sensory imagery", according to Dingemanse: http://ideophone.org/working-definition/). It may be worth studying lexically specific degree modifiers more systematically across languages. Ekkehard König mentioned English "ice-cold", "crystal clear", "pitch-black", and German "hunde-müde" [dog-tired], "stock-dunkel" [stick-dark], and Jussi Ylikoski mentioned Finnish "upo-uusi" (extremeley new) – these are usually treated as marginal phenomena, but the fact that such lexically specific degree modifiers are found on at least three different continents (Wolof, Mwotlap, English) may point to something more general. Martin P.S. The term "adverb" is not wrong, but I try to avoid it, because it has been applied to a very heterogeneous range of phenomena. Am 18.06.20 um 10:56 schrieb Kofi Yakpo: Dear Aminata, As Dmitry points out, these words would normally be referred to as ideophones in African linguistics. Most ideophones in "African languages" (they are more of an areal than a genetic feature) are lexically/constructionally restricted in one or the other way, so there is not much need to invent a new label for them besides "ideophone". Colour-specific ideophones can be found in all Atlantic-Congo languages I am familiarity with, and the European-lexifier creoles of Africa incl. Kriyol (Casamance, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde). You could check the work of Mark Dingemanse and the works he cites for an overview of most of the literature. Best, Kofi ———— Dr Kofi Yakpo • Associate Professor University of Hong Kong • Linguistics • Scholars Hub Resident Scholar: Chi Sun College My publications @ zenodo On the Outcomes of Prosodic Contact A Grammar of Pichi On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 7:07 PM Majigeen Aminata > wrote: Dear all, I am currently working on what are called “adverbs” (see words un bold) in wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (West Africa) has specific words that only work with some colors: white, black, red and each word-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. weex tàll: extremely white (it can't be whiter) ñuul kukk: extremely black (it can't be more black) xonq coyy: extremely red (it can't be more red) Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. They are not commutable. baax lool: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) bees tàq: really new (nobody has ever used it) dëgër këcc: extremely hard (it can't be harder) diis gann: really heavy (very difficult to carry) fatt taraj: extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) fess dell: extremely full (it can't be fuller) forox toll: really acidic (it can't be more acidic) gàtt ndugur: really short (he can't be shorter) jeex tàkk: completely finished, ... In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude. I would like to know if there are languages ​​that work like that and what is the terminology used for this kind of construction. Can someone also recommend me new documentation on the definition of the concepts of verbs, adverbs, adjectives… in African languages? Thanks and regards. Aminata _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Martin Haspelmath (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 _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/UM8tCMwGxOtEGq37hOe0N1?domain=listserv.linguistlist.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From linjr at cc.au.dk Fri Jun 19 04:37:26 2020 From: linjr at cc.au.dk (Jan Rijkhoff) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 08:37:26 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> , <40D4ED4F-0EA5-4DA8-B394-E80E1A8EAE0A@sydney.edu.au>, Message-ID: Some useful references in this context (English keyword 'elatives' - Dutch 'elatieven' or 'elativus') - Coppock, Elizabeth & Elisabet Engdahl. 2016. Quasi-definites in Swedish: Elative superlatives and emphatic assertion. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 34-4, 1181-1243. - Jespersen, Otto. 1924. The philosophy of grammar. London: Allen & Unwin. (see pp-. 244-253; referred to in: De Vooys 1967 - see below) For those who can read Dutch: - De Tier, Veronique & Siemon Reker (ed.), In vergelijking met dieren. Intensiverend Taalgebruik volgens de SND-krantenenquête (1998) (Het Dialectenboek 5), Stichting Nederlandse Dialecten, Groesbeek 1999, 375 blz. 500 BEF, ISBN 90-73869-05-6. Het boek kan besteld worden bij het secretariaat van de SND, Generaal Gavinstraat 344, 6562 MR Groesbeek; tel. 024 - 361 20 48; fax 024 - 361 19 72. (375 blz.). 
ISBN 90 73869 05 6 - de Vooys, Cornelis G. N. 1967. Nederlandse Spraakkunst. Groningen: Wolters (see pp. 67-68 on the ‘elativus’) - Reker, Siemon & Ludie Postmus. 1996. Dikke woorden: bikkelhaard, bragelvet, strontdeurnat en hun soortgenoten in het Gronings en verwante talen; Bedum: Profiel; 90-5294-143-2. Jan R J. Rijkhoff - Associate Professor, Linguistics School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University Jens Chr. Skous Vej 2, Building 1485-621 DK-8000 Aarhus C, DENMARK Phone: (+45) 87162143 URL: http://pure.au.dk/portal/en/linjr at cc.au.dk ________________________________________ From: Lingtyp on behalf of Jussi Ylikoski Sent: Friday, June 19, 2020 10:19 AM To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs Dear all, A follow-up to my previous comments on Finnish and Estonian: It appears that the self-published (and partly idiosyncratic) Handbook of Finnish by Jukka K. Korpela quite nicely captures the essence of the Finnish phenomenon: https://books.google.com/books?id=VE2NCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT386 Best regards, Jussi ________________________________ Saatja: Lingtyp Mark Post nimel Saadetud: reede, 19. juuni 2020 04:38 Adressaat: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Teema: Re: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs Hi folks, To add to Kellen’s remarks, we also find these things in Adi and Milang, two Trans-Himalayan languages spoken in Arunachal Pradesh, India. We call them “expressive intensifiers”, to capture their ideophone-like expressive quality, but distinguish them both from the “four-syllable-expression”-type expressive one often finds in Southeast Asia (which also exist in Adi and Milang), and from ideophones proper (which also exist in Adi and Milang). It would of course be possible to expand either the class of expressives or the class of ideophones (on a mostly functional basis) to include expressive intensifiers, but, well - they are certainly distributionally well-distinguished. https://www.academia.edu/35372326/The_functional_value_of_formal_exuberance_Expressive_intensification_in_Adi_and_Milang It’s remarkable to see such a similar (almost identical) phenomenon in Wolof. We found the Adi and Milang cases striking since these languages are geographically close, but not genealogically close, while languages that are genealogically closer to Adi (such as Galo) seem to lack this construction. In principle therefore, it looks contagious. Cheers Mark Modi, Y. and M. W. Post. In press 2020. ‘The functional value of formal exuberance: Expressive intensification in Adi and Milang.‘ In Jeffrey P. Williams, Ed., Expressive Morphology in the Languages of South Asia. London, Routledge. On 18 Jun 2020, at 23:25, Joey Lovestrand > wrote: There are similar "ideophones” in Chadic languages. Newman (1968) calls them “adjectival intensifiers” in Hausa. Blench (2013) refers to “colour intensifiers” in Mwaghavul. I treat them as a type of ideophone in Barayin (Lovestrand 2019). Note that “ideophones” in Chadic languages typically have adverb-like morphosyntactic properties. -Joey Blench, R. (2013). Mwaghavul expressives. In H. Tourneux (Ed.), Topics in Chadic Linguistics VII: papers from the 6th Biennial International Colloquium on the Chadic Languages, Villejuif, September 22-23, 2011 (pp. 53–75). Cologne: Köppe. Lovestrand, Joseph. (2019). Ideophones in Barayin. In Topics in Chadic Linguistics X: Papers from the 9th Biennial International Colloquium on the Chadic Languages. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. Newman, P. (1968). Ideophones from a syntactic point of view. Journal of West African Languages, 2, 107–117. -- Joseph Lovestrand British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics SOAS University of London On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 1:29 PM Östen Dahl > wrote: I would agree with Martin here. I think ideophones can have different functions, so just calling them “ideophones” would be only half the story anyway. It is also worth mentioning that lexically specific intensifiers may start out with a transparent meaning which is later bleached as the intensifier generalizes. In spoken Swedish, the noun jätte ’giant’ was prefixed to stor ’big’ as a lexically specific intensifier, but is now frequently used with just any adjective, e.g. jättebra ‘very good’. Prescriptivists were not happy with combinations such as jätteliten ‘(lit.) giant small’. * Östen Från: Lingtyp > För Martin Haspelmath Skickat: den 18 juni 2020 11:21 Till: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs Yes, they remind one of ideophones, but it seems that Alex François's term "lexically specific intensifiers" captures best what these forms are (though I would prefer "degree modifiers", to avoid confusion with self-intensifiers). It seems that "ideophones" are generally understood more broadly, because they do not have to be degree modifiers (and maybe more narrowly at the same time, because they have to be "marked", and "depict sensory imagery", according to Dingemanse: http://ideophone.org/working-definition/). It may be worth studying lexically specific degree modifiers more systematically across languages. Ekkehard König mentioned English "ice-cold", "crystal clear", "pitch-black", and German "hunde-müde" [dog-tired], "stock-dunkel" [stick-dark], and Jussi Ylikoski mentioned Finnish "upo-uusi" (extremeley new) – these are usually treated as marginal phenomena, but the fact that such lexically specific degree modifiers are found on at least three different continents (Wolof, Mwotlap, English) may point to something more general. Martin P.S. The term "adverb" is not wrong, but I try to avoid it, because it has been applied to a very heterogeneous range of phenomena. Am 18.06.20 um 10:56 schrieb Kofi Yakpo: Dear Aminata, As Dmitry points out, these words would normally be referred to as ideophones in African linguistics. Most ideophones in "African languages" (they are more of an areal than a genetic feature) are lexically/constructionally restricted in one or the other way, so there is not much need to invent a new label for them besides "ideophone". Colour-specific ideophones can be found in all Atlantic-Congo languages I am familiarity with, and the European-lexifier creoles of Africa incl. Kriyol (Casamance, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde). You could check the work of Mark Dingemanse and the works he cites for an overview of most of the literature. Best, Kofi ———— Dr Kofi Yakpo • Associate Professor University of Hong Kong • Linguistics • Scholars Hub Resident Scholar: Chi Sun College My publications @ zenodo On the Outcomes of Prosodic Contact A Grammar of Pichi On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 7:07 PM Majigeen Aminata > wrote: Dear all, I am currently working on what are called “adverbs” (see words un bold) in wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (West Africa) has specific words that only work with some colors: white, black, red and each word-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. weex tàll: extremely white (it can't be whiter) ñuul kukk: extremely black (it can't be more black) xonq coyy: extremely red (it can't be more red) Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. They are not commutable. baax lool: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) bees tàq: really new (nobody has ever used it) dëgër këcc: extremely hard (it can't be harder) diis gann: really heavy (very difficult to carry) fatt taraj: extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) fess dell: extremely full (it can't be fuller) forox toll: really acidic (it can't be more acidic) gàtt ndugur: really short (he can't be shorter) jeex tàkk: completely finished, ... In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude. I would like to know if there are languages ​​that work like that and what is the terminology used for this kind of construction. Can someone also recommend me new documentation on the definition of the concepts of verbs, adverbs, adjectives… in African languages? Thanks and regards. Aminata _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Martin Haspelmath (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 _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/UM8tCMwGxOtEGq37hOe0N1?domain=listserv.linguistlist.org From martin.kohlberger at gmail.com Fri Jun 19 04:46:47 2020 From: martin.kohlberger at gmail.com (Martin Kohlberger) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 10:46:47 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Call: SSILA 2021 Call for Papers Message-ID: *THE SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF THE INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES OF THE AMERICAS* *Annual Winter Meeting, Online* *January 7-10, 2021* *Call for Papers* *Deadline for abstracts:* *July 17, 2020* The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA) will hold its annual winter meeting on January 7-10, 2021. SSILA meetings allow scholars to present on a wide range of topics centered on any aspect of Indigenous American languages. Because of the global COVID-19 crisis, this conference will be held online on a virtual platform, allowing participants to take part in the meeting without the need to travel. The SSILA executive committee is currently exploring all options so that registration fees can be kept at a minimum. *Call for Organized Session Proposals* SSILA welcomes abstracts for papers that present original research focusing on the linguistic study of the Indigenous languages of the Americas. Presenters must be members of SSILA in order to present. (You can join SSILA at: https://ssila.org/memberships/.) Abstract Submission The *deadline* for receipt of all abstracts is on *July 17th at 11:59PM (Hawaii-Aleutian time). *Abstracts should be submitted electronically, using the electronic submission website EasyChair. Consult the SSILA website for detailed instructions. Also, e-mail or hard-copy submissions will be accepted if arrangements are made in advance with the SSILA Program Committee Administrator, Martin Kohlberger (conferences at ssila.org). Abstracts may be submitted in English, Spanish, French or Portuguese. The EasyChair submission page address is https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ssila2021. Abstracts must conform to the guidelines below. General Requirements 1. All authors must be members of SSILA. See the SSILA website for information about membership and renewal ( https://ssila.org/memberships/). The membership requirement may be waived for co-authors who are from disciplines other than those ordinarily represented by SSILA (linguistics and linguistic anthropology). Requests for waivers of membership must be made by a member of the Society to the SSILA Secretary, Mary Linn (secretary at ssila.org). (Note*: Membership of LSA is not required for participation in SSILA sessions*.) 2. Any member may submit one single-author abstract and one multi-author abstract OR two multi-author abstracts. 3. After an abstract has been submitted, no changes of author, title, or wording of the abstract, other than those due to typographical errors, are permitted. 4. Papers must be delivered as projected in the abstract or represent bona fide developments of the same research. 5. Papers must not appear in print before the meeting. 6. All presenters of individual papers must register for the meeting if their papers are accepted. 7. Authors who must withdraw from the program should inform the SSILA Program Committee Administrator (conferences at ssila.org) as soon as possible. 8. Authors may not submit identical abstracts for presentation at the SSILA meeting and the LSA meeting or a meeting of one of the Sister Societies (ADS, ANS, NAAHoLS, SPCL, TALE). Authors who are discovered to have done so will have these abstracts removed from consideration. Authors may submit substantially different abstracts for presentation at the SSILA meeting and the LSA or a Sister Society meeting. Abstract Format *Please see the section below, “Abstract Submission”, for important information about long and short abstracts.* 1. Abstracts should be uploaded as a file in PDF format to the abstract submittal form on the EasyChair website. 2. The abstract, including examples as needed, should be no more than one typed page (12pt font, single spaced, with 1-inch margins); a second page may be used for references. Abstracts longer than one page will be rejected without being evaluated. 3. At the top of the abstract, give a title that is not more than one 7-inch typed line and that clearly indicates the topic of the paper. 4. Abstracts will be reviewed anonymously. Do not include your name on the abstract. If you identify yourself in any way in the abstract (e.g. “In Smith (1992)...I”), the abstract will be rejected without being evaluated. Of course, it may be necessary to refer to your own work in the third person in order to appropriately situate the research. 5. Abstracts which do not conform to these format guidelines will be rejected without being evaluated. Abstract Contents Papers whose main topic does not focus on the Indigenous languages of the Americas will be rejected without further consideration by the Program Committee. SSILA requires further that the subject matter be related to linguistics and/or language revitalization, that the research presented include new findings or developments not published before the meeting, that there be reflection on the social outcomes/impacts/implication of the work, that the papers not be submitted with malicious or scurrilous intent, and that the abstract be coherent and in accord with these guidelines. Abstracts are more often rejected because they omit crucial information rather than because of errors in what they include. The most important criterion is relevance to the understanding of Indigenous languages of the Americas, but other factors are important, too. It is important to present results so that they will be of interest to the whole SSILA (and larger) linguistic community, not just to those who work on the same language or language family that you do. A suggested outline for abstracts is as follows: 1. State the problem or research question raised by prior work, with specific reference to relevant prior research. 2. Give a clear indication of the nature and source of your data (primary fieldwork, archival research, secondary sources). 3. State the main point or argument of the proposed presentation. 4. Regardless of the subfield, cite sufficient data, and explain why and how they support the main point or argument. For examples in languages other than English, provide word-by-word glosses and *underline* or *boldface* the portions of the examples which are critical to the argument. 5. State the relevance of your ideas to past work or to the future development of the field. Describe analyses in as much detail as possible. Avoid saying in effect "a solution to this problem will be presented". If you are taking a stand on a controversial issue, summarize the arguments that led you to your position. 6. State the contribution to linguistics made by the analysis and state the social outcomes/impacts/implications of the work (which may be positive, neutral or negative, immediate or potential). Consideration of the social outcomes/impacts/implications of the work might focus on the specific topic under consideration or take into account the broader scope of a project. Effects might take a while to be felt, and might be nuanced with respect to who is influenced and how. Implications are likely to relate to the social significance to the language community, such as the project’s capacity for developing tools for pedagogy or revitalization, valorizing the language within a broader social context, or (perhaps at the same time) introducing points of tension regarding approaches to language teaching. They might also include bringing a situation regarding a language community’s status to wider attention, educating the public regarding language endangerment and its significance, promoting the application of Native ways of knowing in linguistic research or community-related goals. 7. Please include a list of references for any work cited in the abstract. The references can be on a second page. Categories of Presentation Authors are required to indicate the preferred category of their presentation at the time of submitting the abstract. The program committee will try to accommodate this preference as space and time allow. The categories to choose from are: Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, Historical Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Lexicography, Applied Linguistics, Language Revitalization, Other. Authors will also be able to select the geographic area that the languages discussed in their abstract are/were spoken in. Abstract Submission Submissions for the SSILA Annual Meeting require *two abstracts*: *Short Abstract.* This abstract should be no more than 100 words and will be used in the meeting handbook. In *EasyChair*, you will paste this abstract into the “Abstract” box under the Title and Abstract heading. *Long Abstract*. This abstract is the one that will be evaluated for inclusion in the meeting program. The long abstract should be a PDF file. In *EasyChair*, you will select the PDF file containing your abstract to upload at the “Long Abstract” prompt under the “Files” heading. *Detailed instructions for using EasyChair* The submission process requires two stages: Get your own *EasyChair* account Submit your abstract(s) *Creating an account in EasyChair: * - Go to the EasyChair site: www.easychair.org • Click “Signup” at the top right corner of the page and follow the instructions for entry into the system. • Enter your name and e-mail address and click “Continue” - Check your e-mail: You will receive a message from EasyChair. Follow the instructions there. - Make a note of your user name and password for future reference. *Submitting your abstracts: * Go to the SSILA 2021 submission page: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ssila2021 Log in using the username and password you just established. Click "New Submission". On the page that appears, you will need to identify the author(s), title, keywords, and submission groups of the proposed paper, and submit your *short abstract* and *long abstract *(see clarification above). *Authors: * Enter the information requested about the author(s): § For yourself, you can click the link at the top of the author box to enter the information from your account profile into the form. § For co-authors, type in their information. § If there are more than three authors, select *Click here to add more authors*. § Use the ‘corresponding author’ checkboxes to select which author(s) will get e-mail from the EasyChair system and the Program Committee. *Title and Abstract and Other Information * § Enter the *title* of the paper. - Enter the *short* *abstract*. If your paper is accepted, this short abstract will appear in the Meeting Handbook. Cut and paste the abstract into the text box provided. Maximum length is 100 words. - [If your short abstract requires special characters, please also send it as a PDF file to the SSILA Program Committee Administrator at .] § Enter the *keywords* (at least 3, up to 5) that apply to your paper. § Under *Topics*, select the main subfield of the paper (to be used by the program committee to group papers) and the geographic region to which it pertains. *Files* § The long abstract, written according to the guidelines described above, must be uploaded here. § Use PDF format. § Use the browse button to select your abstract document. § Click *Submit * *Logout* by selecting “Sign out” in the top menu bar. *Questions? *Please contact conferences at ssila.org if you have any questions about or difficulty with your abstract submission. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From martin.kohlberger at gmail.com Fri Jun 19 05:01:36 2020 From: martin.kohlberger at gmail.com (Martin Kohlberger) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 11:01:36 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Call: SSILA 2021 Call for Papers (Amended) Message-ID: Dear colleagues, I would like to apologise for sending this out again, but it was pointed out to me that the previous e-mail mistakenly called for organized sessions. This is a call for individual papers. Apologies once again, Martin Kohlberger -- Program Committee Administrator SSILA *THE SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF THE INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES OF THE AMERICAS* *Annual Winter Meeting, Online* *January 7-10, 2021* *Call for Papers* *Deadline for abstracts:* *July 17, 2020* The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA) will hold its annual winter meeting on January 7-10, 2021. SSILA meetings allow scholars to present on a wide range of topics centered on any aspect of Indigenous American languages. Because of the global COVID-19 crisis, this conference will be held online on a virtual platform, allowing participants to take part in the meeting without the need to travel. The SSILA executive committee is currently exploring all options so that registration fees can be kept at a minimum. *Call for papers* SSILA welcomes abstracts for papers that present original research focusing on the linguistic study of the Indigenous languages of the Americas. Presenters must be members of SSILA in order to present. (You can join SSILA at: https://ssila.org/memberships/.) Abstract Submission The *deadline* for receipt of all abstracts is on *July 17th at 11:59PM (Hawaii-Aleutian time). *Abstracts should be submitted electronically, using the electronic submission website EasyChair. Consult the SSILA website for detailed instructions. Also, e-mail or hard-copy submissions will be accepted if arrangements are made in advance with the SSILA Program Committee Administrator, Martin Kohlberger (conferences at ssila.org). Abstracts may be submitted in English, Spanish, French or Portuguese. The EasyChair submission page address is https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ssila2021. Abstracts must conform to the guidelines below. General Requirements 1. All authors must be members of SSILA. See the SSILA website for information about membership and renewal (https://ssila.org/memberships/). The membership requirement may be waived for co-authors who are from disciplines other than those ordinarily represented by SSILA (linguistics and linguistic anthropology). Requests for waivers of membership must be made by a member of the Society to the SSILA Secretary, Mary Linn ( secretary at ssila.org). (Note*: Membership of LSA is not required for participation in SSILA sessions*.) 2. Any member may submit one single-author abstract and one multi-author abstract OR two multi-author abstracts. 3. After an abstract has been submitted, no changes of author, title, or wording of the abstract, other than those due to typographical errors, are permitted. 4. Papers must be delivered as projected in the abstract or represent bona fide developments of the same research. 5. Papers must not appear in print before the meeting. 6. All presenters of individual papers must register for the meeting if their papers are accepted. 7. Authors who must withdraw from the program should inform the SSILA Program Committee Administrator (conferences at ssila.org) as soon as possible. 8. Authors may not submit identical abstracts for presentation at the SSILA meeting and the LSA meeting or a meeting of one of the Sister Societies (ADS, ANS, NAAHoLS, SPCL, TALE). Authors who are discovered to have done so will have these abstracts removed from consideration. Authors may submit substantially different abstracts for presentation at the SSILA meeting and the LSA or a Sister Society meeting. Abstract Format *Please see the section below, “Abstract Submission”, for important information about long and short abstracts.* 1. Abstracts should be uploaded as a file in PDF format to the abstract submittal form on the EasyChair website. 2. The abstract, including examples as needed, should be no more than one typed page (12pt font, single spaced, with 1-inch margins); a second page may be used for references. Abstracts longer than one page will be rejected without being evaluated. 3. At the top of the abstract, give a title that is not more than one 7-inch typed line and that clearly indicates the topic of the paper. 4. Abstracts will be reviewed anonymously. Do not include your name on the abstract. If you identify yourself in any way in the abstract (e.g. “In Smith (1992)...I”), the abstract will be rejected without being evaluated. Of course, it may be necessary to refer to your own work in the third person in order to appropriately situate the research. 5. Abstracts which do not conform to these format guidelines will be rejected without being evaluated. Abstract Contents Papers whose main topic does not focus on the Indigenous languages of the Americas will be rejected without further consideration by the Program Committee. SSILA requires further that the subject matter be related to linguistics and/or language revitalization, that the research presented include new findings or developments not published before the meeting, that there be reflection on the social outcomes/impacts/implication of the work, that the papers not be submitted with malicious or scurrilous intent, and that the abstract be coherent and in accord with these guidelines. Abstracts are more often rejected because they omit crucial information rather than because of errors in what they include. The most important criterion is relevance to the understanding of Indigenous languages of the Americas, but other factors are important, too. It is important to present results so that they will be of interest to the whole SSILA (and larger) linguistic community, not just to those who work on the same language or language family that you do. A suggested outline for abstracts is as follows: 1. State the problem or research question raised by prior work, with specific reference to relevant prior research. 2. Give a clear indication of the nature and source of your data (primary fieldwork, archival research, secondary sources). 3. State the main point or argument of the proposed presentation. 4. Regardless of the subfield, cite sufficient data, and explain why and how they support the main point or argument. For examples in languages other than English, provide word-by-word glosses and *underline* or *boldface* the portions of the examples which are critical to the argument. 5. State the relevance of your ideas to past work or to the future development of the field. Describe analyses in as much detail as possible. Avoid saying in effect "a solution to this problem will be presented". If you are taking a stand on a controversial issue, summarize the arguments that led you to your position. 6. State the contribution to linguistics made by the analysis and state the social outcomes/impacts/implications of the work (which may be positive, neutral or negative, immediate or potential). Consideration of the social outcomes/impacts/implications of the work might focus on the specific topic under consideration or take into account the broader scope of a project. Effects might take a while to be felt, and might be nuanced with respect to who is influenced and how. Implications are likely to relate to the social significance to the language community, such as the project’s capacity for developing tools for pedagogy or revitalization, valorizing the language within a broader social context, or (perhaps at the same time) introducing points of tension regarding approaches to language teaching. They might also include bringing a situation regarding a language community’s status to wider attention, educating the public regarding language endangerment and its significance, promoting the application of Native ways of knowing in linguistic research or community-related goals. 7. Please include a list of references for any work cited in the abstract. The references can be on a second page. Categories of Presentation Authors are required to indicate the preferred category of their presentation at the time of submitting the abstract. The program committee will try to accommodate this preference as space and time allow. The categories to choose from are: Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, Historical Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Lexicography, Applied Linguistics, Language Revitalization, Other. Authors will also be able to select the geographic area that the languages discussed in their abstract are/were spoken in. Abstract Submission Submissions for the SSILA Annual Meeting require *two abstracts*: *Short Abstract.* This abstract should be no more than 100 words and will be used in the meeting handbook. In *EasyChair*, you will paste this abstract into the “Abstract” box under the Title and Abstract heading. *Long Abstract*. This abstract is the one that will be evaluated for inclusion in the meeting program. The long abstract should be a PDF file. In *EasyChair*, you will select the PDF file containing your abstract to upload at the “Long Abstract” prompt under the “Files” heading. *Detailed instructions for using EasyChair* The submission process requires two stages: Get your own *EasyChair* account Submit your abstract(s) *Creating an account in EasyChair: * - Go to the EasyChair site: www.easychair.org • Click “Signup” at the top right corner of the page and follow the instructions for entry into the system. • Enter your name and e-mail address and click “Continue” - Check your e-mail: You will receive a message from EasyChair. Follow the instructions there. - Make a note of your user name and password for future reference. *Submitting your abstracts: * Go to the SSILA 2021 submission page: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ssila2021 Log in using the username and password you just established. Click "New Submission". On the page that appears, you will need to identify the author(s), title, keywords, and submission groups of the proposed paper, and submit your *short abstract* and *long abstract *(see clarification above). *Authors: * Enter the information requested about the author(s): § For yourself, you can click the link at the top of the author box to enter the information from your account profile into the form. § For co-authors, type in their information. § If there are more than three authors, select *Click here to add more authors*. § Use the ‘corresponding author’ checkboxes to select which author(s) will get e-mail from the EasyChair system and the Program Committee. *Title and Abstract and Other Information * § Enter the *title* of the paper. - Enter the *short* *abstract*. If your paper is accepted, this short abstract will appear in the Meeting Handbook. Cut and paste the abstract into the text box provided. Maximum length is 100 words. - [If your short abstract requires special characters, please also send it as a PDF file to the SSILA Program Committee Administrator at .] § Enter the *keywords* (at least 3, up to 5) that apply to your paper. § Under *Topics*, select the main subfield of the paper (to be used by the program committee to group papers) and the geographic region to which it pertains. *Files* § The long abstract, written according to the guidelines described above, must be uploaded here. § Use PDF format. § Use the browse button to select your abstract document. § Click *Submit * *Logout* by selecting “Sign out” in the top menu bar. *Questions? *Please contact conferences at ssila.org if you have any questions about or difficulty with your abstract submission. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de Fri Jun 19 05:02:22 2020 From: christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de (Christian Lehmann) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 11:02:22 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> <40D4ED4F-0EA5-4DA8-B394-E80E1A8EAE0A@sydney.edu.au> Message-ID: <39ec5108-02cf-8f21-d6ff-ea6b5c144a71@Uni-Erfurt.De> Thanks for reminding us of the availability of a traditional term. Could we say that 'elative' is the degree on a parameter reached if this is combined with Natalia's 'maximizer? -- Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann Rudolfstr. 4 99092 Erfurt Deutschland Tel.: +49/361/2113417 E-Post: christianw_lehmann at arcor.de Web: https://www.christianlehmann.eu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From honohiiri at yandex.ru Fri Jun 19 11:48:06 2020 From: honohiiri at yandex.ru (Idiatov Dmitry) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 18:48:06 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jb77 at buffalo.edu Fri Jun 19 12:57:11 2020 From: jb77 at buffalo.edu (Bohnemeyer, Juergen) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 16:57:11 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> Message-ID: <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> Dear Dmitry — I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ‘inflection’ that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It’s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. So what I’m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ‘functional expressions’ (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ‘syncategoremata’. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) Best — Juergen > On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > > I would like to react to Kasper Boye’s summary of the “solutions to the problem of defining ‘grammatical’ on the market”. > > There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson “Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey” (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)’s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining “grammatical”, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)’s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. > > Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case “grammatical meaning”, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of “grammatical meaning”, for example because it’s easier to apply consistently. > > Best wishes, > Dmitry > > -------- > Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. > (accessible at: https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 ; it’s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) > > > 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear all, > > I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas about the job grammatical items do. > > There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ”grammatical” on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. > > Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. > > Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. > > If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. > > Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar’s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. > > With best wishes, > Kasper > > References > Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. > Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf > > Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. > > Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. > > Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 > > Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. > Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af David Gil > Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 > Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Juergen and all, > > My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. > > Best, > > David > > > McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. > McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. > McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 > McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. > > > On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. > > Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) > > I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. > > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > > As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). > > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen > > -- > David Gil > > Senior Scientist (Associate) > 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 > Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 > , > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) From honohiiri at yandex.ru Fri Jun 19 15:51:17 2020 From: honohiiri at yandex.ru (Idiatov Dmitry) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 22:51:17 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> Message-ID: <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From slobin at berkeley.edu Fri Jun 19 17:58:30 2020 From: slobin at berkeley.edu (Dan I. SLOBIN) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 14:58:30 -0700 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> Message-ID: Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency—all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as “grammatical” elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb—entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, Dan On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > Dear Juergen, > > I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two > issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the > end of your message. > > The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the > distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may > appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of > “optionality” possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by > others) in my (2008) paper. > > However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality > may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is > that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific > language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. > Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical > much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described > as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the > same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely > optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact > it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, > as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in > many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same > about English. > > The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being > morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to > the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that > derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the > defining criterion, does not mean that *grammatical *is the same as > *inflectional*, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine > (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of > inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as > much as possible. > > Best, > Dmitry > > > 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : > > Dear Dmitry — I think the typological literature on functional expressions > has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To > give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both > nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious > semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it > in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I > not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category > just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. > > A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if > a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past > tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the > language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. > > My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a > larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a > notion of ‘inflection’ that was developed on the basis and for the > treatment of Indo-European languages. It’s a concept that seems > unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that > package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of > strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you > begin to run into all kinds of problems. > > So what I’m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very > real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just > one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection > that is typologically woefully inadequate. > > (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ‘functional > expressions’ (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label > expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional > ‘syncategoremata’. But, I also believe that we should worry about the > concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize > that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) > > Best — Juergen > > > On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > > I would like to react to Kasper Boye’s summary of the “solutions to the > problem of defining ‘grammatical’ on the market”. > > There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these > purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the > well-known quote by Jakobson “Languages differ essentially in what they > _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey” (see > https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of > obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being > categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)’s criterion > of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes > the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss > obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining “grammatical”, but > dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would > exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around > long before Boye & Harder (2012)’s paper, it so happened that I discussed > why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts > of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. > > Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case > “grammatical meaning”, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using > one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical > terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of > “grammatical meaning”, for example because it’s easier to apply > consistently. > > Best wishes, > Dmitry > > -------- > Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and > the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in > collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues > in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: > 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. > (accessible at: > https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 > ; it’s also available from my website, but the server has been down for > some time, hence this temporary link) > > > 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear all, > > I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems of > defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas about > the job grammatical items do. > > There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ”grammatical” > on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural definition in > terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own functional and > usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his > initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse > prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). > Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of > being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, > being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being > dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. > > Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the > same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison > d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, > which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster > than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations > (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap > shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather > superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. > > Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is > clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. > Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than > not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are > in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et > al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their > dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider > which host expression to attach it to. > > If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer > perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human > communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the > notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production > resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. > > Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical > morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and > we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably > did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are > quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are > not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar’s > schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are > conventionalized as carriers of background info. > > With best wishes, > Kasper > > References > Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status > and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. > Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf > > Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of > evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. > > Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, > Germany: Language Science Press. > > Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. > (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in > multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. > https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 > > Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The > production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. > Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. > Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af > David Gil > Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 > Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Juergen and all, > > My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from > some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For the > most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional > categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in > Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language > has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex > rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also > complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier > discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase > final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it > takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace > the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of > a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of > erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological > attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). > Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and > since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form > the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the > absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated > development of a functional category. > > Best, > > David > > > McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci > Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. > McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object > agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. > McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From > Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. > Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of > Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural > Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/ > 978-3-319-90710-9_22 > McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) > "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", > Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. > > > On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional > categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ > of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I > propose a more technical definition below. > > Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in which > the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more > members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the > balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former > languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no > obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in > question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based > innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of > functional categories in the absence of contact models.) > > I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not > most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of > definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the > “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation > event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some > of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors > of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what > role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as > Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to > be unclear. > > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of > innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest > here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not > present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > > As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a > superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might > be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical > category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional > combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very > broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of > great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform > in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of > the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every > single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of > quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for > languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential > predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for > universal quantification). > > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly > interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, > and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two > thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My > hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the > communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, > number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in > which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative > intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. > The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently > serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining > feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t > translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively > advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as > negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in > turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in > question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, > and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a > sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen > > -- > David Gil > > Senior Scientist (Associate) > 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 > Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 > , > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies > Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science > University at Buffalo > > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. > Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu > 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In > (Leonard Cohen) > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -- *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * *Dan I. Slobin * *Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics* *University of California, Berkeley* *email: slobin at berkeley.edu * *address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708* *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jb77 at buffalo.edu Fri Jun 19 23:50:17 2020 From: jb77 at buffalo.edu (Bohnemeyer, Juergen) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 03:50:17 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> Message-ID: Dear Dmitry — The analogy with evidentiality in English is rather misleading. Evidentiality in English is not grammaticalized, plural in Yucatec is. Evidential expressions in English are readily identified as members of lexical categories by their morphological properties: they inflect as verbs (and perfectly regularly so, unlike modals) or carry the adverb formative _-ly_. The plural suffix of Yucatec does not belong to a lexical category and does not have any lexical meaning, it just encodes plurality. If the Yucatec plural suffix does not express a "grammatical meaning,” as you suggest, then it must express a lexical meaning. But how can that be if it does not belong to any lexical category and is inherently backgrounded, unlike any other lexical expression of the language? The conditions that govern the distribution of plural marking in Yucatec discourse are fundamentally akin to those that govern object case marking in languages in which it is optional, such as Japanese: the more predictably the information the marker conveys can be inferred from context, the more likely speakers will omit it, and the less likely hearers will infer the relevant information in its absence, the more likely speakers are to produce it. See here for experimental studies on object case in Japanese: https://kinderlab.bcs.rochester.edu/papers/KurumadaJaeger2015.pdf Would you argue that accusative case in Japanese is not grammatical? Is it lexical, then? What does that mean? Respectfully, I’m afraid the idea that grammatical categories must be obligatory is a convenient fiction. Best — Juergen > On Jun 19, 2020, at 3:51 PM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > > Dear Juergen, > > I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. > > The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of “optionality” possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. > > However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. > > The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. > > Best, > Dmitry > > > 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : > Dear Dmitry — I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. > > A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. > > My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ‘inflection’ that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It’s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. > > So what I’m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. > > (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ‘functional expressions’ (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ‘syncategoremata’. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) > > Best — Juergen > > > On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > > I would like to react to Kasper Boye’s summary of the “solutions to the problem of defining ‘grammatical’ on the market”. > > There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson “Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey” (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)’s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining “grammatical”, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)’s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. > > Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case “grammatical meaning”, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of “grammatical meaning”, for example because it’s easier to apply consistently. > > Best wishes, > Dmitry > > -------- > Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. > (accessible at: https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 ; it’s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) > > > 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear all, > > I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas about the job grammatical items do. > > There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ”grammatical” on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. > > Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. > > Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. > > If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. > > Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar’s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. > > With best wishes, > Kasper > > References > Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. > Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf > > Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. > > Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. > > Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 > > Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. > Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af David Gil > Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 > Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Juergen and all, > > My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. > > Best, > > David > > > McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. > McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. > McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 > McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. > > > On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. > > Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) > > I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. > > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > > As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). > > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen > > -- > David Gil > > Senior Scientist (Associate) > 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 > Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 > , > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies > Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science > University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In > (Leonard Cohen) > > -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) From boye at hum.ku.dk Sat Jun 20 08:12:14 2020 From: boye at hum.ku.dk (Kasper Boye) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 12:12:14 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> Message-ID: Dear Dmitry and all, First a comment on obligatoriness, then one closed classes. Jürgen Bohnemeyer pointed out that obligatoriness is too restrictive as a definiens of grammatical status. Another problem is that it is also too inclusive. Consider a language like German where indicative verbs are inflected for past and present tense. The intuition (which is backed up by the “encoded secondariness” definition; Boye & Harder 2012) is that the tense inflections are grammatical. But neither the past nor the present tense inflection is of course obligatory in itself: instead of past we can choose present, and vice versa. So, instead we have to say that the tense paradigm – or the choice between tenses – is obligatory: whenever you select an indicative verb, you also have to select a tense inflection. Now comes the problem. Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else – and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion. Of course, there are many ways in which obligatoriness can be saved as a definiens, but they all require that this notion is combined with something else. Dan Slobin pointed to the fact that items that are intuitively (and by the “encoded secondariness” definition) lexical, may form closed classes. I would like to add that closed classes may comprise both lexical and grammatical members. Within the classes of prepositions and pronouns, for instance, distinctions have occasionally been made between lexical and grammatical prepositions. Just as closed class membership seems to have a processing impact, so does the contrast between grammatical and lexical. For instance, Ishkhanyan et al. (2017) showed that the production of French pronouns identified as grammatical based on Boye & Harder (2017) is more severely impaired in agrammatic aphasia than the production of pronouns classified as lexical, and Messerschmidt et al. (2019) showed that Danish prepositions classified as grammatical attract less attention than prepositions classified as lexical. Best wishes, Kasper Boye, K. & P. Harder. 2012. "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization". Language 88.1. 1-44. Ishkhanyan, B., H. Sahraoui, P. Harder, J. Mogensen & K. Boye. 2017. "Grammatical and lexical pronoun dissociation in French speakers with agrammatic aphasia: A usage-based account and REF-based hypothesis". Journal of Neurolinguistics 44. 1-16. Messerschmidt, M., K. Boye, M.M. Overmark, S.T. Kristensen & P. Harder. 2018. "Sondringen mellem grammatiske og leksikalske præpositioner" [’The distinction between grammatical and lexical prepositions’]. Ny forskning i grammatik 25. 89-106. Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af Dan I. SLOBIN Sendt: 19. juni 2020 23:59 Til: Idiatov Dmitry Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency—all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as “grammatical” elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb—entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, Dan On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: Dear Juergen, I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of “optionality” possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. Best, Dmitry 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" >: Dear Dmitry — I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ‘inflection’ that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It’s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. So what I’m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ‘functional expressions’ (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ‘syncategoremata’. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) Best — Juergen On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: I would like to react to Kasper Boye’s summary of the “solutions to the problem of defining ‘grammatical’ on the market”. There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson “Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey” (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)’s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining “grammatical”, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)’s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case “grammatical meaning”, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of “grammatical meaning”, for example because it’s easier to apply consistently. Best wishes, Dmitry -------- Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. (accessible at: https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 ; it’s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" >: Dear all, I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas about the job grammatical items do. There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ”grammatical” on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar’s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. With best wishes, Kasper References Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 Fra: Lingtyp > På vegne af David Gil Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Juergen and all, My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. Best, David McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 , _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Dan I. Slobin Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics University of California, Berkeley email: slobin at berkeley.edu address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From honohiiri at yandex.ru Sat Jun 20 08:59:54 2020 From: honohiiri at yandex.ru (Idiatov Dmitry) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 15:59:54 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> Message-ID: <651101592657926@mail.yandex.ru> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From honohiiri at yandex.ru Sat Jun 20 09:23:04 2020 From: honohiiri at yandex.ru (Idiatov Dmitry) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 16:23:04 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> Message-ID: <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Adam.TALLMAN at cnrs.fr Sat Jun 20 10:19:10 2020 From: Adam.TALLMAN at cnrs.fr (TALLMAN Adam) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 14:19:10 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> ,<7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> Message-ID: <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED341@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> Dear all, A few of you have elaborated on my question about the meaning of "functional" and and then critiqued Juergen's terminological choices. I wonder if my question about adjectives was interpreted facetiously (like "wouldn't it be absurd if adjectives were considered functional?!"). Actually, it was not meant as a facetious question at all as I was attempting to understand Juergen's research question in its own terms to discern whether there was anything in the languages I was familiar with that would count as functional, but diachronically lexical without contact. Juergen, you answered my question, in the sense, that I think I have a better idea of how one might go about operationalizing a distinction between lexical and functional. But now I am less sure about what your original question to the listserve was. Allow me to elaborate. Here is your new definition: "a ‘lexical category’ is a class of expressions defined in terms of shared morphosyntactic properties. The members of lexical categories are inherently suitable for expressing ‘at-issue’ content and are backgrounded only when they appear in certain syntactic positions (e.g., attributive as opposed to predicative adjectives). Their combinatorial types (e.g., in a Categorial Grammar framework) are relatively simple. They express concepts of basic ontological categories." I think this points in the right* direction and makes me understand where you are coming from (I assume at-issue just means anything that is not presuppositional nor just implicates some meaning). But crucially the concept is now scalar or gradient (depending on how we operationalize the notion). Saying that it concerns at-issue meaning in "certain syntactic positions" (I would prefer "morphosyntactic" positions) means that for some set of morphemes / constructs / categories or whatever a, b, c, d … we could rank them in terms of the number of positions they can occur in where they express (or tend to express?) at-issue content a>b>c>d …. Or we could formulate this in terms of tokens in discourse rather than constructions abstracted from their use, but you get my point. And indeed you state. "It might be best to treat this list of properties as defining the notion of ‘lexical category’ as a cluster/radio/prototype concept." But now there is no nonarbitrary cut-off point between lexical and grammatical. If there is a boundary it will refer to quantal shifts in the distribution of elements along the lexical-grammatical scale: or stated another way, we know there is some sort of boundary because the distribution of elements along the scale is bimodal and elements in between the modes are statistically marginal. To make this more concrete, in Chácobo there are some adjectives / adverbials that express small size or small amount of time. In certain syntactic positions they are more likely to express backgrounded information and in a classifier like manner appear "redundantly", but plausibly help to track referents (referring to someone as honi yoi 'poor man' throughout the discourse). If I scan around related languages (I haven't done this, but let's just say hypothetically) and I find that in these other languages they more typically display at-issue notions (perhaps they more commonly appear in a predicative function), have I found a case of a "functional element" that has grammaticalized? Certainly, it expresses at-issue content less often than others … I think there are *a lot* of morphemes like this in Amazonia. In my description of Chacobo I actually called them "semi-functional" (it includes associated motion morphemes, time of day adverbials, temporal distance markers) and I try to make the explicit argument that temporal distance morphemes mix and match properties of temporal adverbials with those of tense. It would be hard for me to make the case that these were not a result of contact (in fact, myself and Pattie Epps have a paper where we argue that such liminal cases might be an areal property of Southwestern Amazonia), but the point is that I find a performative contradiction in your attempt to exclude (certain types of?) adjectives and adverbs and the definition you supply. Seems like if you really wanted to test the idea that languages grammaticalize functional notions for the specific reasons you claim, you would need to actually include all of these liminal cases and explain why they do not all disappear under communicative pressure or else drop off of the grammaticalization cline and become lexical / primarily at-issue expressing elements. So the upshot is that I was actually wondering whether you would consider adjectives, adverbs etc. but not because they are lexical or functional, but rather because, according to your own definition they awkwardly sit in between. I was interested in what you would say about them, not whether they should be classified discretely as lexical versus functional. Adam *By "right direction" I mean interesting direction in that it could lead to developing testable hypotheses with an operationalizable set of variables that define the domain of lexical versus functional categories. I am not making the essentialist claim that it is the best definition regardless of the problem context, research question, or audience. [https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/images/cleardot.gif] Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin) ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, Lyon (07) Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867 ________________________________ De : Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] de la part de Idiatov Dmitry [honohiiri at yandex.ru] Envoyé : samedi 20 juin 2020 15:23 À : Kasper Boye; Dan I.SLOBIN Cc : lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder Objet : Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Kasper, a quick reaction to this passage: “Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else – and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion.” While the application of the criterion of obligatoriness is surely a delicate matter, nobody is obliged to say anything… To avoid the kind of logical figures that you bring up, let’s say that grammatical categories are those sets of mutually exclusive discourse prominence secondary meanings whose expression is obligatory in the constructions to which they apply. Dmitry 20.06.2020, 15:12, "Kasper Boye" : Dear Dmitry and all, First a comment on obligatoriness, then one closed classes. Jürgen Bohnemeyer pointed out that obligatoriness is too restrictive as a definiens of grammatical status. Another problem is that it is also too inclusive. Consider a language like German where indicative verbs are inflected for past and present tense. The intuition (which is backed up by the “encoded secondariness” definition; Boye & Harder 2012) is that the tense inflections are grammatical. But neither the past nor the present tense inflection is of course obligatory in itself: instead of past we can choose present, and vice versa. So, instead we have to say that the tense paradigm – or the choice between tenses – is obligatory: whenever you select an indicative verb, you also have to select a tense inflection. Now comes the problem. Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else – and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion. Of course, there are many ways in which obligatoriness can be saved as a definiens, but they all require that this notion is combined with something else. Dan Slobin pointed to the fact that items that are intuitively (and by the “encoded secondariness” definition) lexical, may form closed classes. I would like to add that closed classes may comprise both lexical and grammatical members. Within the classes of prepositions and pronouns, for instance, distinctions have occasionally been made between lexical and grammatical prepositions. Just as closed class membership seems to have a processing impact, so does the contrast between grammatical and lexical. For instance, Ishkhanyan et al. (2017) showed that the production of French pronouns identified as grammatical based on Boye & Harder (2017) is more severely impaired in agrammatic aphasia than the production of pronouns classified as lexical, and Messerschmidt et al. (2019) showed that Danish prepositions classified as grammatical attract less attention than prepositions classified as lexical. Best wishes, Kasper Boye, K. & P. Harder. 2012. "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization". Language 88.1. 1-44. Ishkhanyan, B., H. Sahraoui, P. Harder, J. Mogensen & K. Boye. 2017. "Grammatical and lexical pronoun dissociation in French speakers with agrammatic aphasia: A usage-based account and REF-based hypothesis". Journal of Neurolinguistics 44. 1-16. Messerschmidt, M., K. Boye, M.M. Overmark, S.T. Kristensen & P. Harder. 2018. "Sondringen mellem grammatiske og leksikalske præpositioner" [’The distinction between grammatical and lexical prepositions’]. Ny forskning i grammatik 25. 89-106. Fra: Lingtyp > På vegne af Dan I. SLOBIN Sendt: 19. juni 2020 23:59 Til: Idiatov Dmitry > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency—all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as “grammatical” elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb—entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, Dan On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: Dear Juergen, I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of “optionality” possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. Best, Dmitry 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" >: Dear Dmitry — I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ‘inflection’ that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It’s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. So what I’m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ‘functional expressions’ (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ‘syncategoremata’. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) Best — Juergen On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: I would like to react to Kasper Boye’s summary of the “solutions to the problem of defining ‘grammatical’ on the market”. There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson “Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey” (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)’s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining “grammatical”, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)’s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case “grammatical meaning”, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of “grammatical meaning”, for example because it’s easier to apply consistently. Best wishes, Dmitry -------- Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. (accessible at: https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 ; it’s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" >: Dear all, I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas about the job grammatical items do. There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ”grammatical” on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar’s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. With best wishes, Kasper References Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 Fra: Lingtyp > På vegne af David Gil Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Juergen and all, My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. Best, David McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 , _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Dan I. Slobin Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics University of California, Berkeley email: slobin at berkeley.edu address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natalie.a.weber at gmail.com Sat Jun 20 11:09:15 2020 From: natalie.a.weber at gmail.com (Natalie Weber) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 11:09:15 -0400 Subject: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic structure Message-ID: I agree. This is a failing of a lot of prosodic phonology literature, although perhaps for good reason. Ideally, a study of the correspondence between prosodic and syntactic structure would have three parts: 1. Independent phonological evidence for prosodic constituents 2. Independent syntactic evidence for syntactic constituents 3. Explicit characterization of the mapping between the two But in practice you will often only see 2 out 3 of those, because it's uncommon for phonologists to be well-versed in syntax enough to study the syntax side of things, and vice versa. Personally, I'm hoping to encourage more cross-subfield collaborations. My dissertation discusses correspondences between syntactic, prosodic, and metrical constituents in Blackfoot (Algonquian), and I address each of the three points above. I discuss independent syntactic evidence for the CP and *v*P constituents, independent phonological evidence for the PPh and PWd constituents, and then discuss some of the implications for mapping between them. It was a huge undertaking (hence why I think we need co-authored studies), but it's also one of the only studies of prosodic phonology I know of that attempts to address all three points. You can download it at http://hdl.handle.net/2429/74075 if you are interested. Regarding some of the recent and seminal papers in prosodic phonology: The mentions of syntactic 'words' (X0) and 'phrases' (XP) have increased since Selkirk's (2011) "The syntax-phonology interface" paper on Match Theory. In her earlier work, she was more explicit about relating the syntactic definitions to X-bar theory. In my interpretation, that means that X0 is a minimal phrase (not a syntactic "word", which is not a primitive type). In theory, then, these papers *could* use typical tests for phrasal constituency, such as movement, uninterruptibility, etc. Like you, I've found that they don't, but it's good to remember that it should in principle be possible to show this. There is also work like Nespor and Vogel (1986/2007) which has explicit mapping algorithms that rely on morphological units like the "stem", or "affix". Much of the time, these constituents are also not defined with a universal morphosyntactic definition, but at least they are usually well-supported on language internal facts. There's other recent work that does pretty decently though, depending on what you'll count as sufficient empirical evidence... maybe if you give us an idea of the sorts of papers you've already considered and rejected, we could fill in the gaps? (Basically, I started typing a lot more, but I wasn't sure if it was the kind of thing you are looking for.) I'd be super happy to start a shared list of prosodic phonology literature (a reading group?), if you're interested! It would be pretty useful to tag papers for how well they address the syntax side of things via empirical generalizations. Best, --Natalie ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: *Adam James Ross Tallman* Date: Wed, Jun 3, 2020, 6:07 AM Subject: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic structure To: Hello all, I've been doing a lit. review (again) in prosodic phonology. Advocates of the prosodic hierarchy claim that prosodic levels map from specific morphosyntactic constituents like 'words' or 'phrases' or X0 and XP etc. However, I have been unable to find a single example of a paper that relates its analysis to the prosodic hierarchy that actually provides evidence for or defines the morphosyntactic categories that the prosodic domains relate to in the language under study. Of course, the fact that no evidence or definitions for X0 / XP and the like are provided does not mean there is no evidence - but the "phonology evidence only please" character of the literature makes it very difficult to come up with global assessment of how the quest for mapping rules has faired (the discussion in Scheer 2010 suggests it has been a total failure) or to distill some sort of testable hypothesis from the literature. I'm wondering if anyone has any examples at hand where such categories are provided with explicit empirical definitions. Perhaps this is just an oversight on my part. best, Adam -- Adam J.R. Tallman PhD, University of Texas at Austin Investigador del Museo de Etnografía y Folklore, la Paz ELDP -- Postdoctorante CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Natalie Weber (pronouns: *they/them*) Assistant Professor Department of Linguistics, Yale University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From boye at hum.ku.dk Sat Jun 20 11:14:42 2020 From: boye at hum.ku.dk (Kasper Boye) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 15:14:42 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> Message-ID: Dear Dmitry, Thank you for continuing this interesting discussion! As for your claim that nobody is obliged to say anything: Languages are conventions and social facts, and if you want to make yourself understood, and to make yourself understood as belonging to a language community, you have to follow these conventions. Playing with social facts can be as dangerous as playing with physical facts. You can go around saying “-ed, -s, -ing” for months at home without producing any bases, but if you do it in public in an English language community, there is a risk that you will be put in a straightjacket until you start producing the bases. Your suggestion to refer to both “encoded secondariness” and obligatoriness in the definition of grammatical status would exclude all the lexical items, which is fine and due to “encoded secondariness”. However, as far as I can see, it would also exclude a lot of items that you might not want to exclude, e.g. some auxiliaries and a lot of schematic constructions. For instance, an English caused motion construction (NP V NP PP) is not obligatory in any useful sense of the term, but if you don’t include it under “grammar”, then you are defining a notion of grammar which is getting far from the notions that most people agree (and disagree) on. This is perfectly fine of course, but you may have to spend a considerable part of your life trying to get it accepted. So, why not stick with “encoded secondariness”, and say: Within the class of grammatical items there is an interesting subset of items that are obligatory – and then start thinking about the relationship between encoded secondariness, closed classes and obligatoriness? I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts on that relationship! With best wishes, Kasper Fra: Idiatov Dmitry Sendt: 20. juni 2020 15:23 Til: Kasper Boye ; Dan I.SLOBIN Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder Emne: Re: SV: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Kasper, a quick reaction to this passage: “Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else – and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion.” While the application of the criterion of obligatoriness is surely a delicate matter, nobody is obliged to say anything… To avoid the kind of logical figures that you bring up, let’s say that grammatical categories are those sets of mutually exclusive discourse prominence secondary meanings whose expression is obligatory in the constructions to which they apply. Dmitry 20.06.2020, 15:12, "Kasper Boye" >: Dear Dmitry and all, First a comment on obligatoriness, then one closed classes. Jürgen Bohnemeyer pointed out that obligatoriness is too restrictive as a definiens of grammatical status. Another problem is that it is also too inclusive. Consider a language like German where indicative verbs are inflected for past and present tense. The intuition (which is backed up by the “encoded secondariness” definition; Boye & Harder 2012) is that the tense inflections are grammatical. But neither the past nor the present tense inflection is of course obligatory in itself: instead of past we can choose present, and vice versa. So, instead we have to say that the tense paradigm – or the choice between tenses – is obligatory: whenever you select an indicative verb, you also have to select a tense inflection. Now comes the problem. Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else – and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion. Of course, there are many ways in which obligatoriness can be saved as a definiens, but they all require that this notion is combined with something else. Dan Slobin pointed to the fact that items that are intuitively (and by the “encoded secondariness” definition) lexical, may form closed classes. I would like to add that closed classes may comprise both lexical and grammatical members. Within the classes of prepositions and pronouns, for instance, distinctions have occasionally been made between lexical and grammatical prepositions. Just as closed class membership seems to have a processing impact, so does the contrast between grammatical and lexical. For instance, Ishkhanyan et al. (2017) showed that the production of French pronouns identified as grammatical based on Boye & Harder (2017) is more severely impaired in agrammatic aphasia than the production of pronouns classified as lexical, and Messerschmidt et al. (2019) showed that Danish prepositions classified as grammatical attract less attention than prepositions classified as lexical. Best wishes, Kasper Boye, K. & P. Harder. 2012. "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization". Language 88.1. 1-44. Ishkhanyan, B., H. Sahraoui, P. Harder, J. Mogensen & K. Boye. 2017. "Grammatical and lexical pronoun dissociation in French speakers with agrammatic aphasia: A usage-based account and REF-based hypothesis". Journal of Neurolinguistics 44. 1-16. Messerschmidt, M., K. Boye, M.M. Overmark, S.T. Kristensen & P. Harder. 2018. "Sondringen mellem grammatiske og leksikalske præpositioner" [’The distinction between grammatical and lexical prepositions’]. Ny forskning i grammatik 25. 89-106. Fra: Lingtyp > På vegne af Dan I. SLOBIN Sendt: 19. juni 2020 23:59 Til: Idiatov Dmitry > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency—all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as “grammatical” elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb—entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, Dan On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: Dear Juergen, I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of “optionality” possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. Best, Dmitry 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" >: Dear Dmitry — I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ‘inflection’ that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It’s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. So what I’m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ‘functional expressions’ (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ‘syncategoremata’. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) Best — Juergen On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: I would like to react to Kasper Boye’s summary of the “solutions to the problem of defining ‘grammatical’ on the market”. There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson “Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey” (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)’s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining “grammatical”, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)’s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case “grammatical meaning”, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of “grammatical meaning”, for example because it’s easier to apply consistently. Best wishes, Dmitry -------- Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. (accessible at: https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 ; it’s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" >: Dear all, I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas about the job grammatical items do. There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ”grammatical” on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar’s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. With best wishes, Kasper References Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 Fra: Lingtyp > På vegne af David Gil Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Juergen and all, My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. Best, David McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 , _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Dan I. Slobin Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics University of California, Berkeley email: slobin at berkeley.edu address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jb77 at buffalo.edu Sat Jun 20 11:45:38 2020 From: jb77 at buffalo.edu (Bohnemeyer, Juergen) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 15:45:38 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED341@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED341@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> Message-ID: <3180F818-F44B-43FF-A3C9-7053002AFBBF@buffalo.edu> Dear Adam — The notion of ‘at-issue content’ is defined in models of information structure that assume that utterances in their discourse contexts introduce or answer explicit or implicit ‘questions under discussion’ (QuDs). Craige Robert’s work is probably the most widely known exponent of this approach (Roberts 1996, 2012). Others include Büring (1997, 2003), Carlson (1982), Klein & von Stutterheim (1987, 2002), and van Kuppevelt (1995, 1996). The at-issue content of an utterance (if any) is that part of its content that provides a (complete or partial) answer to the QuD of the utterance context. I do indeed assume that there is no categorical boundary between lexicon and grammar. Any assumption to the contrary would seem to be inconsistent with both grammaticalization theory and most versions of Construction Grammar. Is there a problem with that? I wonder whether the source of your confusion regarding the variable status of adjectives stems from a failure to distinguish between an expression’s actual information status as a token in a given utterance and the expression’s inherent capability as a type of expressing at-issue content. Only the latter, not the former, is part of the proposed definition of restrictors (which I’ll remind you is merely a subtype of functional expressions - I’m *not* actually claiming that *all* functional expressions are inherently backgrounded. That is where I part company with Boye & Harder 2012, to whom I otherwise owe a debt of gratitude, as Kasper pointed out). Adjectives *can* express at-issue content, restrictors cannot. Adjectives do not become restrictors just because they are used in a backgrounded position in a given utterance. It’s type properties not matter, not token properties. What you say about adjectives and classifiers in Chacobo is of great interest to me. There is a similar phenomenon in Mayan languages: so-called ‘positionals’ (I prefer ‘dispositionals’, since the great majority of the roots lexicalize properties of inanimate referents, not postures) constitute a lexical category in their own right in Mayan. They surface as both verbs and stative predicates (traditionally, but arguably misleadingly, the latter are considered participles), but subsets of them require derivational morphology in both cases. Mayan languages have hundreds of such roots. Crucially for present purposes, many if not most of these roots can also be used as numeral classifiers. And when they are, I treat them as functional expressions. I consider this polysemy - that is to say, I assume that there is a single lexicon entry that licenses both the dispositional predicate uses and the classifier uses. In other words, I put less distance between these two uses of dispositional morphemes than I put between, say, _have_ used as a possessive predicators vs. auxiliary. That’s because it seems to me that speakers draft dispositional roots into classifier duty on the fly creatively. In other words, I see the relation between the two kinds of uses as more dynamic than static. Bottomline: we should definitely not assume that we can sort the morphemes of a language (and here I mean strings of sound used as one or multiple signs in the speech community) neatly into two buckets, one labeled “lexicon”, the other “grammar”. That is just really not how natural languages work. I’m surprised that this seems controversial? Best — Juergen Berlin, B. (1968). Tzeltal numeral classifiers: A study in ethnographic semantics. The Hague: Mouton. Büring, Daniel (1997). The 59th Street Bridge Accent. London: Routledge. Büring, Daniel (2003). On D-trees, beans, and B-accents. Linguistics and Philosophy 26: 511-545. Carlson, Lauri. 1982. Dialogue games: an approach to discourse analysis (Synthese Language Library 17). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel. Klein, W., & Von Stutterheim, C. (1987). Quaestio und referenzielle Bewegung in Erzählungen [Quaestio and referential shift in narratives]. Linguistische Berichte 109: 163-183. --- (2002). Quaestio and L-perspectivation. In C. F. Graumann, & W. Kallmeyer (Eds.), Perspective and perspectivation in discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 59-88. Roberts, C. (1996). Information Structure in Discourse: Towards an Integrated Formal Theory of Pragmatics. In Jae Hak Yoon and Andreas Kathol (eds.), Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 49. Roberts, C. (2012). Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. Semantics & Pragmatics 5 (Article 6): 1-69. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1995). Discourse structure, topicality and questioning. Linguistics 31, 109–147. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1996). Inferring from topics. Linguistics and Philosophy 19, 393–443. > On Jun 20, 2020, at 10:19 AM, TALLMAN Adam wrote: > > Dear all, > > A few of you have elaborated on my question about the meaning of "functional" and and then critiqued Juergen's terminological choices. I wonder if my question about adjectives was interpreted facetiously (like "wouldn't it be absurd if adjectives were considered functional?!"). > > Actually, it was not meant as a facetious question at all as I was attempting to understand Juergen's research question in its own terms to discern whether there was anything in the languages I was familiar with that would count as functional, but diachronically lexical without contact. > > Juergen, you answered my question, in the sense, that I think I have a better idea of how one might go about operationalizing a distinction between lexical and functional. But now I am less sure about what your original question to the listserve was. Allow me to elaborate. > > Here is your new definition: > > "a ‘lexical category’ is a class of expressions defined in terms of shared morphosyntactic properties. The members of lexical categories are inherently suitable for expressing ‘at-issue’ content and are backgrounded only when they appear in certain syntactic positions (e.g., attributive as opposed to predicative adjectives). Their combinatorial types (e.g., in a Categorial Grammar framework) are relatively simple. They express concepts of basic ontological categories." > > I think this points in the right* direction and makes me understand where you are coming from (I assume at-issue just means anything that is not presuppositional nor just implicates some meaning). But crucially the concept is now scalar or gradient (depending on how we operationalize the notion). Saying that it concerns at-issue meaning in "certain syntactic positions" (I would prefer "morphosyntactic" positions) means that for some set of morphemes / constructs / categories or whatever a, b, c, d … we could rank them in terms of the number of positions they can occur in where they express (or tend to express?) at-issue content a>b>c>d …. Or we could formulate this in terms of tokens in discourse rather than constructions abstracted from their use, but you get my point. And indeed you state. > > > "It might be best to treat this list of properties as defining the notion of ‘lexical category’ as a cluster/radio/prototype concept." > > > But now there is no nonarbitrary cut-off point between lexical and grammatical. If there is a boundary it will refer to quantal shifts in the distribution of elements along the lexical-grammatical scale: or stated another way, we know there is some sort of boundary because the distribution of elements along the scale is bimodal and elements in between the modes are statistically marginal. > > To make this more concrete, in Chácobo there are some adjectives / adverbials that express small size or small amount of time. In certain syntactic positions they are more likely to express backgrounded information and in a classifier like manner appear "redundantly", but plausibly help to track referents (referring to someone as honi yoi 'poor man' throughout the discourse). If I scan around related languages (I haven't done this, but let's just say hypothetically) and I find that in these other languages they more typically display at-issue notions (perhaps they more commonly appear in a predicative function), have I found a case of a "functional element" that has grammaticalized? Certainly, it expresses at-issue content less often than others … > > I think there are *a lot* of morphemes like this in Amazonia. In my description of Chacobo I actually called them "semi-functional" (it includes associated motion morphemes, time of day adverbials, temporal distance markers) and I try to make the explicit argument that temporal distance morphemes mix and match properties of temporal adverbials with those of tense. It would be hard for me to make the case that these were not a result of contact (in fact, myself and Pattie Epps have a paper where we argue that such liminal cases might be an areal property of Southwestern Amazonia), but the point is that I find a performative contradiction in your attempt to exclude (certain types of?) adjectives and adverbs and the definition you supply. Seems like if you really wanted to test the idea that languages grammaticalize functional notions for the specific reasons you claim, you would need to actually include all of these liminal cases and explain why they do not all disappear under communicative pressure or else drop off of the grammaticalization cline and become lexical / primarily at-issue expressing elements. > > So the upshot is that I was actually wondering whether you would consider adjectives, adverbs etc. but not because they are lexical or functional, but rather because, according to your own definition they awkwardly sit in between. I was interested in what you would say about them, not whether they should be classified discretely as lexical versus functional. > > Adam > > *By "right direction" I mean interesting direction in that it could lead to developing testable hypotheses with an operationalizable set of variables that define the domain of lexical versus functional categories. I am not making the essentialist claim that it is the best definition regardless of the problem context, research question, or audience. > > > > > > > > Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin) > ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant > CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) > Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, Lyon (07) > Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867 > De : Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] de la part de Idiatov Dmitry [honohiiri at yandex.ru] > Envoyé : samedi 20 juin 2020 15:23 > À : Kasper Boye; Dan I.SLOBIN > Cc : lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > Objet : Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Kasper, a quick reaction to this passage: > > “Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else – and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion.” > > While the application of the criterion of obligatoriness is surely a delicate matter, nobody is obliged to say anything… > > To avoid the kind of logical figures that you bring up, let’s say that grammatical categories are those sets of mutually exclusive discourse prominence secondary meanings whose expression is obligatory in the constructions to which they apply. > > Dmitry > > > 20.06.2020, 15:12, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear Dmitry and all, > > First a comment on obligatoriness, then one closed classes. > > Jürgen Bohnemeyer pointed out that obligatoriness is too restrictive as a definiens of grammatical status. Another problem is that it is also too inclusive. Consider a language like German where indicative verbs are inflected for past and present tense. The intuition (which is backed up by the “encoded secondariness” definition; Boye & Harder 2012) is that the tense inflections are grammatical. But neither the past nor the present tense inflection is of course obligatory in itself: instead of past we can choose present, and vice versa. So, instead we have to say that the tense paradigm – or the choice between tenses – is obligatory: whenever you select an indicative verb, you also have to select a tense inflection. Now comes the problem. Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else – and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion. Of course, there are many ways in which obligatoriness can be saved as a definiens, but they all require that this notion is combined with something else. > > Dan Slobin pointed to the fact that items that are intuitively (and by the “encoded secondariness” definition) lexical, may form closed classes. I would like to add that closed classes may comprise both lexical and grammatical members. Within the classes of prepositions and pronouns, for instance, distinctions have occasionally been made between lexical and grammatical prepositions. Just as closed class membership seems to have a processing impact, so does the contrast between grammatical and lexical. For instance, Ishkhanyan et al. (2017) showed that the production of French pronouns identified as grammatical based on Boye & Harder (2017) is more severely impaired in agrammatic aphasia than the production of pronouns classified as lexical, and Messerschmidt et al. (2019) showed that Danish prepositions classified as grammatical attract less attention than prepositions classified as lexical. > > Best wishes, > Kasper > > Boye, K. & P. Harder. 2012. "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization". Language 88.1. 1-44. > > Ishkhanyan, B., H. Sahraoui, P. Harder, J. Mogensen & K. Boye. 2017. "Grammatical and lexical pronoun dissociation in French speakers with agrammatic aphasia: A usage-based account and REF-based hypothesis". Journal of Neurolinguistics 44. 1-16. > > Messerschmidt, M., K. Boye, M.M. Overmark, S.T. Kristensen & P. Harder. 2018. "Sondringen mellem grammatiske og leksikalske præpositioner" [’The distinction between grammatical and lexical prepositions’]. Ny forskning i grammatik 25. 89-106. > > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af Dan I. SLOBIN > Sendt: 19. juni 2020 23:59 > Til: Idiatov Dmitry > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency—all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as “grammatical” elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb—entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. > > Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, > Dan > > On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > Dear Juergen, > > I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. > > The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of “optionality” possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. > > However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. > > The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. > > Best, > Dmitry > > > 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : > Dear Dmitry — I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. > > A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. > > My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ‘inflection’ that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It’s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. > > So what I’m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. > > (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ‘functional expressions’ (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ‘syncategoremata’. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) > > Best — Juergen > > > On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > > I would like to react to Kasper Boye’s summary of the “solutions to the problem of defining ‘grammatical’ on the market”. > > There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson “Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey” (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)’s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining “grammatical”, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)’s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. > > Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case “grammatical meaning”, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of “grammatical meaning”, for example because it’s easier to apply consistently. > > Best wishes, > Dmitry > > -------- > Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. > (accessible at: https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 ; it’s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) > > > 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear all, > > I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas about the job grammatical items do. > > There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ”grammatical” on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. > > Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. > > Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. > > If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. > > Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar’s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. > > With best wishes, > Kasper > > References > Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. > Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf > > Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. > > Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. > > Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 > > Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. > Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af David Gil > Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 > Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Juergen and all, > > My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. > > Best, > > David > > > McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. > McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. > McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 > McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. > > > On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. > > Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) > > I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. > > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > > As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). > > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen > > -- > David Gil > > Senior Scientist (Associate) > 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 > Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 > , > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies > Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science > University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In > (Leonard Cohen) > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > -- > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > Dan I. Slobin > Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics > University of California, Berkeley > email: slobin at berkeley.edu > address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) From hyman at berkeley.edu Sat Jun 20 11:48:54 2020 From: hyman at berkeley.edu (Larry M. HYMAN) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 08:48:54 -0700 Subject: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic structure In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Thanks for your comments on prosodic phonology and syntax (and for the link to your Blackfoot!). I wonder if you see one of your first two parts as prior to the other, either logically, temporally, or practically? - 1. Independent phonological evidence for prosodic constituents - 2. Independent syntactic evidence for syntactic constituents The reason I ask is that I find that the interface is best studied by language specialists who let the phonological facts of the language drive the "interface", rather than starting with preconceived notions of abstract syntax (which can/should come in later, once you have a handle on the complexities). Having worked extensively on the syntax-phonology interface in a number of Bantu languages, I can tell you that none of them have prosodic facts that provide a perfect correlation to pre-existing views of abstract syntax. In current work I am doing on Runyankore and related Rutara Bantu languages, there are distinct differences between the prosodic effects on the head noun vs. on the verb, despite X-bar theory, which appear to follow their own "logic". Digging into the details to discover the wide range of surprising facts that speakers/languages exploit has been very rewarding, if not producing quite a bit of humility. I find myself in agreement with some wise remarks made by Akinlabi & Liberman (2000) several years ago: "Whether formal modeling is treated simply as programming for some practical purpose, or as a method of investigating the properties of the cognitive systems involved, it can and should be separated in most cases from the problem of determining the facts and the descriptive generalizations." (p.60) "The documentation of... descriptive generalizations is sometimes clearer and more accessible when expressed in terms of a detailed formal reconstruction, but only in the rare and happy case that the formalism fits the data so well that the resulting account is clearer and easier to understand than the list of categories of facts that it encodes...." (p.54) While I cannot argue against the wisdom of phonologists and syntacticians working together, which is happening, and linguists knowing both phonology and syntax, the main problem in the syntax-phonology interface area is that there are still so few exhaustive studies of "the facts". Linguists on both "persuasions" have been too content to stop short. Akinlabi, Akinbiyi & Mark Liberman. 2000. The tonal phonology of Yoruba clitics. In B. Gerlach & J. Grizjenhout (eds), *Clitics in phonology, morphology, and syntax*, 31-62. Amsterdam: Benjamins. PS If anyone is interested I have a recent paper that I could send that will give a hint of the complexities and non-isomorphisms I refer to above: "Prosodic asymmetries in nominal vs. verbal phrases in Bantu". On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 8:09 AM Natalie Weber wrote: > I agree. This is a failing of a lot of prosodic phonology literature, > although perhaps for good reason. Ideally, a study of the correspondence > between prosodic and syntactic structure would have three parts: > > 1. Independent phonological evidence for prosodic constituents > 2. Independent syntactic evidence for syntactic constituents > 3. Explicit characterization of the mapping between the two > > But in practice you will often only see 2 out 3 of those, because it's > uncommon for phonologists to be well-versed in syntax enough to study the > syntax side of things, and vice versa. Personally, I'm hoping to encourage > more cross-subfield collaborations. > > My dissertation discusses correspondences between syntactic, prosodic, and > metrical constituents in Blackfoot (Algonquian), and I address each of the > three points above. I discuss independent syntactic evidence for the CP and > *v*P constituents, independent phonological evidence for the PPh and PWd > constituents, and then discuss some of the implications for mapping between > them. It was a huge undertaking (hence why I think we need co-authored > studies), but it's also one of the only studies of prosodic phonology I > know of that attempts to address all three points. You can download it at > http://hdl.handle.net/2429/74075 if you are interested. > > Regarding some of the recent and seminal papers in prosodic phonology: > > The mentions of syntactic 'words' (X0) and 'phrases' (XP) have increased > since Selkirk's (2011) "The syntax-phonology interface" paper on Match > Theory. In her earlier work, she was more explicit about relating the > syntactic definitions to X-bar theory. In my interpretation, that means > that X0 is a minimal phrase (not a syntactic "word", which is not a > primitive type). In theory, then, these papers *could* use typical tests > for phrasal constituency, such as movement, uninterruptibility, etc. Like > you, I've found that they don't, but it's good to remember that it should > in principle be possible to show this. > > There is also work like Nespor and Vogel (1986/2007) which has explicit > mapping algorithms that rely on morphological units like the "stem", or > "affix". Much of the time, these constituents are also not defined with a > universal morphosyntactic definition, but at least they are usually > well-supported on language internal facts. > > There's other recent work that does pretty decently though, depending on > what you'll count as sufficient empirical evidence... maybe if you give us > an idea of the sorts of papers you've already considered and rejected, we > could fill in the gaps? (Basically, I started typing a lot more, but I > wasn't sure if it was the kind of thing you are looking for.) > > I'd be super happy to start a shared list of prosodic phonology literature > (a reading group?), if you're interested! It would be pretty useful to tag > papers for how well they address the syntax side of things via empirical > generalizations. > > Best, > --Natalie > > > ---------- Forwarded message --------- > From: *Adam James Ross Tallman* > Date: Wed, Jun 3, 2020, 6:07 AM > Subject: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic > structure > To: > > Hello all, > > I've been doing a lit. review (again) in prosodic phonology. Advocates of > the prosodic hierarchy claim that prosodic levels map from specific > morphosyntactic constituents like 'words' or 'phrases' or X0 and XP etc. > > However, I have been unable to find a single example of a paper that > relates its analysis to the prosodic hierarchy that actually provides > evidence for or defines the morphosyntactic categories that the prosodic > domains relate to in the language under study. > > Of course, the fact that no evidence or definitions for X0 / XP and the > like are provided does not mean there is no evidence - but the "phonology > evidence only please" character of the literature makes it very difficult > to come up with global assessment of how the quest for mapping rules has > faired (the discussion in Scheer 2010 suggests it has been a total failure) > or to distill some sort of testable hypothesis from the literature. I'm > wondering if anyone has any examples at hand where such categories are > provided with explicit empirical definitions. Perhaps this is just an > oversight on my part. > > best, > > Adam > > -- > Adam J.R. Tallman > PhD, University of Texas at Austin > Investigador del Museo de Etnografía y Folklore, la Paz > ELDP -- Postdoctorante > CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > -- > > Natalie Weber > (pronouns: *they/them*) > > Assistant Professor > Department of Linguistics, Yale University > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -- Larry M. Hyman, Professor of Linguistics & Executive Director, France-Berkeley Fund Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/person_detail.php?person=19 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dbeck at ualberta.ca Sat Jun 20 12:01:29 2020 From: dbeck at ualberta.ca (David Beck) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 10:01:29 -0600 Subject: [Lingtyp] Lingtyp Digest, Vol 69, Issue 25 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <0CBC1FA5-6917-49D2-B6FC-131979495DBB@ualberta.ca> Hello, I’m coming in on this late and there’s a lot of interesting stuff to catch up on in this thread on a Saturday morning (so I apologize if I missed where somebody already said this), but I have a couple of observations: 1) It seems to me that it is a mistake to want to attribute the term “functional” as an inherent property of any linguistic item (let’s go out on a limb and use the term “sign” here). Signs have meanings and they can be used in different ways in an utterance. Uses that are prescribed by structure, as opposed to instances that are “freely” selected to express meanings, are what I think the common parlance terms “functional”. Functional uses can be prescribed/allowed for by general rules of grammar or by specific constructions. Many items have only functional uses, many (most?) have non-functional uses, and there are some that have both, or that appear in constructions where it isn’t 100% clear whether we want to call them functional or not. A functional category for me would be the structural specification being filled (predicate, auxiliary, spatial adjunct, etc.) rather than the specific item that fills it. What you call a functional category in a language would really have to be defined in terms of how you describe the grammar, and what generalizable structural characteristics you need to posit to make that description work. The fact that signs can have both types of uses would explain how and why grammaticalization occurs, the “classic” cline being that of the lexical sign that moves progressively towards having only a functional use. 2) Jürgen’s observation that optional functional categories is real is spot on. This is what Igor Mel’čuk calls “quasi-inflection”—optional elements that are inflection-like in that they don’t form new lexical items, are generally applicable across members of a lexical class/classes, and express what he would call “grammatical meanings” (≈ (meaning belonging to a) functional category). As Jürgen observes, this is a common thing and a concept that we ignore at our peril. David ================================ David Beck, Professor Department of Linguistics University of Alberta Edmonton, AB T6G 2E7 Canada Phone: (780) 492-0807 FAX: (780) 492-0806 http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbeck/ http://www.artsrn.ualberta.ca/totonaco/ > On Jun 20, 2020, at 9:15 AM, lingtyp-request at listserv.linguistlist.org wrote: > > Send Lingtyp mailing list submissions to > lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > lingtyp-request at listserv.linguistlist.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > lingtyp-owner at listserv.linguistlist.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of Lingtyp digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: Innovation of functional categories (Kasper Boye) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 15:14:42 +0000 > From: Kasper Boye > To: Idiatov Dmitry , Dan I.SLOBIN > > Cc: "lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org" > , Peter Harder > Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > Message-ID: > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Dear Dmitry, > > Thank you for continuing this interesting discussion! > > As for your claim that nobody is obliged to say anything: Languages are conventions and social facts, and if you want to make yourself understood, and to make yourself understood as belonging to a language community, you have to follow these conventions. Playing with social facts can be as dangerous as playing with physical facts. You can go around saying “-ed, -s, -ing” for months at home without producing any bases, but if you do it in public in an English language community, there is a risk that you will be put in a straightjacket until you start producing the bases. > > Your suggestion to refer to both “encoded secondariness” and obligatoriness in the definition of grammatical status would exclude all the lexical items, which is fine and due to “encoded secondariness”. However, as far as I can see, it would also exclude a lot of items that you might not want to exclude, e.g. some auxiliaries and a lot of schematic constructions. For instance, an English caused motion construction (NP V NP PP) is not obligatory in any useful sense of the term, but if you don’t include it under “grammar”, then you are defining a notion of grammar which is getting far from the notions that most people agree (and disagree) on. This is perfectly fine of course, but you may have to spend a considerable part of your life trying to get it accepted. > > So, why not stick with “encoded secondariness”, and say: Within the class of grammatical items there is an interesting subset of items that are obligatory – and then start thinking about the relationship between encoded secondariness, closed classes and obligatoriness? I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts on that relationship! > > With best wishes, > Kasper > > > > > > > > > Fra: Idiatov Dmitry > Sendt: 20. juni 2020 15:23 > Til: Kasper Boye ; Dan I.SLOBIN > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > Emne: Re: SV: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Kasper, a quick reaction to this passage: > > “Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else – and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion.” > > While the application of the criterion of obligatoriness is surely a delicate matter, nobody is obliged to say anything… > > To avoid the kind of logical figures that you bring up, let’s say that grammatical categories are those sets of mutually exclusive discourse prominence secondary meanings whose expression is obligatory in the constructions to which they apply. > > Dmitry > > > 20.06.2020, 15:12, "Kasper Boye" >: > > Dear Dmitry and all, > > > > First a comment on obligatoriness, then one closed classes. > > > > Jürgen Bohnemeyer pointed out that obligatoriness is too restrictive as a definiens of grammatical status. Another problem is that it is also too inclusive. Consider a language like German where indicative verbs are inflected for past and present tense. The intuition (which is backed up by the “encoded secondariness” definition; Boye & Harder 2012) is that the tense inflections are grammatical. But neither the past nor the present tense inflection is of course obligatory in itself: instead of past we can choose present, and vice versa. So, instead we have to say that the tense paradigm – or the choice between tenses – is obligatory: whenever you select an indicative verb, you also have to select a tense inflection. Now comes the problem. Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else – and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion. Of course, there are many ways in which obligatoriness can be saved as a definiens, but they all require that this notion is combined with something else. > > > > Dan Slobin pointed to the fact that items that are intuitively (and by the “encoded secondariness” definition) lexical, may form closed classes. I would like to add that closed classes may comprise both lexical and grammatical members. Within the classes of prepositions and pronouns, for instance, distinctions have occasionally been made between lexical and grammatical prepositions. Just as closed class membership seems to have a processing impact, so does the contrast between grammatical and lexical. For instance, Ishkhanyan et al. (2017) showed that the production of French pronouns identified as grammatical based on Boye & Harder (2017) is more severely impaired in agrammatic aphasia than the production of pronouns classified as lexical, and Messerschmidt et al. (2019) showed that Danish prepositions classified as grammatical attract less attention than prepositions classified as lexical. > > > > Best wishes, > > Kasper > > > > Boye, K. & P. Harder. 2012. "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization". Language 88.1. 1-44. > > > > Ishkhanyan, B., H. Sahraoui, P. Harder, J. Mogensen & K. Boye. 2017. "Grammatical and lexical pronoun dissociation in French speakers with agrammatic aphasia: A usage-based account and REF-based hypothesis". Journal of Neurolinguistics 44. 1-16. > > > > Messerschmidt, M., K. Boye, M.M. Overmark, S.T. Kristensen & P. Harder. 2018. "Sondringen mellem grammatiske og leksikalske præpositioner" [’The distinction between grammatical and lexical prepositions’]. Ny forskning i grammatik 25. 89-106. > > > > > > > > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp > På vegne af Dan I. SLOBIN > Sendt: 19. juni 2020 23:59 > Til: Idiatov Dmitry > > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > > > Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency—all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as “grammatical” elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb—entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. > > > > Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, > > Dan > > > > On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: > > Dear Juergen, > > > > I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. > > > > The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of “optionality” possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. > > > > However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. > > > > The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. > > > > Best, > > Dmitry > > > > > > 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" >: > > Dear Dmitry — I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. > > A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. > > My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ‘inflection’ that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It’s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. > > So what I’m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. > > (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ‘functional expressions’ (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ‘syncategoremata’. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) > > Best — Juergen > > > On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: > > I would like to react to Kasper Boye’s summary of the “solutions to the problem of defining ‘grammatical’ on the market”. > > There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson “Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey” (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)’s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining “grammatical”, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)’s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. > > Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case “grammatical meaning”, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of “grammatical meaning”, for example because it’s easier to apply consistently. > > Best wishes, > Dmitry > > -------- > Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. > (accessible at: https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 ; it’s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) > > > 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" >: > Dear all, > > I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas about the job grammatical items do. > > There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ”grammatical” on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. > > Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. > > Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. > > If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. > > Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar’s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. > > With best wishes, > Kasper > > References > Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. > Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf > > Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. > > Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. > > Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 > > Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. > Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp > På vegne af David Gil > Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 > Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Juergen and all, > > My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. > > Best, > > David > > > McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. > McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. > McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 > McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. > > > On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. > > Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) > > I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. > > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > > As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). > > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen > > -- > David Gil > > Senior Scientist (Associate) > 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 > Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 > , > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies > Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science > University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In > (Leonard Cohen) > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > > > -- > > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > > Dan I. Slobin > > Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics > > University of California, Berkeley > > email: slobin at berkeley.edu > > address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 > > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > > ------------------------------ > > Subject: Digest Footer > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > ------------------------------ > > End of Lingtyp Digest, Vol 69, Issue 25 > *************************************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From honohiiri at yandex.ru Sat Jun 20 13:31:47 2020 From: honohiiri at yandex.ru (Idiatov Dmitry) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 20:31:47 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> Message-ID: <18781592669882@mail.yandex.ru> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From slobin at berkeley.edu Sat Jun 20 16:20:03 2020 From: slobin at berkeley.edu (Dan I. SLOBIN) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 13:20:03 -0700 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <96098C7F-D7B9-4388-B297-5369CA7A68BA@uni-konstanz.de> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <96098C7F-D7B9-4388-B297-5369CA7A68BA@uni-konstanz.de> Message-ID: Interesting question, Frans – From the viewpoint of processing (rather than definitions of linguistic terms), basic color terms are similar to basic path verbs: high frequency, short, broad range within a basic category (“blue” and not “turquoise” or “cerulean”, “enter” and not “penetrate” or “invade”). Many semantic domains are characterized by a small, fixed class of basic verbs—e.g., basic gait verbs like “walk,” run,” “crawl”; basic speech-act verbs like “ask,” “answer”; and many more. As you note, manner verbs do not fit into such closed classes. From this point of view, there is a cline from morphosyntactic to lexical expression of the same basic semantic classes (echoing Jan Rijkhoff’s point that functions of grammatical elements can also be expressed lexically and by other means). A question for a broader discussion might be why it is that some domains, like color and gait, do not show up toward the grammatical end of the cline (or do they ever?). (Sorry to miss seeing you in Berkeley. I’m doing well in a sedentary state and hope you are too.) Regards, Dan On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 3:58 AM Uni KN wrote: > What about basic colour terms, Dan? They are a class (if you believe in > “basicness” as class-delimiting), they are supposedly synchronically closed > (max 11/12 or so), and they seem to be internally structured. So, do basic > colour terms (in any lg) share something — other than being a closed class > — with case markers (in, let’s say, Turkish) that they don’t share with, > say, manner-of-speaking verbs (in, say, English: growl, grunt, whisper, > shriek, yell, moan, tut-tut …)? > > Good to hear from you. We were already booked to come to Berkeley a > couple of months ago, for the Germanic Roundtable of indefatigable > Irmengard, but then we’ve suddenly had to become sedentary, not a bad state > to be in, in principle ... > > Yours > Frans > > On 19. Jun 2020, at 23:58, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: > > Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The > plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is > important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec > speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed > classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high > frequency—all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in > my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as “grammatical” > elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a > small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the > Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not > innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb > prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the > relevant verb—entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- > or u- as the relevant verb prefix. > > Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, > Dan > > On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: > >> Dear Juergen, >> >> I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two >> issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the >> end of your message. >> >> The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the >> distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may >> appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of >> “optionality” possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by >> others) in my (2008) paper. >> >> However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality >> may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is >> that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific >> language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. >> Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical >> much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described >> as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the >> same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely >> optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact >> it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, >> as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in >> many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same >> about English. >> >> The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with >> being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, >> not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that >> derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the >> defining criterion, does not mean that *grammatical *is the same as >> *inflectional*, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine >> (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of >> inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as >> much as possible. >> >> Best, >> Dmitry >> >> >> 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : >> >> Dear Dmitry — I think the typological literature on functional >> expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate >> ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural >> marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix >> bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only >> differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, >> obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a >> functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather >> suboptimal move to me. >> >> A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if >> a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past >> tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the >> language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. >> >> My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a >> larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a >> notion of ‘inflection’ that was developed on the basis and for the >> treatment of Indo-European languages. It’s a concept that seems >> unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that >> package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of >> strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you >> begin to run into all kinds of problems. >> >> So what I’m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very >> real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just >> one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection >> that is typologically woefully inadequate. >> >> (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ‘functional >> expressions’ (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label >> expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional >> ‘syncategoremata’. But, I also believe that we should worry about the >> concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize >> that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) >> >> Best — Juergen >> >> >> On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry >> wrote: >> >> I would like to react to Kasper Boye’s summary of the “solutions to the >> problem of defining ‘grammatical’ on the market”. >> >> There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these >> purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the >> well-known quote by Jakobson “Languages differ essentially in what they >> _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey” (see >> https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of >> obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being >> categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)’s criterion >> of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes >> the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss >> obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining “grammatical”, but >> dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would >> exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around >> long before Boye & Harder (2012)’s paper, it so happened that I discussed >> why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts >> of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. >> >> Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case >> “grammatical meaning”, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using >> one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical >> terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of >> “grammatical meaning”, for example because it’s easier to apply >> consistently. >> >> Best wishes, >> Dmitry >> >> -------- >> Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and >> the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in >> collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues >> in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: >> 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. >> (accessible at: >> https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 >> ; it’s also available from my website, but the server has been down for >> some time, hence this temporary link) >> >> >> 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : >> Dear all, >> >> I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems of >> defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas about >> the job grammatical items do. >> >> There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ”grammatical” >> on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural definition in >> terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own functional and >> usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his >> initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse >> prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). >> Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of >> being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, >> being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being >> dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. >> >> Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the >> same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison >> d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, >> which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster >> than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations >> (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap >> shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather >> superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. >> >> Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is >> clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. >> Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than >> not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are >> in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et >> al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their >> dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider >> which host expression to attach it to. >> >> If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer >> perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human >> communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the >> notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production >> resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. >> >> Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical >> morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and >> we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably >> did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are >> quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are >> not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar’s >> schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are >> conventionalized as carriers of background info. >> >> With best wishes, >> Kasper >> >> References >> Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status >> and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. >> Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf >> >> Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of >> evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. >> >> Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. >> Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. >> >> Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. >> (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in >> multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. >> https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 >> >> Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The >> production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. >> Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. >> Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 >> >> >> >> >> Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af >> David Gil >> Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 >> Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories >> >> Dear Juergen and all, >> >> My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes >> from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For >> the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional >> categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in >> Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language >> has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex >> rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also >> complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier >> discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase >> final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it >> takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace >> the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of >> a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of >> erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological >> attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). >> Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and >> since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form >> the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the >> absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated >> development of a functional category. >> >> Best, >> >> David >> >> >> McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci >> Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. >> McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object >> agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. >> McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From >> Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. >> Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of >> Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural >> Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/ >> 978-3-319-90710-9_22 >> McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) >> "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", >> Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. >> >> >> On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: >> Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional >> categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ >> of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I >> propose a more technical definition below. >> >> Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in >> which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one >> or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) >> the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former >> languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no >> obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in >> question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based >> innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of >> functional categories in the absence of contact models.) >> >> I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if >> not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of >> definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the >> “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation >> event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some >> of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors >> of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what >> role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as >> Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to >> be unclear. >> >> It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of >> innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest >> here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not >> present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. >> >> As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a >> superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might >> be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical >> category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional >> combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very >> broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of >> great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform >> in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of >> the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every >> single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of >> quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for >> languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential >> predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for >> universal quantification). >> >> Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m >> particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, >> definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only >> between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that >> report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability >> correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions >> such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of >> utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s >> communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable >> in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions >> apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. >> >> This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining >> feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t >> translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively >> advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as >> negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in >> turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in >> question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, >> and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. >> >> I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) >> >> Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a >> sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen >> >> -- >> David Gil >> >> Senior Scientist (Associate) >> 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 >> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 >> , >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> >> -- >> Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) >> Professor and Director of Graduate Studies >> Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science >> University at Buffalo >> >> >> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus >> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 >> Phone: (716) 645 0127 >> Fax: (716) 645 3825 >> Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu >> Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ >> >> Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. >> Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu >> 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. >> >> There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In >> (Leonard Cohen) >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> > > > -- > *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * > *Dan I. Slobin * > *Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics* > *University of California, Berkeley* > *email: slobin at berkeley.edu * > *address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708* > *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > -- *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * *Dan I. Slobin * *Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics* *University of California, Berkeley* *email: slobin at berkeley.edu * *address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708* *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From slobin at berkeley.edu Sat Jun 20 17:59:26 2020 From: slobin at berkeley.edu (Dan I. SLOBIN) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 14:59:26 -0700 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <96098C7F-D7B9-4388-B297-5369CA7A68BA@uni-konstanz.de> Message-ID: Thanks Daniel - Of course - direction of motion is typically grammaticalized as verbal particles of one sort or another (Talmy's "satellites") or as path verbs. Deixis is an additional dimension, as is associated motion. I'd be interested in more information from your work. Dan On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 1:33 PM Daniel Ross wrote: > Hi Dan, > > Just a quick comment: I'm not sure about color terms grammaticalizing, but > basic motion verbs can grammaticalize as Associated Motion markers (or > Directionals). They rarely display anything like the range of variation > even in a small set of motion verbs, but they do often express direction of > motion ("go" vs. "come") as well as timing of that motion ("go and do" vs > "do while going" or "do and go"), plus in a few languages 'adverbial' > properties like 'go quickly and do', but that's very rare. (I'm > contributing to an edited volume on this topic, to be published soon. More > information on request.) > > Daniel > > On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 1:21 PM Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: > >> Interesting question, Frans – From the viewpoint of processing (rather >> than definitions of linguistic terms), basic color terms are similar to >> basic path verbs: high frequency, short, broad range within a basic >> category (“blue” and not “turquoise” or “cerulean”, “enter” and not >> “penetrate” or “invade”). Many semantic domains are characterized by a >> small, fixed class of basic verbs—e.g., basic gait verbs like “walk,” run,” >> “crawl”; basic speech-act verbs like “ask,” “answer”; and many more. As >> you note, manner verbs do not fit into such closed classes. From this >> point of view, there is a cline from morphosyntactic to lexical expression >> of the same basic semantic classes (echoing Jan Rijkhoff’s point that >> functions of grammatical elements can also be expressed lexically and by >> other means). >> >> >> >> A question for a broader discussion might be why it is that some domains, >> like color and gait, do not show up toward the grammatical end of the cline >> (or do they ever?). >> >> >> >> (Sorry to miss seeing you in Berkeley. I’m doing well in a sedentary >> state and hope you are too.) >> >> >> >> Regards, >> >> Dan >> >> On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 3:58 AM Uni KN >> wrote: >> >>> What about basic colour terms, Dan? They are a class (if you believe in >>> “basicness” as class-delimiting), they are supposedly synchronically closed >>> (max 11/12 or so), and they seem to be internally structured. So, do basic >>> colour terms (in any lg) share something — other than being a closed class >>> — with case markers (in, let’s say, Turkish) that they don’t share with, >>> say, manner-of-speaking verbs (in, say, English: growl, grunt, whisper, >>> shriek, yell, moan, tut-tut …)? >>> >>> Good to hear from you. We were already booked to come to Berkeley a >>> couple of months ago, for the Germanic Roundtable of indefatigable >>> Irmengard, but then we’ve suddenly had to become sedentary, not a bad state >>> to be in, in principle ... >>> >>> Yours >>> Frans >>> >>> On 19. Jun 2020, at 23:58, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: >>> >>> Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. >>> The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor >>> is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec >>> speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed >>> classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high >>> frequency—all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in >>> my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as “grammatical” >>> elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a >>> small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the >>> Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not >>> innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb >>> prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the >>> relevant verb—entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- >>> or u- as the relevant verb prefix. >>> >>> Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, >>> Dan >>> >>> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry >>> wrote: >>> >>>> Dear Juergen, >>>> >>>> I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two >>>> issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the >>>> end of your message. >>>> >>>> The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of >>>> the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may >>>> appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of >>>> “optionality” possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by >>>> others) in my (2008) paper. >>>> >>>> However interesting the study of these various gradations of >>>> optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is >>>> fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system >>>> of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, >>>> universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be >>>> grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus >>>> be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical >>>> is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is >>>> completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, >>>> despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other >>>> languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a >>>> grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would >>>> not wish to say the same about English. >>>> >>>> The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with >>>> being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, >>>> not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that >>>> derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the >>>> defining criterion, does not mean that *grammatical *is the same as >>>> *inflectional*, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine >>>> (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of >>>> inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as >>>> much as possible. >>>> >>>> Best, >>>> Dmitry >>>> >>>> >>>> 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : >>>> >>>> Dear Dmitry — I think the typological literature on functional >>>> expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate >>>> ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural >>>> marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix >>>> bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only >>>> differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, >>>> obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a >>>> functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather >>>> suboptimal move to me. >>>> >>>> A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: >>>> if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English >>>> past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider >>>> the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. >>>> >>>> My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a >>>> larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a >>>> notion of ‘inflection’ that was developed on the basis and for the >>>> treatment of Indo-European languages. It’s a concept that seems >>>> unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that >>>> package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of >>>> strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you >>>> begin to run into all kinds of problems. >>>> >>>> So what I’m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very >>>> real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just >>>> one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection >>>> that is typologically woefully inadequate. >>>> >>>> (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ‘functional >>>> expressions’ (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label >>>> expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional >>>> ‘syncategoremata’. But, I also believe that we should worry about the >>>> concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize >>>> that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) >>>> >>>> Best — Juergen >>>> >>>> >>>> On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry >>>> wrote: >>>> >>>> I would like to react to Kasper Boye’s summary of the “solutions to >>>> the problem of defining ‘grammatical’ on the market”. >>>> >>>> There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these >>>> purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the >>>> well-known quote by Jakobson “Languages differ essentially in what they >>>> _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey” (see >>>> https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of >>>> obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being >>>> categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)’s criterion >>>> of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes >>>> the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss >>>> obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining “grammatical”, but >>>> dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would >>>> exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around >>>> long before Boye & Harder (2012)’s paper, it so happened that I discussed >>>> why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts >>>> of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. >>>> >>>> Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case >>>> “grammatical meaning”, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using >>>> one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical >>>> terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of >>>> “grammatical meaning”, for example because it’s easier to apply >>>> consistently. >>>> >>>> Best wishes, >>>> Dmitry >>>> >>>> -------- >>>> Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization >>>> and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in >>>> collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues >>>> in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: >>>> 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. >>>> (accessible at: >>>> https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 >>>> ; it’s also available from my website, but the server has been down for >>>> some time, hence this temporary link) >>>> >>>> >>>> 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : >>>> Dear all, >>>> >>>> I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems >>>> of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas >>>> about the job grammatical items do. >>>> >>>> There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining >>>> ”grammatical” on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural >>>> definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own >>>> functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was >>>> referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary >>>> discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references >>>> below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic >>>> properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention >>>> backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background >>>> meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background >>>> requires a foreground. >>>> >>>> Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the >>>> same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison >>>> d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, >>>> which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster >>>> than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations >>>> (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap >>>> shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather >>>> superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. >>>> >>>> Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is >>>> clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. >>>> Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than >>>> not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are >>>> in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et >>>> al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their >>>> dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider >>>> which host expression to attach it to. >>>> >>>> If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer >>>> perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human >>>> communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the >>>> notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production >>>> resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. >>>> >>>> Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of >>>> grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but >>>> satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our >>>> forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on >>>> inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically >>>> concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also >>>> construction grammar’s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical >>>> items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. >>>> >>>> With best wishes, >>>> Kasper >>>> >>>> References >>>> Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical >>>> status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. >>>> Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf >>>> >>>> Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of >>>> evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. >>>> >>>> Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. >>>> Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. >>>> >>>> Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. >>>> (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in >>>> multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. >>>> https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 >>>> >>>> Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The >>>> production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. >>>> Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019. >>>> 1616104. >>>> Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af >>>> David Gil >>>> Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 >>>> Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>>> Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories >>>> >>>> Dear Juergen and all, >>>> >>>> My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes >>>> from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For >>>> the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional >>>> categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in >>>> Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language >>>> has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex >>>> rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also >>>> complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier >>>> discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase >>>> final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it >>>> takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace >>>> the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of >>>> a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of >>>> erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological >>>> attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). >>>> Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and >>>> since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form >>>> the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the >>>> absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated >>>> development of a functional category. >>>> >>>> Best, >>>> >>>> David >>>> >>>> >>>> McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of >>>> Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, >>>> Newark. >>>> McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object >>>> agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. >>>> McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From >>>> Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. >>>> Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of >>>> Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural >>>> Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/ >>>> 978-3-319-90710-9_22 >>>> McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) >>>> "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", >>>> Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. >>>> >>>> >>>> On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: >>>> Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of >>>> functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical >>>> categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, >>>> case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. >>>> >>>> Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in >>>> which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one >>>> or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) >>>> the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former >>>> languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no >>>> obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in >>>> question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based >>>> innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of >>>> functional categories in the absence of contact models.) >>>> >>>> I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if >>>> not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of >>>> definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the >>>> “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation >>>> event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some >>>> of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors >>>> of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what >>>> role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as >>>> Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to >>>> be unclear. >>>> >>>> It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of >>>> innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest >>>> here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not >>>> present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. >>>> >>>> As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a >>>> superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might >>>> be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical >>>> category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional >>>> combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very >>>> broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of >>>> great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform >>>> in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of >>>> the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every >>>> single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of >>>> quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for >>>> languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential >>>> predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for >>>> universal quantification). >>>> >>>> Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m >>>> particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, >>>> definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only >>>> between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that >>>> report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability >>>> correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions >>>> such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of >>>> utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s >>>> communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable >>>> in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions >>>> apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. >>>> >>>> This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining >>>> feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t >>>> translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively >>>> advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as >>>> negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in >>>> turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in >>>> question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, >>>> and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. >>>> >>>> I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) >>>> >>>> Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive >>>> a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen >>>> >>>> -- >>>> David Gil >>>> >>>> Senior Scientist (Associate) >>>> 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 >>>> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 >>>> , >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Lingtyp mailing list >>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Lingtyp mailing list >>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> -- >>>> Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) >>>> Professor and Director of Graduate Studies >>>> Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science >>>> University at Buffalo >>>> >>>> >>>> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus >>>> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 >>>> Phone: (716) 645 0127 >>>> Fax: (716) 645 3825 >>>> Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu >>>> Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ >>>> >>>> Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further >>>> notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu >>>> 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. >>>> >>>> There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In >>>> (Leonard Cohen) >>>> >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Lingtyp mailing list >>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * >>> *Dan I. Slobin * >>> *Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics* >>> *University of California, Berkeley* >>> *email: slobin at berkeley.edu * >>> *address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708* >>> *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >>> >>> >> >> -- >> >> *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * >> >> *Dan I. Slobin * >> >> *Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics* >> >> *University of California, Berkeley* >> >> *email: slobin at berkeley.edu * >> >> *address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708* >> >> *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> > -- *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * *Dan I. Slobin * *Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics* *University of California, Berkeley* *email: slobin at berkeley.edu * *address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708* *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jb77 at buffalo.edu Sun Jun 21 01:04:55 2020 From: jb77 at buffalo.edu (Bohnemeyer, Juergen) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2020 05:04:55 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <96098C7F-D7B9-4388-B297-5369CA7A68BA@uni-konstanz.de> Message-ID: Dear Dan et al. — A couple of points here: 1. The view that the meanings of functional elements can also be expressed by lexical elements is often at best imprecise. A great example of this is the old canard according to which tenseless languages use adverbials that express the semantic contributions of tense markers. Having studied tenselessness up close and personal for a quarter century, I can assure you they do no such thing. If anything, Yucatec speakers use temporal adverbials less frequently, not more frequently, than English speakers. Also, there is no lexical item in English or Yucatec that expresses the meaning of the English past tense. Consider the following mini-discourse: (1) Sally got out of her car. She put on her mask. Try inserting _in the past_ or _formerly_ in either clause and the meaning changes drastically. The same is true for the Yucatec equivalent. The reason this doesn’t work: lexical items such as _in the past_ and _formerly_ express part of the speaker’s intended message, whereas tense markers do not, they are just a coherence device. 2. Which brings me to the question why no language appears to have inflections for color. As it happens, I’m currently working on a book that tries to answer precisely that question, or more generally, the question why the languages of the world have the functional categories they do. The answer, I argue, is parallel evolution driven by functional selection. There are certain kinds of meanings that lend themselves to facilitating communication by reducing the hearer’s inference load while in their grammaticalized form increasing the speaker’s production effort only minimally. Why does tense lend itself so much more to this kind of thing than color? Because with almost every utterance she encounters (every one except for generics), the hearer has to decide whether the speaker is talking about something that happened in the past, is presently unfolding, or may yet happen in the future. Even the most color-obsessed people in the world do not talk about color with any more than a tiny fraction of that frequency. Best — Juergen > On Jun 20, 2020, at 4:20 PM, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: > > Interesting question, Frans – From the viewpoint of processing (rather than definitions of linguistic terms), basic color terms are similar to basic path verbs: high frequency, short, broad range within a basic category (“blue” and not “turquoise” or “cerulean”, “enter” and not “penetrate” or “invade”). Many semantic domains are characterized by a small, fixed class of basic verbs—e.g., basic gait verbs like “walk,” run,” “crawl”; basic speech-act verbs like “ask,” “answer”; and many more. As you note, manner verbs do not fit into such closed classes. From this point of view, there is a cline from morphosyntactic to lexical expression of the same basic semantic classes (echoing Jan Rijkhoff’s point that functions of grammatical elements can also be expressed lexically and by other means). > > A question for a broader discussion might be why it is that some domains, like color and gait, do not show up toward the grammatical end of the cline (or do they ever?). > > (Sorry to miss seeing you in Berkeley. I’m doing well in a sedentary state and hope you are too.) > > Regards, > Dan > > On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 3:58 AM Uni KN wrote: > What about basic colour terms, Dan? They are a class (if you believe in “basicness” as class-delimiting), they are supposedly synchronically closed (max 11/12 or so), and they seem to be internally structured. So, do basic colour terms (in any lg) share something — other than being a closed class — with case markers (in, let’s say, Turkish) that they don’t share with, say, manner-of-speaking verbs (in, say, English: growl, grunt, whisper, shriek, yell, moan, tut-tut …)? > > Good to hear from you. We were already booked to come to Berkeley a couple of months ago, for the Germanic Roundtable of indefatigable Irmengard, but then we’ve suddenly had to become sedentary, not a bad state to be in, in principle ... > > Yours > Frans > >> On 19. Jun 2020, at 23:58, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: >> >> Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency—all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as “grammatical” elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb—entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. >> >> Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, >> Dan >> >> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry wrote: >> Dear Juergen, >> >> I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. >> >> The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of “optionality” possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. >> >> However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. >> >> The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. >> >> Best, >> Dmitry >> >> >> 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : >> Dear Dmitry — I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. >> >> A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. >> >> My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ‘inflection’ that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It’s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. >> >> So what I’m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. >> >> (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ‘functional expressions’ (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ‘syncategoremata’. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) >> >> Best — Juergen >> >> >> On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: >> >> I would like to react to Kasper Boye’s summary of the “solutions to the problem of defining ‘grammatical’ on the market”. >> >> There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson “Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey” (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)’s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining “grammatical”, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)’s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. >> >> Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case “grammatical meaning”, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of “grammatical meaning”, for example because it’s easier to apply consistently. >> >> Best wishes, >> Dmitry >> >> -------- >> Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. >> (accessible at: https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 ; it’s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) >> >> >> 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : >> Dear all, >> >> I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas about the job grammatical items do. >> >> There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ”grammatical” on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. >> >> Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. >> >> Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. >> >> If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. >> >> Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar’s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. >> >> With best wishes, >> Kasper >> >> References >> Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. >> Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf >> >> Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. >> >> Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. >> >> Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 >> >> Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. >> Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 >> >> >> >> >> Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af David Gil >> Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 >> Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories >> >> Dear Juergen and all, >> >> My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. >> >> Best, >> >> David >> >> >> McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. >> McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. >> McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 >> McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. >> >> >> On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: >> Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. >> >> Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) >> >> I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. >> >> It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. >> >> As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). >> >> Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. >> >> This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. >> >> I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) >> >> Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen >> >> -- >> David Gil >> >> Senior Scientist (Associate) >> 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 >> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 >> , >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> >> -- >> Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) >> Professor and Director of Graduate Studies >> Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science >> University at Buffalo >> >> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus >> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 >> Phone: (716) 645 0127 >> Fax: (716) 645 3825 >> Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu >> Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ >> >> Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. >> >> There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In >> (Leonard Cohen) >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> -- >> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> >> Dan I. Slobin >> Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics >> University of California, Berkeley >> email: slobin at berkeley.edu >> address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 >> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > Dan I. Slobin > Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics > University of California, Berkeley > email: slobin at berkeley.edu > address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) From slobin at berkeley.edu Sun Jun 21 01:42:46 2020 From: slobin at berkeley.edu (Dan I. SLOBIN) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 22:42:46 -0700 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <96098C7F-D7B9-4388-B297-5369CA7A68BA@uni-konstanz.de> Message-ID: Exactly, Juergen, I quite agree. I formulated a similar position in a long paper about acquisition and grammaticizable notions (Slobin, D. I. (2001). Form function relations: how do children find out what they are? In M. Bowerman & S. C. Levinson (Eds.), *Language acquisition and conceptual development* (pp. 406-449). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.). Here is a portion of that paper that is relevant to the current discussion (attached). Appreciating our parallel evolution, as ever, Dan On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 10:05 PM Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > Dear Dan et al. — A couple of points here: > > 1. The view that the meanings of functional elements can also be expressed > by lexical elements is often at best imprecise. A great example of this is > the old canard according to which tenseless languages use adverbials that > express the semantic contributions of tense markers. Having studied > tenselessness up close and personal for a quarter century, I can assure you > they do no such thing. If anything, Yucatec speakers use temporal > adverbials less frequently, not more frequently, than English speakers. > > Also, there is no lexical item in English or Yucatec that expresses the > meaning of the English past tense. Consider the following mini-discourse: > > (1) Sally got out of her car. She put on her mask. > > Try inserting _in the past_ or _formerly_ in either clause and the meaning > changes drastically. The same is true for the Yucatec equivalent. > > The reason this doesn’t work: lexical items such as _in the past_ and > _formerly_ express part of the speaker’s intended message, whereas tense > markers do not, they are just a coherence device. > > 2. Which brings me to the question why no language appears to have > inflections for color. As it happens, I’m currently working on a book that > tries to answer precisely that question, or more generally, the question > why the languages of the world have the functional categories they do. > > The answer, I argue, is parallel evolution driven by functional selection. > There are certain kinds of meanings that lend themselves to facilitating > communication by reducing the hearer’s inference load while in their > grammaticalized form increasing the speaker’s production effort only > minimally. > > Why does tense lend itself so much more to this kind of thing than color? > Because with almost every utterance she encounters (every one except for > generics), the hearer has to decide whether the speaker is talking about > something that happened in the past, is presently unfolding, or may yet > happen in the future. > > Even the most color-obsessed people in the world do not talk about color > with any more than a tiny fraction of that frequency. > > Best — Juergen > > > > On Jun 20, 2020, at 4:20 PM, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: > > > > Interesting question, Frans – From the viewpoint of processing (rather > than definitions of linguistic terms), basic color terms are similar to > basic path verbs: high frequency, short, broad range within a basic > category (“blue” and not “turquoise” or “cerulean”, “enter” and not > “penetrate” or “invade”). Many semantic domains are characterized by a > small, fixed class of basic verbs—e.g., basic gait verbs like “walk,” run,” > “crawl”; basic speech-act verbs like “ask,” “answer”; and many more. As > you note, manner verbs do not fit into such closed classes. From this > point of view, there is a cline from morphosyntactic to lexical expression > of the same basic semantic classes (echoing Jan Rijkhoff’s point that > functions of grammatical elements can also be expressed lexically and by > other means). > > > > A question for a broader discussion might be why it is that some > domains, like color and gait, do not show up toward the grammatical end of > the cline (or do they ever?). > > > > (Sorry to miss seeing you in Berkeley. I’m doing well in a sedentary > state and hope you are too.) > > > > Regards, > > Dan > > > > On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 3:58 AM Uni KN > wrote: > > What about basic colour terms, Dan? They are a class (if you believe in > “basicness” as class-delimiting), they are supposedly synchronically closed > (max 11/12 or so), and they seem to be internally structured. So, do basic > colour terms (in any lg) share something — other than being a closed class > — with case markers (in, let’s say, Turkish) that they don’t share with, > say, manner-of-speaking verbs (in, say, English: growl, grunt, whisper, > shriek, yell, moan, tut-tut …)? > > > > Good to hear from you. We were already booked to come to Berkeley a > couple of months ago, for the Germanic Roundtable of indefatigable > Irmengard, but then we’ve suddenly had to become sedentary, not a bad state > to be in, in principle ... > > > > Yours > > Frans > > > >> On 19. Jun 2020, at 23:58, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: > >> > >> Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. > The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor > is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec > speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed > classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high > frequency—all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in > my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as “grammatical” > elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a > small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the > Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not > innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb > prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the > relevant verb—entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- > or u- as the relevant verb prefix. > >> > >> Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, > >> Dan > >> > >> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: > >> Dear Juergen, > >> > >> I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two > issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the > end of your message. > >> > >> The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of > the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may > appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of > “optionality” possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by > others) in my (2008) paper. > >> > >> However interesting the study of these various gradations of > optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is > fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system > of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, > universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be > grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus > be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical > is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is > completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, > despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other > languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a > grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would > not wish to say the same about English. > >> > >> The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with > being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, > not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that > derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the > defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as > inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By > the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather > flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. > >> > >> Best, > >> Dmitry > >> > >> > >> 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : > >> Dear Dmitry — I think the typological literature on functional > expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate > ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural > marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix > bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only > differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, > obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a > functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather > suboptimal move to me. > >> > >> A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: > if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English > past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider > the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. > >> > >> My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a > larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a > notion of ‘inflection’ that was developed on the basis and for the > treatment of Indo-European languages. It’s a concept that seems > unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that > package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of > strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you > begin to run into all kinds of problems. > >> > >> So what I’m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very > real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just > one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection > that is typologically woefully inadequate. > >> > >> (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ‘functional > expressions’ (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label > expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional > ‘syncategoremata’. But, I also believe that we should worry about the > concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize > that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) > >> > >> Best — Juergen > >> > >> > >> On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: > >> > >> I would like to react to Kasper Boye’s summary of the “solutions to > the problem of defining ‘grammatical’ on the market”. > >> > >> There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these > purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the > well-known quote by Jakobson “Languages differ essentially in what they > _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey” (see > https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of > obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being > categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)’s criterion > of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes > the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss > obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining “grammatical”, but > dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would > exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around > long before Boye & Harder (2012)’s paper, it so happened that I discussed > why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts > of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. > >> > >> Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case > “grammatical meaning”, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using > one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical > terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of > “grammatical meaning”, for example because it’s easier to apply > consistently. > >> > >> Best wishes, > >> Dmitry > >> > >> -------- > >> Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization > and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in > collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues > in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: > 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. > >> (accessible at: > https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 > ; it’s also available from my website, but the server has been down for > some time, hence this temporary link) > >> > >> > >> 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : > >> Dear all, > >> > >> I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems > of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas > about the job grammatical items do. > >> > >> There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining > ”grammatical” on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural > definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own > functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was > referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary > discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references > below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic > properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention > backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background > meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background > requires a foreground. > >> > >> Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the > same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison > d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, > which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster > than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations > (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap > shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather > superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. > >> > >> Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is > clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. > Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than > not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are > in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et > al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their > dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider > which host expression to attach it to. > >> > >> If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer > perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human > communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the > notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production > resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. > >> > >> Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of > grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but > satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our > forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on > inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically > concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also > construction grammar’s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical > items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. > >> > >> With best wishes, > >> Kasper > >> > >> References > >> Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical > status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. > >> Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf > >> > >> Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of > evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. > >> > >> Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. > Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. > >> > >> Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. > (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in > multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. > https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 > >> > >> Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The > production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. > Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. > >> Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af > David Gil > >> Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 > >> Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >> Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > >> > >> Dear Juergen and all, > >> > >> My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes > from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For > the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional > categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in > Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language > has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex > rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also > complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier > discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase > final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it > takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace > the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of > a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of > erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological > attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). > Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and > since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form > the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the > absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated > development of a functional category. > >> > >> Best, > >> > >> David > >> > >> > >> McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of > Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, > Newark. > >> McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object > agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. > >> McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From > Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. > Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of > Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural > Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: > 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 > >> McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) > "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", > Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. > >> > >> > >> On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > >> Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of > functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical > categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, > case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. > >> > >> Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in > which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one > or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) > the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former > languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no > obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in > question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based > innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of > functional categories in the absence of contact models.) > >> > >> I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if > not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of > definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the > “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation > event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some > of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors > of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what > role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as > Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to > be unclear. > >> > >> It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of > innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest > here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not > present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > >> > >> As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a > superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might > be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical > category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional > combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very > broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of > great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform > in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of > the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every > single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of > quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for > languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential > predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for > universal quantification). > >> > >> Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m > particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, > definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only > between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that > report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability > correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions > such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of > utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s > communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable > in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions > apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. > >> > >> This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining > feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t > translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively > advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as > negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in > turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in > question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, > and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > >> > >> I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) > >> > >> Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive > a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen > >> > >> -- > >> David Gil > >> > >> Senior Scientist (Associate) > >> 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 > >> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 > >> , > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Lingtyp mailing list > >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Lingtyp mailing list > >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > >> > >> > >> > >> -- > >> Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > >> Professor and Director of Graduate Studies > >> Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science > >> University at Buffalo > >> > >> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > >> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > >> Phone: (716) 645 0127 > >> Fax: (716) 645 3825 > >> Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > >> Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > >> > >> Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further > notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu > 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > >> > >> There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In > >> (Leonard Cohen) > >> > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Lingtyp mailing list > >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > >> > >> > >> -- > >> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > >> Dan I. Slobin > >> Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics > >> University of California, Berkeley > >> email: slobin at berkeley.edu > >> address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 > >> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Lingtyp mailing list > >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > > > > > -- > > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > > Dan I. Slobin > > Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics > > University of California, Berkeley > > email: slobin at berkeley.edu > > address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 > > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > > _______________________________________________ > > Lingtyp mailing list > > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies > Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science > University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. > Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu > 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In > (Leonard Cohen) > > -- *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * *Dan I. Slobin * *Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics* *University of California, Berkeley* *email: slobin at berkeley.edu * *address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708* *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Doc2.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 54480 bytes Desc: not available URL: From oesten at ling.su.se Sun Jun 21 02:24:59 2020 From: oesten at ling.su.se (=?utf-8?B?w5ZzdGVuIERhaGw=?=) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2020 06:24:59 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <3180F818-F44B-43FF-A3C9-7053002AFBBF@buffalo.edu> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED341@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> <3180F818-F44B-43FF-A3C9-7053002AFBBF@buffalo.edu> Message-ID: <60a48ca1bd344e6ebbbfcba3476bbf69@ling.su.se> The section "Accidence categories and Gricean principles" (p. 11-15) in my 1985 book "Tense and Aspect Systems" argues for the view that the semantic features involved in what I called "accidence categories", which would include tense/aspect and other similar phenomena, "typically do not belong to the 'intended message'". The book can be downloaded from https://www2.ling.su.se/staff/oesten/recycled/Tense&aspectsystems.pdf Östen -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Från: Lingtyp För Bohnemeyer, Juergen Skickat: den 20 juni 2020 17:46 Till: TALLMAN Adam Kopia: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Adam — The notion of ‘at-issue content’ is defined in models of information structure that assume that utterances in their discourse contexts introduce or answer explicit or implicit ‘questions under discussion’ (QuDs). Craige Robert’s work is probably the most widely known exponent of this approach (Roberts 1996, 2012). Others include Büring (1997, 2003), Carlson (1982), Klein & von Stutterheim (1987, 2002), and van Kuppevelt (1995, 1996). The at-issue content of an utterance (if any) is that part of its content that provides a (complete or partial) answer to the QuD of the utterance context. I do indeed assume that there is no categorical boundary between lexicon and grammar. Any assumption to the contrary would seem to be inconsistent with both grammaticalization theory and most versions of Construction Grammar. Is there a problem with that? I wonder whether the source of your confusion regarding the variable status of adjectives stems from a failure to distinguish between an expression’s actual information status as a token in a given utterance and the expression’s inherent capability as a type of expressing at-issue content. Only the latter, not the former, is part of the proposed definition of restrictors (which I’ll remind you is merely a subtype of functional expressions - I’m *not* actually claiming that *all* functional expressions are inherently backgrounded. That is where I part company with Boye & Harder 2012, to whom I otherwise owe a debt of gratitude, as Kasper pointed out). Adjectives *can* express at-issue content, restrictors cannot. Adjectives do not become restrictors just because they are used in a backgrounded position in a given utterance. It’s type properties not matter, not token properties. What you say about adjectives and classifiers in Chacobo is of great interest to me. There is a similar phenomenon in Mayan languages: so-called ‘positionals’ (I prefer ‘dispositionals’, since the great majority of the roots lexicalize properties of inanimate referents, not postures) constitute a lexical category in their own right in Mayan. They surface as both verbs and stative predicates (traditionally, but arguably misleadingly, the latter are considered participles), but subsets of them require derivational morphology in both cases. Mayan languages have hundreds of such roots. Crucially for present purposes, many if not most of these roots can also be used as numeral classifiers. And when they are, I treat them as functional expressions. I consider this polysemy - that is to say, I assume that there is a single lexicon entry that licenses both the dispositional predicate uses and the classifier uses. In other words, I put less distance between these two uses of dispositional morphemes than I put between, say, _have_ used as a possessive predicators vs. auxiliary. That’s because it seems to me that speakers draft dispositional roots into classifier duty on the fly creatively. In other words, I see the relation between the two kinds of uses as more dynamic than static. Bottomline: we should definitely not assume that we can sort the morphemes of a language (and here I mean strings of sound used as one or multiple signs in the speech community) neatly into two buckets, one labeled “lexicon”, the other “grammar”. That is just really not how natural languages work. I’m surprised that this seems controversial? Best — Juergen Berlin, B. (1968). Tzeltal numeral classifiers: A study in ethnographic semantics. The Hague: Mouton. Büring, Daniel (1997). The 59th Street Bridge Accent. London: Routledge. Büring, Daniel (2003). On D-trees, beans, and B-accents. Linguistics and Philosophy 26: 511-545. Carlson, Lauri. 1982. Dialogue games: an approach to discourse analysis (Synthese Language Library 17). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel. Klein, W., & Von Stutterheim, C. (1987). Quaestio und referenzielle Bewegung in Erzählungen [Quaestio and referential shift in narratives]. Linguistische Berichte 109: 163-183. --- (2002). Quaestio and L-perspectivation. In C. F. Graumann, & W. Kallmeyer (Eds.), Perspective and perspectivation in discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 59-88. Roberts, C. (1996). Information Structure in Discourse: Towards an Integrated Formal Theory of Pragmatics. In Jae Hak Yoon and Andreas Kathol (eds.), Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 49. Roberts, C. (2012). Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. Semantics & Pragmatics 5 (Article 6): 1-69. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1995). Discourse structure, topicality and questioning. Linguistics 31, 109–147. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1996). Inferring from topics. Linguistics and Philosophy 19, 393–443. > On Jun 20, 2020, at 10:19 AM, TALLMAN Adam wrote: > > Dear all, > > A few of you have elaborated on my question about the meaning of "functional" and and then critiqued Juergen's terminological choices. I wonder if my question about adjectives was interpreted facetiously (like "wouldn't it be absurd if adjectives were considered functional?!"). > > Actually, it was not meant as a facetious question at all as I was attempting to understand Juergen's research question in its own terms to discern whether there was anything in the languages I was familiar with that would count as functional, but diachronically lexical without contact. > > Juergen, you answered my question, in the sense, that I think I have a better idea of how one might go about operationalizing a distinction between lexical and functional. But now I am less sure about what your original question to the listserve was. Allow me to elaborate. > > Here is your new definition: > > "a ‘lexical category’ is a class of expressions defined in terms of shared morphosyntactic properties. The members of lexical categories are inherently suitable for expressing ‘at-issue’ content and are backgrounded only when they appear in certain syntactic positions (e.g., attributive as opposed to predicative adjectives). Their combinatorial types (e.g., in a Categorial Grammar framework) are relatively simple. They express concepts of basic ontological categories." > > I think this points in the right* direction and makes me understand where you are coming from (I assume at-issue just means anything that is not presuppositional nor just implicates some meaning). But crucially the concept is now scalar or gradient (depending on how we operationalize the notion). Saying that it concerns at-issue meaning in "certain syntactic positions" (I would prefer "morphosyntactic" positions) means that for some set of morphemes / constructs / categories or whatever a, b, c, d … we could rank them in terms of the number of positions they can occur in where they express (or tend to express?) at-issue content a>b>c>d …. Or we could formulate this in terms of tokens in discourse rather than constructions abstracted from their use, but you get my point. And indeed you state. > > > "It might be best to treat this list of properties as defining the notion of ‘lexical category’ as a cluster/radio/prototype concept." > > > But now there is no nonarbitrary cut-off point between lexical and grammatical. If there is a boundary it will refer to quantal shifts in the distribution of elements along the lexical-grammatical scale: or stated another way, we know there is some sort of boundary because the distribution of elements along the scale is bimodal and elements in between the modes are statistically marginal. > > To make this more concrete, in Chácobo there are some adjectives / > adverbials that express small size or small amount of time. In certain > syntactic positions they are more likely to express backgrounded > information and in a classifier like manner appear "redundantly", but > plausibly help to track referents (referring to someone as honi yoi > 'poor man' throughout the discourse). If I scan around related > languages (I haven't done this, but let's just say hypothetically) and > I find that in these other languages they more typically display > at-issue notions (perhaps they more commonly appear in a predicative > function), have I found a case of a "functional element" that has > grammaticalized? Certainly, it expresses at-issue content less often > than others … > > I think there are *a lot* of morphemes like this in Amazonia. In my description of Chacobo I actually called them "semi-functional" (it includes associated motion morphemes, time of day adverbials, temporal distance markers) and I try to make the explicit argument that temporal distance morphemes mix and match properties of temporal adverbials with those of tense. It would be hard for me to make the case that these were not a result of contact (in fact, myself and Pattie Epps have a paper where we argue that such liminal cases might be an areal property of Southwestern Amazonia), but the point is that I find a performative contradiction in your attempt to exclude (certain types of?) adjectives and adverbs and the definition you supply. Seems like if you really wanted to test the idea that languages grammaticalize functional notions for the specific reasons you claim, you would need to actually include all of these liminal cases and explain why they do not all disappear under communicative pressure or else drop off of the grammaticalization cline and become lexical / primarily at-issue expressing elements. > > So the upshot is that I was actually wondering whether you would consider adjectives, adverbs etc. but not because they are lexical or functional, but rather because, according to your own definition they awkwardly sit in between. I was interested in what you would say about them, not whether they should be classified discretely as lexical versus functional. > > Adam > > *By "right direction" I mean interesting direction in that it could lead to developing testable hypotheses with an operationalizable set of variables that define the domain of lexical versus functional categories. I am not making the essentialist claim that it is the best definition regardless of the problem context, research question, or audience. > > > > > > > > Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin) ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant > CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, > Lyon (07) Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867 De : Lingtyp > [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] de la part de Idiatov > Dmitry [honohiiri at yandex.ru] Envoyé : samedi 20 juin 2020 15:23 À : > Kasper Boye; Dan I.SLOBIN Cc : lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; > Peter Harder Objet : Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Kasper, a quick reaction to this passage: > > “Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else – and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion.” > > While the application of the criterion of obligatoriness is surely a > delicate matter, nobody is obliged to say anything… > > To avoid the kind of logical figures that you bring up, let’s say that grammatical categories are those sets of mutually exclusive discourse prominence secondary meanings whose expression is obligatory in the constructions to which they apply. > > Dmitry > > > 20.06.2020, 15:12, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear Dmitry and all, > > First a comment on obligatoriness, then one closed classes. > > Jürgen Bohnemeyer pointed out that obligatoriness is too restrictive as a definiens of grammatical status. Another problem is that it is also too inclusive. Consider a language like German where indicative verbs are inflected for past and present tense. The intuition (which is backed up by the “encoded secondariness” definition; Boye & Harder 2012) is that the tense inflections are grammatical. But neither the past nor the present tense inflection is of course obligatory in itself: instead of past we can choose present, and vice versa. So, instead we have to say that the tense paradigm – or the choice between tenses – is obligatory: whenever you select an indicative verb, you also have to select a tense inflection. Now comes the problem. Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else – and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion. Of course, there are many ways in which obligatoriness can be saved as a definiens, but they all require that this notion is combined with something else. > > Dan Slobin pointed to the fact that items that are intuitively (and by the “encoded secondariness” definition) lexical, may form closed classes. I would like to add that closed classes may comprise both lexical and grammatical members. Within the classes of prepositions and pronouns, for instance, distinctions have occasionally been made between lexical and grammatical prepositions. Just as closed class membership seems to have a processing impact, so does the contrast between grammatical and lexical. For instance, Ishkhanyan et al. (2017) showed that the production of French pronouns identified as grammatical based on Boye & Harder (2017) is more severely impaired in agrammatic aphasia than the production of pronouns classified as lexical, and Messerschmidt et al. (2019) showed that Danish prepositions classified as grammatical attract less attention than prepositions classified as lexical. > > Best wishes, > Kasper > > Boye, K. & P. Harder. 2012. "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization". Language 88.1. 1-44. > > Ishkhanyan, B., H. Sahraoui, P. Harder, J. Mogensen & K. Boye. 2017. "Grammatical and lexical pronoun dissociation in French speakers with agrammatic aphasia: A usage-based account and REF-based hypothesis". Journal of Neurolinguistics 44. 1-16. > > Messerschmidt, M., K. Boye, M.M. Overmark, S.T. Kristensen & P. Harder. 2018. "Sondringen mellem grammatiske og leksikalske præpositioner" [’The distinction between grammatical and lexical prepositions’]. Ny forskning i grammatik 25. 89-106. > > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af > Dan I. SLOBIN > Sendt: 19. juni 2020 23:59 > Til: Idiatov Dmitry > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency—all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as “grammatical” elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb—entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. > > Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, Dan > > On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > Dear Juergen, > > I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. > > The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of “optionality” possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. > > However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. > > The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. > > Best, > Dmitry > > > 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : > Dear Dmitry — I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. > > A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. > > My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ‘inflection’ that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It’s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. > > So what I’m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. > > (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ‘functional > expressions’ (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label > expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional > ‘syncategoremata’. But, I also believe that we should worry about the > concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I > realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) > Whorfian :-)) > > Best — Juergen > > > On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > > I would like to react to Kasper Boye’s summary of the “solutions to the problem of defining ‘grammatical’ on the market”. > > There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson “Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey” (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)’s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining “grammatical”, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)’s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. > > Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case “grammatical meaning”, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of “grammatical meaning”, for example because it’s easier to apply consistently. > > Best wishes, > Dmitry > > -------- > Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. > (accessible at: > https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da > 0-bd739bd16d95 ; it’s also available from my website, but the server > has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) > > > 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear all, > > I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas about the job grammatical items do. > > There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ”grammatical” on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. > > Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. > > Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. > > If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. > > Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar’s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. > > With best wishes, > Kasper > > References > Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. > Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf > > Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. > > Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. > > Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. > Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs > in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. > https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 > > Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. > Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af > David Gil > Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 > Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Juergen and all, > > My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. > > Best, > > David > > > McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. > McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. > McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) > "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. > > > On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. > > Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in > which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in > one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, > with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the > former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) > there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of > the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to > include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically > interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of > contact models.) > > I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. > > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > > As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). > > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I > receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen > > -- > David Gil > > Senior Scientist (Associate) > 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): > +62-81344082091 , _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics > and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy > Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard > Cohen) > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > -- > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > Dan I. Slobin > Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics University of > California, Berkeley > email: slobin at berkeley.edu > address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp From frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de Sun Jun 21 03:38:03 2020 From: frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de (Frans Plank) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2020 09:38:03 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Message-ID: Growing up among Runyankore cowboys and cowgirls and being exposed to a lot of cattle talk, as Larry’s consultant appears to have been, or being apprenticed to a painter along with other young enthusiasts, I might be tempted to grammaticalise colour as a classifier category, no? If frequency is all that counts for grammaticalisation, that is — rather than whether the classifying category, if it has a perceptual basis, is about what you cannot only see but also touch. Frans Sent from my iPad > On 21. Jun 2020, at 07:05, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > > Dear Dan et al. — A couple of points here: > > 1. The view that the meanings of functional elements can also be expressed by lexical elements is often at best imprecise. A great example of this is the old canard according to which tenseless languages use adverbials that express the semantic contributions of tense markers. Having studied tenselessness up close and personal for a quarter century, I can assure you they do no such thing. If anything, Yucatec speakers use temporal adverbials less frequently, not more frequently, than English speakers. > > Also, there is no lexical item in English or Yucatec that expresses the meaning of the English past tense. Consider the following mini-discourse: > > (1) Sally got out of her car. She put on her mask. > > Try inserting _in the past_ or _formerly_ in either clause and the meaning changes drastically. The same is true for the Yucatec equivalent. > > The reason this doesn’t work: lexical items such as _in the past_ and _formerly_ express part of the speaker’s intended message, whereas tense markers do not, they are just a coherence device. > > 2. Which brings me to the question why no language appears to have inflections for color. As it happens, I’m currently working on a book that tries to answer precisely that question, or more generally, the question why the languages of the world have the functional categories they do. > > The answer, I argue, is parallel evolution driven by functional selection. There are certain kinds of meanings that lend themselves to facilitating communication by reducing the hearer’s inference load while in their grammaticalized form increasing the speaker’s production effort only minimally. > > Why does tense lend itself so much more to this kind of thing than color? Because with almost every utterance she encounters (every one except for generics), the hearer has to decide whether the speaker is talking about something that happened in the past, is presently unfolding, or may yet happen in the future. > > Even the most color-obsessed people in the world do not talk about color with any more than a tiny fraction of that frequency. > > Best — Juergen > > >>>> On Jun 20, 2020, at 4:20 PM, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: >> Interesting question, Frans – From the viewpoint of processing (rather than definitions of linguistic terms), basic color terms are similar to basic path verbs: high frequency, short, broad range within a basic category (“blue” and not “turquoise” or “cerulean”, “enter” and not “penetrate” or “invade”). Many semantic domains are characterized by a small, fixed class of basic verbs—e.g., basic gait verbs like “walk,” run,” “crawl”; basic speech-act verbs like “ask,” “answer”; and many more. As you note, manner verbs do not fit into such closed classes. From this point of view, there is a cline from morphosyntactic to lexical expression of the same basic semantic classes (echoing Jan Rijkhoff’s point that functions of grammatical elements can also be expressed lexically and by other means). >> A question for a broader discussion might be why it is that some domains, like color and gait, do not show up toward the grammatical end of the cline (or do they ever?). >> (Sorry to miss seeing you in Berkeley. I’m doing well in a sedentary state and hope you are too.) >> Regards, >> Dan >>>> On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 3:58 AM Uni KN wrote: >> What about basic colour terms, Dan? They are a class (if you believe in “basicness” as class-delimiting), they are supposedly synchronically closed (max 11/12 or so), and they seem to be internally structured. So, do basic colour terms (in any lg) share something — other than being a closed class — with case markers (in, let’s say, Turkish) that they don’t share with, say, manner-of-speaking verbs (in, say, English: growl, grunt, whisper, shriek, yell, moan, tut-tut …)? >> Good to hear from you. We were already booked to come to Berkeley a couple of months ago, for the Germanic Roundtable of indefatigable Irmengard, but then we’ve suddenly had to become sedentary, not a bad state to be in, in principle ... >> Yours >> Frans >>>> On 19. Jun 2020, at 23:58, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: >>> Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency—all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as “grammatical” elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb—entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. >>> Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, >>> Dan >>>> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry wrote: >>> Dear Juergen, >>> I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. >>> The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of “optionality” possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. >>> However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. >>> The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. >>> Best, >>> Dmitry >>> 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : >>> Dear Dmitry — I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. >>> A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. >>> My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ‘inflection’ that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It’s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. >>> So what I’m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. >>> (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ‘functional expressions’ (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ‘syncategoremata’. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) >>> Best — Juergen >>>> On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: >>> I would like to react to Kasper Boye’s summary of the “solutions to the problem of defining ‘grammatical’ on the market”. >>> There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson “Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey” (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)’s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining “grammatical”, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)’s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. >>> Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case “grammatical meaning”, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of “grammatical meaning”, for example because it’s easier to apply consistently. >>> Best wishes, >>> Dmitry >>> -------- >>> Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. >>> (accessible at: https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 ; it’s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) >>> 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : >>> Dear all, >>> I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas about the job grammatical items do. >>> There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ”grammatical” on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. >>> Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. >>> Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. >>> If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. >>> Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar’s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. >>> With best wishes, >>> Kasper >>> References >>> Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. >>> Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf >>> Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. >>> Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. >>> Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 >>> Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. >>> Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 >>> Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af David Gil >>> Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 >>> Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories >>> Dear Juergen and all, >>> My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. >>> Best, >>> David >>> McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. >>> McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. >>> McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 >>> McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. >>>> On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: >>> Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. >>> Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) >>> I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. >>> It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. >>> As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). >>> Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. >>> This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. >>> I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) >>> Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen >>> -- >>> David Gil >>> Senior Scientist (Associate) >>> 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 >>> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 >>> , >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> -- >>> Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) >>> Professor and Director of Graduate Studies >>> Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science >>> University at Buffalo >>> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus >>> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 >>> Phone: (716) 645 0127 >>> Fax: (716) 645 3825 >>> Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu >>> Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ >>> Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. >>> There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In >>> (Leonard Cohen) >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> -- >>> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> >>> Dan I. Slobin >>> Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics >>> University of California, Berkeley >>> email: slobin at berkeley.edu >>> address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 >>> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> -- >> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> >> Dan I. Slobin >> Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics >> University of California, Berkeley >> email: slobin at berkeley.edu >> address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 >> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies > Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science > University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In > (Leonard Cohen) From linjr at cc.au.dk Sun Jun 21 07:12:33 2020 From: linjr at cc.au.dk (Jan Rijkhoff) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2020 11:12:33 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <96098C7F-D7B9-4388-B297-5369CA7A68BA@uni-konstanz.de> , Message-ID: Jürgen wrote: ”The view that the meanings of functional elements can also be expressed by lexical elements is often at best imprecise. … (etc)”. (Jürgen’s first point). Indeed, but as long as we (i) confuse meaning, form and function and (ii) don’t agree on a list of functions or functional categories (and how they are defined) problems in the analysis of linguistic units will remain. In your example (under 1.) you argue that functional elements (tense markers) do not have the same semantic properties as certain lexical forms (time adverb(ial)s), which is uncontroversial. But that does not mean that tense markers and time adverb(ial)s cannot have the same (communicative, interpersonal) function. ‘Meaning’ is not same as ‘function’. I still haven’t seen a list of functions or functional categories (and their definitions) in this discussion of ‘functional categories’. When you consider the (communicative, interpersonal) function of tense markers and time adverb(ial)s, it is not difficult to see what they have in common: Location in time. Both tense markers and time adverb(ial)s are ’localizing modifiers’ (one of at least five functional categories; see below), which speakers use to locate a first or second order entity in space or time. The semantic or formal properties (bound vs. free; lexical vs. grammatical; compulsory vs. optional, high vs. low frequency - etc.) of these elements are also important for a complete grammatical investigation, of course, but irrelevant at this (functional) level of analysis. At mentioned above, at least five functional modifier categories (classifying, qualifying, quantifying, localizing or ’anchoring’, and discourse-referential modifiers) are attested in both NPs and clauses. They are discussed in e.g. (also mentioned in an earlier message): Rijkhoff, Jan. 2014. Modification as a propositional act. In María de los Ángeles Gómez González et al. (eds.), Theory and Practice in Functional-Cognitive Space, 129-150. Amsterdam: Benjamins. https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/sfsl.68/main https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/sfsl.68.06rij/details I can send a copy of the chapter if you don’t have access to the volume. Jan J. Rijkhoff - Associate Professor, Linguistics School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University Jens Chr. Skous Vej 2, Building 1485-621 DK-8000 Aarhus C, DENMARK Phone: (+45) 87162143 URL: http://pure.au.dk/portal/en/linjr at cc.au.dk ________________________________________ From: Lingtyp on behalf of Bohnemeyer, Juergen Sent: Sunday, June 21, 2020 7:04 AM To: Dan I. SLOBIN Cc: Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Dan et al. — A couple of points here: 1. The view that the meanings of functional elements can also be expressed by lexical elements is often at best imprecise. A great example of this is the old canard according to which tenseless languages use adverbials that express the semantic contributions of tense markers. Having studied tenselessness up close and personal for a quarter century, I can assure you they do no such thing. If anything, Yucatec speakers use temporal adverbials less frequently, not more frequently, than English speakers. Also, there is no lexical item in English or Yucatec that expresses the meaning of the English past tense. Consider the following mini-discourse: (1) Sally got out of her car. She put on her mask. Try inserting _in the past_ or _formerly_ in either clause and the meaning changes drastically. The same is true for the Yucatec equivalent. The reason this doesn’t work: lexical items such as _in the past_ and _formerly_ express part of the speaker’s intended message, whereas tense markers do not, they are just a coherence device. 2. Which brings me to the question why no language appears to have inflections for color. As it happens, I’m currently working on a book that tries to answer precisely that question, or more generally, the question why the languages of the world have the functional categories they do. The answer, I argue, is parallel evolution driven by functional selection. There are certain kinds of meanings that lend themselves to facilitating communication by reducing the hearer’s inference load while in their grammaticalized form increasing the speaker’s production effort only minimally. Why does tense lend itself so much more to this kind of thing than color? Because with almost every utterance she encounters (every one except for generics), the hearer has to decide whether the speaker is talking about something that happened in the past, is presently unfolding, or may yet happen in the future. Even the most color-obsessed people in the world do not talk about color with any more than a tiny fraction of that frequency. Best — Juergen > On Jun 20, 2020, at 4:20 PM, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: > > Interesting question, Frans – From the viewpoint of processing (rather than definitions of linguistic terms), basic color terms are similar to basic path verbs: high frequency, short, broad range within a basic category (“blue” and not “turquoise” or “cerulean”, “enter” and not “penetrate” or “invade”). Many semantic domains are characterized by a small, fixed class of basic verbs—e.g., basic gait verbs like “walk,” run,” “crawl”; basic speech-act verbs like “ask,” “answer”; and many more. As you note, manner verbs do not fit into such closed classes. From this point of view, there is a cline from morphosyntactic to lexical expression of the same basic semantic classes (echoing Jan Rijkhoff’s point that functions of grammatical elements can also be expressed lexically and by other means). > > A question for a broader discussion might be why it is that some domains, like color and gait, do not show up toward the grammatical end of the cline (or do they ever?). > > (Sorry to miss seeing you in Berkeley. I’m doing well in a sedentary state and hope you are too.) > > Regards, > Dan > > On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 3:58 AM Uni KN wrote: > What about basic colour terms, Dan? They are a class (if you believe in “basicness” as class-delimiting), they are supposedly synchronically closed (max 11/12 or so), and they seem to be internally structured. So, do basic colour terms (in any lg) share something — other than being a closed class — with case markers (in, let’s say, Turkish) that they don’t share with, say, manner-of-speaking verbs (in, say, English: growl, grunt, whisper, shriek, yell, moan, tut-tut …)? > > Good to hear from you. We were already booked to come to Berkeley a couple of months ago, for the Germanic Roundtable of indefatigable Irmengard, but then we’ve suddenly had to become sedentary, not a bad state to be in, in principle ... > > Yours > Frans > >> On 19. Jun 2020, at 23:58, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: >> >> Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency—all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as “grammatical” elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb—entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. >> >> Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, >> Dan >> >> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry wrote: >> Dear Juergen, >> >> I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. >> >> The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of “optionality” possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. >> >> However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. >> >> The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. >> >> Best, >> Dmitry >> >> >> 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : >> Dear Dmitry — I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. >> >> A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. >> >> My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ‘inflection’ that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It’s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. >> >> So what I’m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. >> >> (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ‘functional expressions’ (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ‘syncategoremata’. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) >> >> Best — Juergen >> >> >> On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: >> >> I would like to react to Kasper Boye’s summary of the “solutions to the problem of defining ‘grammatical’ on the market”. >> >> There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson “Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey” (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)’s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining “grammatical”, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)’s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. >> >> Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case “grammatical meaning”, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of “grammatical meaning”, for example because it’s easier to apply consistently. >> >> Best wishes, >> Dmitry >> >> -------- >> Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. >> (accessible at: https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 ; it’s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) >> >> >> 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : >> Dear all, >> >> I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas about the job grammatical items do. >> >> There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ”grammatical” on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. >> >> Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. >> >> Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. >> >> If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. >> >> Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar’s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. >> >> With best wishes, >> Kasper >> >> References >> Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. >> Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf >> >> Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. >> >> Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. >> >> Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 >> >> Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. >> Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 >> >> >> >> >> Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af David Gil >> Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 >> Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories >> >> Dear Juergen and all, >> >> My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. >> >> Best, >> >> David >> >> >> McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. >> McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. >> McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 >> McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. >> >> >> On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: >> Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. >> >> Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) >> >> I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. >> >> It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. >> >> As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). >> >> Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. >> >> This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. >> >> I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) >> >> Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen >> >> -- >> David Gil >> >> Senior Scientist (Associate) >> 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 >> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 >> , >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> >> -- >> Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) >> Professor and Director of Graduate Studies >> Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science >> University at Buffalo >> >> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus >> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 >> Phone: (716) 645 0127 >> Fax: (716) 645 3825 >> Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu >> Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ >> >> Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. >> >> There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In >> (Leonard Cohen) >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> -- >> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> >> Dan I. Slobin >> Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics >> University of California, Berkeley >> email: slobin at berkeley.edu >> address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 >> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > Dan I. Slobin > Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics > University of California, Berkeley > email: slobin at berkeley.edu > address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp From wcroft at unm.edu Sun Jun 21 10:21:14 2020 From: wcroft at unm.edu (William Croft) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2020 14:21:14 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <96098C7F-D7B9-4388-B297-5369CA7A68BA@uni-konstanz.de> , , Message-ID: Defining "lexical" vs "grammatical" meaning is difficult, if possible at all. I have tried four times (listed below, in the order that they were conceived). I am pretty content with the last time I went at it, using an elaborated version of Chafe's theory of verbalization. Of course, many other opinions have been offered here which shed light on the distinction. Bill Croft Croft, William. 1990. “A conceptual framework for grammatical categories (or, a taxonomy of propositional acts).” Journal of Semantics 7:245-279. Croft, William. 2000. “Grammatical and lexical semantics.” Morphology: A Handbook on Inflection and Word Formation, ed. Geert Booij, Christian Lehmann and Joachim Mugdan, 257-63. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Clausner , Timothy C. and William Croft. 1999. “Domains, image-schemas and construal.” Cognitive Linguistics 10.1-31. Croft, William. 2007. “The origins of grammar in the verbalization of experience.” Cognitive Linguistics 18.339-82. ________________________________ From: Lingtyp on behalf of Jan Rijkhoff Sent: Sunday, June 21, 2020 5:12 AM To: Bohnemeyer, Juergen Cc: Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories [EXTERNAL] Jürgen wrote: ”The view that the meanings of functional elements can also be expressed by lexical elements is often at best imprecise. … (etc)”. (Jürgen’s first point). Indeed, but as long as we (i) confuse meaning, form and function and (ii) don’t agree on a list of functions or functional categories (and how they are defined) problems in the analysis of linguistic units will remain. In your example (under 1.) you argue that functional elements (tense markers) do not have the same semantic properties as certain lexical forms (time adverb(ial)s), which is uncontroversial. But that does not mean that tense markers and time adverb(ial)s cannot have the same (communicative, interpersonal) function. ‘Meaning’ is not same as ‘function’. I still haven’t seen a list of functions or functional categories (and their definitions) in this discussion of ‘functional categories’. When you consider the (communicative, interpersonal) function of tense markers and time adverb(ial)s, it is not difficult to see what they have in common: Location in time. Both tense markers and time adverb(ial)s are ’localizing modifiers’ (one of at least five functional categories; see below), which speakers use to locate a first or second order entity in space or time. The semantic or formal properties (bound vs. free; lexical vs. grammatical; compulsory vs. optional, high vs. low frequency - etc.) of these elements are also important for a complete grammatical investigation, of course, but irrelevant at this (functional) level of analysis. At mentioned above, at least five functional modifier categories (classifying, qualifying, quantifying, localizing or ’anchoring’, and discourse-referential modifiers) are attested in both NPs and clauses. They are discussed in e.g. (also mentioned in an earlier message): Rijkhoff, Jan. 2014. Modification as a propositional act. In María de los Ángeles Gómez González et al. (eds.), Theory and Practice in Functional-Cognitive Space, 129-150. Amsterdam: Benjamins. https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/sfsl.68/main https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/sfsl.68.06rij/details I can send a copy of the chapter if you don’t have access to the volume. Jan J. Rijkhoff - Associate Professor, Linguistics School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University Jens Chr. Skous Vej 2, Building 1485-621 DK-8000 Aarhus C, DENMARK Phone: (+45) 87162143 URL: http://pure.au.dk/portal/en/linjr at cc.au.dk ________________________________________ From: Lingtyp on behalf of Bohnemeyer, Juergen Sent: Sunday, June 21, 2020 7:04 AM To: Dan I. SLOBIN Cc: Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Dan et al. — A couple of points here: 1. The view that the meanings of functional elements can also be expressed by lexical elements is often at best imprecise. A great example of this is the old canard according to which tenseless languages use adverbials that express the semantic contributions of tense markers. Having studied tenselessness up close and personal for a quarter century, I can assure you they do no such thing. If anything, Yucatec speakers use temporal adverbials less frequently, not more frequently, than English speakers. Also, there is no lexical item in English or Yucatec that expresses the meaning of the English past tense. Consider the following mini-discourse: (1) Sally got out of her car. She put on her mask. Try inserting _in the past_ or _formerly_ in either clause and the meaning changes drastically. The same is true for the Yucatec equivalent. The reason this doesn’t work: lexical items such as _in the past_ and _formerly_ express part of the speaker’s intended message, whereas tense markers do not, they are just a coherence device. 2. Which brings me to the question why no language appears to have inflections for color. As it happens, I’m currently working on a book that tries to answer precisely that question, or more generally, the question why the languages of the world have the functional categories they do. The answer, I argue, is parallel evolution driven by functional selection. There are certain kinds of meanings that lend themselves to facilitating communication by reducing the hearer’s inference load while in their grammaticalized form increasing the speaker’s production effort only minimally. Why does tense lend itself so much more to this kind of thing than color? Because with almost every utterance she encounters (every one except for generics), the hearer has to decide whether the speaker is talking about something that happened in the past, is presently unfolding, or may yet happen in the future. Even the most color-obsessed people in the world do not talk about color with any more than a tiny fraction of that frequency. Best — Juergen > On Jun 20, 2020, at 4:20 PM, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: > > Interesting question, Frans – From the viewpoint of processing (rather than definitions of linguistic terms), basic color terms are similar to basic path verbs: high frequency, short, broad range within a basic category (“blue” and not “turquoise” or “cerulean”, “enter” and not “penetrate” or “invade”). Many semantic domains are characterized by a small, fixed class of basic verbs—e.g., basic gait verbs like “walk,” run,” “crawl”; basic speech-act verbs like “ask,” “answer”; and many more. As you note, manner verbs do not fit into such closed classes. From this point of view, there is a cline from morphosyntactic to lexical expression of the same basic semantic classes (echoing Jan Rijkhoff’s point that functions of grammatical elements can also be expressed lexically and by other means). > > A question for a broader discussion might be why it is that some domains, like color and gait, do not show up toward the grammatical end of the cline (or do they ever?). > > (Sorry to miss seeing you in Berkeley. I’m doing well in a sedentary state and hope you are too.) > > Regards, > Dan > > On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 3:58 AM Uni KN wrote: > What about basic colour terms, Dan? They are a class (if you believe in “basicness” as class-delimiting), they are supposedly synchronically closed (max 11/12 or so), and they seem to be internally structured. So, do basic colour terms (in any lg) share something — other than being a closed class — with case markers (in, let’s say, Turkish) that they don’t share with, say, manner-of-speaking verbs (in, say, English: growl, grunt, whisper, shriek, yell, moan, tut-tut …)? > > Good to hear from you. We were already booked to come to Berkeley a couple of months ago, for the Germanic Roundtable of indefatigable Irmengard, but then we’ve suddenly had to become sedentary, not a bad state to be in, in principle ... > > Yours > Frans > >> On 19. Jun 2020, at 23:58, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: >> >> Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency—all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as “grammatical” elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb—entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. >> >> Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, >> Dan >> >> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry wrote: >> Dear Juergen, >> >> I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. >> >> The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of “optionality” possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. >> >> However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. >> >> The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. >> >> Best, >> Dmitry >> >> >> 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : >> Dear Dmitry — I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. >> >> A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. >> >> My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ‘inflection’ that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It’s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. >> >> So what I’m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. >> >> (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ‘functional expressions’ (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ‘syncategoremata’. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) >> >> Best — Juergen >> >> >> On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: >> >> I would like to react to Kasper Boye’s summary of the “solutions to the problem of defining ‘grammatical’ on the market”. >> >> There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson “Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey” (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)’s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining “grammatical”, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)’s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. >> >> Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case “grammatical meaning”, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of “grammatical meaning”, for example because it’s easier to apply consistently. >> >> Best wishes, >> Dmitry >> >> -------- >> Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. >> (accessible at: https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 ; it’s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) >> >> >> 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : >> Dear all, >> >> I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas about the job grammatical items do. >> >> There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ”grammatical” on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. >> >> Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. >> >> Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. >> >> If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. >> >> Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar’s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. >> >> With best wishes, >> Kasper >> >> References >> Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. >> Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf >> >> Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. >> >> Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. >> >> Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 >> >> Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. >> Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 >> >> >> >> >> Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af David Gil >> Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 >> Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories >> >> Dear Juergen and all, >> >> My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. >> >> Best, >> >> David >> >> >> McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. >> McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. >> McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 >> McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. >> >> >> On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: >> Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. >> >> Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) >> >> I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. >> >> It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. >> >> As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). >> >> Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. >> >> This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. >> >> I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) >> >> Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen >> >> -- >> David Gil >> >> Senior Scientist (Associate) >> 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 >> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 >> , >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> >> -- >> Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) >> Professor and Director of Graduate Studies >> Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science >> University at Buffalo >> >> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus >> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 >> Phone: (716) 645 0127 >> Fax: (716) 645 3825 >> Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu >> Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ >> >> Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. >> >> There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In >> (Leonard Cohen) >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> -- >> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> >> Dan I. Slobin >> Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics >> University of California, Berkeley >> email: slobin at berkeley.edu >> address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 >> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > Dan I. Slobin > Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics > University of California, Berkeley > email: slobin at berkeley.edu > address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Adam.TALLMAN at cnrs.fr Sun Jun 21 15:39:06 2020 From: Adam.TALLMAN at cnrs.fr (TALLMAN Adam) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2020 19:39:06 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic structure In-Reply-To: References: , Message-ID: <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED52E@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> Thanks Natalie - works like your diss are what I was looking for. I was just fishing for sources not trying to imply that I had some hidden standard of what the morphosyntactic evidence should be. Generally (perhaps your thesis is a special exception), works in prosodic phonology provide no evidence for their syntactic parses - and that's true of all the sources you cited apart from your dissertation. Perhaps with Nespor and Vogel its not so bad because everyone agreed [!?] what the correct formal syntactic analysis of Italian, Greek etc. should be at the time of writing. For Selkirk's analysis of Xitsonga, I'm less sure - syntactic parses of sentences are given, but it would have been nice to have some account of how clause boundaries, words etc. are defined or identified (a few years ago there was a long unresolved discussion on lingtyp about how to define a word / X0). Any source that defines something like an X0 (a la Bruening for example) would have been what I was looking for (but more precise definitions would obviously be preferable). best, Adam best, Adam Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin) ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, Lyon (07) Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867 ________________________________ De : Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] de la part de Larry M. HYMAN [hyman at berkeley.edu] Envoyé : samedi 20 juin 2020 17:48 À : Natalie Weber Cc : LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG Objet : Re: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic structure Thanks for your comments on prosodic phonology and syntax (and for the link to your Blackfoot!). I wonder if you see one of your first two parts as prior to the other, either logically, temporally, or practically? * 1. Independent phonological evidence for prosodic constituents * 2. Independent syntactic evidence for syntactic constituents The reason I ask is that I find that the interface is best studied by language specialists who let the phonological facts of the language drive the "interface", rather than starting with preconceived notions of abstract syntax (which can/should come in later, once you have a handle on the complexities). Having worked extensively on the syntax-phonology interface in a number of Bantu languages, I can tell you that none of them have prosodic facts that provide a perfect correlation to pre-existing views of abstract syntax. In current work I am doing on Runyankore and related Rutara Bantu languages, there are distinct differences between the prosodic effects on the head noun vs. on the verb, despite X-bar theory, which appear to follow their own "logic". Digging into the details to discover the wide range of surprising facts that speakers/languages exploit has been very rewarding, if not producing quite a bit of humility. I find myself in agreement with some wise remarks made by Akinlabi & Liberman (2000) several years ago: "Whether formal modeling is treated simply as programming for some practical purpose, or as a method of investigating the properties of the cognitive systems involved, it can and should be separated in most cases from the problem of determining the facts and the descriptive generalizations." (p.60) "The documentation of... descriptive generalizations is sometimes clearer and more accessible when expressed in terms of a detailed formal reconstruction, but only in the rare and happy case that the formalism fits the data so well that the resulting account is clearer and easier to understand than the list of categories of facts that it encodes...." (p.54) While I cannot argue against the wisdom of phonologists and syntacticians working together, which is happening, and linguists knowing both phonology and syntax, the main problem in the syntax-phonology interface area is that there are still so few exhaustive studies of "the facts". Linguists on both "persuasions" have been too content to stop short. Akinlabi, Akinbiyi & Mark Liberman. 2000. The tonal phonology of Yoruba clitics. In B. Gerlach & J. Grizjenhout (eds), Clitics in phonology, morphology, and syntax, 31-62. Amsterdam: Benjamins. PS If anyone is interested I have a recent paper that I could send that will give a hint of the complexities and non-isomorphisms I refer to above: "Prosodic asymmetries in nominal vs. verbal phrases in Bantu". On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 8:09 AM Natalie Weber > wrote: I agree. This is a failing of a lot of prosodic phonology literature, although perhaps for good reason. Ideally, a study of the correspondence between prosodic and syntactic structure would have three parts: 1. Independent phonological evidence for prosodic constituents 2. Independent syntactic evidence for syntactic constituents 3. Explicit characterization of the mapping between the two But in practice you will often only see 2 out 3 of those, because it's uncommon for phonologists to be well-versed in syntax enough to study the syntax side of things, and vice versa. Personally, I'm hoping to encourage more cross-subfield collaborations. My dissertation discusses correspondences between syntactic, prosodic, and metrical constituents in Blackfoot (Algonquian), and I address each of the three points above. I discuss independent syntactic evidence for the CP and vP constituents, independent phonological evidence for the PPh and PWd constituents, and then discuss some of the implications for mapping between them. It was a huge undertaking (hence why I think we need co-authored studies), but it's also one of the only studies of prosodic phonology I know of that attempts to address all three points. You can download it at http://hdl.handle.net/2429/74075 if you are interested. Regarding some of the recent and seminal papers in prosodic phonology: The mentions of syntactic 'words' (X0) and 'phrases' (XP) have increased since Selkirk's (2011) "The syntax-phonology interface" paper on Match Theory. In her earlier work, she was more explicit about relating the syntactic definitions to X-bar theory. In my interpretation, that means that X0 is a minimal phrase (not a syntactic "word", which is not a primitive type). In theory, then, these papers could use typical tests for phrasal constituency, such as movement, uninterruptibility, etc. Like you, I've found that they don't, but it's good to remember that it should in principle be possible to show this. There is also work like Nespor and Vogel (1986/2007) which has explicit mapping algorithms that rely on morphological units like the "stem", or "affix". Much of the time, these constituents are also not defined with a universal morphosyntactic definition, but at least they are usually well-supported on language internal facts. There's other recent work that does pretty decently though, depending on what you'll count as sufficient empirical evidence... maybe if you give us an idea of the sorts of papers you've already considered and rejected, we could fill in the gaps? (Basically, I started typing a lot more, but I wasn't sure if it was the kind of thing you are looking for.) I'd be super happy to start a shared list of prosodic phonology literature (a reading group?), if you're interested! It would be pretty useful to tag papers for how well they address the syntax side of things via empirical generalizations. Best, --Natalie ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Adam James Ross Tallman > Date: Wed, Jun 3, 2020, 6:07 AM Subject: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic structure To: > Hello all, I've been doing a lit. review (again) in prosodic phonology. Advocates of the prosodic hierarchy claim that prosodic levels map from specific morphosyntactic constituents like 'words' or 'phrases' or X0 and XP etc. However, I have been unable to find a single example of a paper that relates its analysis to the prosodic hierarchy that actually provides evidence for or defines the morphosyntactic categories that the prosodic domains relate to in the language under study. Of course, the fact that no evidence or definitions for X0 / XP and the like are provided does not mean there is no evidence - but the "phonology evidence only please" character of the literature makes it very difficult to come up with global assessment of how the quest for mapping rules has faired (the discussion in Scheer 2010 suggests it has been a total failure) or to distill some sort of testable hypothesis from the literature. I'm wondering if anyone has any examples at hand where such categories are provided with explicit empirical definitions. Perhaps this is just an oversight on my part. best, Adam -- Adam J.R. Tallman PhD, University of Texas at Austin Investigador del Museo de Etnografía y Folklore, la Paz ELDP -- Postdoctorante CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Natalie Weber (pronouns: they/them) Assistant Professor Department of Linguistics, Yale University _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Larry M. Hyman, Professor of Linguistics & Executive Director, France-Berkeley Fund Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/person_detail.php?person=19 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Liberman_McLemore_Woodbury-1991_Utrecht slides.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 57657 bytes Desc: Liberman_McLemore_Woodbury-1991_Utrecht slides.pdf URL: From mithun at linguistics.ucsb.edu Sun Jun 21 15:52:27 2020 From: mithun at linguistics.ucsb.edu (Marianne Mithun) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2020 12:52:27 -0700 Subject: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic structure In-Reply-To: <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED52E@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> References: <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED52E@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> Message-ID: We just had an Abralin round table on prosody and corpora. My contribution compared prosodic and syntactic constituent structure. Marianne Mithun [image: image.png] On Sun, Jun 21, 2020 at 12:39 PM TALLMAN Adam wrote: > Thanks Natalie - works like your diss are what I was looking for. I was > just fishing for sources not trying to imply that I had some hidden > standard of what the morphosyntactic evidence should be. Generally (perhaps > your thesis is a special exception), works in prosodic phonology provide no > evidence for their syntactic parses - and that's true of all the sources > you cited apart from your dissertation. Perhaps with Nespor and Vogel its > not so bad because everyone agreed [!?] what the correct formal syntactic > analysis of Italian, Greek etc. should be at the time of writing. For > Selkirk's analysis of Xitsonga, I'm less sure - syntactic parses of > sentences are given, but it would have been nice to have some account of > how clause boundaries, words etc. are defined or identified (a few years > ago there was a long unresolved discussion on lingtyp about how to define a > word / X0). > > Any source that defines something like an X0 (a la Bruening for example) > would have been what I was looking for (but more precise definitions would > obviously be preferable). > > best, > > Adam > > > > best, > > Adam > > > > > > Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin) > ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant > CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) > Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, Lyon (07) > Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867 > ------------------------------ > *De :* Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] de la part de > Larry M. HYMAN [hyman at berkeley.edu] > *Envoyé :* samedi 20 juin 2020 17:48 > *À :* Natalie Weber > *Cc :* LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG > *Objet :* Re: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and > morphosyntactic structure > > Thanks for your comments on prosodic phonology and syntax (and for the > link to your Blackfoot!). I wonder if you see one of your first two parts > as prior to the other, either logically, temporally, or practically? > > > - 1. Independent phonological evidence for prosodic constituents > - 2. Independent syntactic evidence for syntactic constituents > > > The reason I ask is that I find that the interface is best studied by > language specialists who let the phonological facts of the language drive > the "interface", rather than starting with preconceived notions of abstract > syntax (which can/should come in later, once you have a handle on the > complexities). Having worked extensively on the syntax-phonology interface > in a number of Bantu languages, I can tell you that none of them have > prosodic facts that provide a perfect correlation to pre-existing views of > abstract syntax. In current work I am doing on Runyankore and related > Rutara Bantu languages, there are distinct differences between the prosodic > effects on the head noun vs. on the verb, despite X-bar theory, which > appear to follow their own "logic". Digging into the details to discover > the wide range of surprising facts that speakers/languages exploit has been > very rewarding, if not producing quite a bit of humility. I find myself in > agreement with some wise remarks made by Akinlabi & Liberman (2000) several > years ago: > > "Whether formal modeling is treated simply as programming for some > practical purpose, or as a method of investigating the properties of the > cognitive systems involved, it can and should be separated in most cases > from the problem of determining the facts and the descriptive > generalizations." (p.60) > > "The documentation of... descriptive generalizations is sometimes clearer > and more accessible when expressed in terms of a detailed formal > reconstruction, but only in the rare and happy case that the formalism fits > the data so well that the resulting account is clearer and easier to > understand than the list of categories of facts that it encodes...." (p.54) > > While I cannot argue against the wisdom of phonologists and syntacticians > working together, which is happening, and linguists knowing both phonology > and syntax, the main problem in the syntax-phonology interface area is that > there are still so few exhaustive studies of "the facts". Linguists on both > "persuasions" have been too content to stop short. > > Akinlabi, Akinbiyi & Mark Liberman. 2000. The tonal phonology of Yoruba > clitics. In B. Gerlach & J. Grizjenhout (eds), *Clitics in phonology, > morphology, and syntax*, 31-62. Amsterdam: Benjamins. > > PS If anyone is interested I have a recent paper that I could send that > will give a hint of the complexities and non-isomorphisms I refer to above: > "Prosodic asymmetries in nominal vs. verbal phrases in Bantu". > > On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 8:09 AM Natalie Weber > wrote: > >> I agree. This is a failing of a lot of prosodic phonology literature, >> although perhaps for good reason. Ideally, a study of the correspondence >> between prosodic and syntactic structure would have three parts: >> >> 1. Independent phonological evidence for prosodic constituents >> 2. Independent syntactic evidence for syntactic constituents >> 3. Explicit characterization of the mapping between the two >> >> But in practice you will often only see 2 out 3 of those, because it's >> uncommon for phonologists to be well-versed in syntax enough to study the >> syntax side of things, and vice versa. Personally, I'm hoping to encourage >> more cross-subfield collaborations. >> >> My dissertation discusses correspondences between syntactic, prosodic, >> and metrical constituents in Blackfoot (Algonquian), and I address each of >> the three points above. I discuss independent syntactic evidence for the CP >> and *v*P constituents, independent phonological evidence for the PPh and >> PWd constituents, and then discuss some of the implications for mapping >> between them. It was a huge undertaking (hence why I think we need >> co-authored studies), but it's also one of the only studies of prosodic >> phonology I know of that attempts to address all three points. You can >> download it at http://hdl.handle.net/2429/74075 if you are interested. >> >> Regarding some of the recent and seminal papers in prosodic phonology: >> >> The mentions of syntactic 'words' (X0) and 'phrases' (XP) have increased >> since Selkirk's (2011) "The syntax-phonology interface" paper on Match >> Theory. In her earlier work, she was more explicit about relating the >> syntactic definitions to X-bar theory. In my interpretation, that means >> that X0 is a minimal phrase (not a syntactic "word", which is not a >> primitive type). In theory, then, these papers *could* use typical tests >> for phrasal constituency, such as movement, uninterruptibility, etc. >> Like you, I've found that they don't, but it's good to remember that it >> should in principle be possible to show this. >> >> There is also work like Nespor and Vogel (1986/2007) which has explicit >> mapping algorithms that rely on morphological units like the "stem", or >> "affix". Much of the time, these constituents are also not defined with a >> universal morphosyntactic definition, but at least they are usually >> well-supported on language internal facts. >> >> There's other recent work that does pretty decently though, depending on >> what you'll count as sufficient empirical evidence... maybe if you give us >> an idea of the sorts of papers you've already considered and rejected, we >> could fill in the gaps? (Basically, I started typing a lot more, but I >> wasn't sure if it was the kind of thing you are looking for.) >> >> I'd be super happy to start a shared list of prosodic phonology >> literature (a reading group?), if you're interested! It would be pretty >> useful to tag papers for how well they address the syntax side of things >> via empirical generalizations. >> >> Best, >> --Natalie >> >> >> ---------- Forwarded message --------- >> From: *Adam James Ross Tallman* >> Date: Wed, Jun 3, 2020, 6:07 AM >> Subject: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic >> structure >> To: >> >> Hello all, >> >> I've been doing a lit. review (again) in prosodic phonology. Advocates of >> the prosodic hierarchy claim that prosodic levels map from specific >> morphosyntactic constituents like 'words' or 'phrases' or X0 and XP etc. >> >> However, I have been unable to find a single example of a paper that >> relates its analysis to the prosodic hierarchy that actually provides >> evidence for or defines the morphosyntactic categories that the prosodic >> domains relate to in the language under study. >> >> Of course, the fact that no evidence or definitions for X0 / XP and the >> like are provided does not mean there is no evidence - but the "phonology >> evidence only please" character of the literature makes it very difficult >> to come up with global assessment of how the quest for mapping rules has >> faired (the discussion in Scheer 2010 suggests it has been a total failure) >> or to distill some sort of testable hypothesis from the literature. I'm >> wondering if anyone has any examples at hand where such categories are >> provided with explicit empirical definitions. Perhaps this is just an >> oversight on my part. >> >> best, >> >> Adam >> >> -- >> Adam J.R. Tallman >> PhD, University of Texas at Austin >> Investigador del Museo de Etnografía y Folklore, la Paz >> ELDP -- Postdoctorante >> CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> -- >> >> Natalie Weber >> (pronouns: *they/them*) >> >> Assistant Professor >> Department of Linguistics, Yale University >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> > > > -- > Larry M. Hyman, Professor of Linguistics & Executive Director, > France-Berkeley Fund > Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley > http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/person_detail.php?person=19 > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.png Type: image/png Size: 16562 bytes Desc: not available URL: From boye at hum.ku.dk Mon Jun 22 06:03:24 2020 From: boye at hum.ku.dk (Kasper Boye) Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2020 10:03:24 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <3180F818-F44B-43FF-A3C9-7053002AFBBF@buffalo.edu> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED341@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> <3180F818-F44B-43FF-A3C9-7053002AFBBF@buffalo.edu> Message-ID: Dear Jürgen, I am not sure I understand what you mean is the difference between your approach and Peter's and mine. We define grammatical items as those that are coded (= conventionalized) as backgrounded/secondary/'not at issue', and lexical items as those that have the potential to be foregrounded/etc. in usage. That is, we make a clear distinction between language potential and language usage, and define grammatical status as applying to language potential. How does this differ from yours? Just to make sure: all adjectives I can think of just now in the languages I know of are lexical by our definition - they can be focalized, addressed and modified. But whether adjectives are lexical or grammatical is really an empirical question. As for the issue of whether you can divide all items of a given language into two buckets, one lexical and one grammatical, I fully agree that it cannot be done neatly. The issue is complicated by e.g. polyselmy, layering and the gradualness of conventionalization. If you distinguish meanings or variants of the same items, it gets less complicated. Obviously, full verbal "have" ('I have a book') is lexical, while perfect auxiliary 'have' is grammatical, for instance. As for the question whether lexical and grammatical items can have the same inherent-semantic meaning, at least they can be very close, cf. harmonic combination. What is important, however, is that some meaning domains can be expressed both lexically and grammatically. This means that grammatical status cannot be defined in terms of inherent-semantic meaning (some grammaticalizable notions can be expressed also lexically). As for grammatical meaning, it can be defined in analogy with grammatical items. Grammatical meaning is meaning that is coded as backgrounded/secondary/not at issue. According to this definition, the past tense meaning of the English suffix "-ed" is grammatical, but so is the past tense meaning of "went". "Went" also has lexical meaning ('go'), and it is by virtue of this meaning that the item as a whole is lexical. Best wishes, Kasper -----Oprindelig meddelelse----- Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af Bohnemeyer, Juergen Sendt: 20. juni 2020 17:46 Til: TALLMAN Adam Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Adam — The notion of ‘at-issue content’ is defined in models of information structure that assume that utterances in their discourse contexts introduce or answer explicit or implicit ‘questions under discussion’ (QuDs). Craige Robert’s work is probably the most widely known exponent of this approach (Roberts 1996, 2012). Others include Büring (1997, 2003), Carlson (1982), Klein & von Stutterheim (1987, 2002), and van Kuppevelt (1995, 1996). The at-issue content of an utterance (if any) is that part of its content that provides a (complete or partial) answer to the QuD of the utterance context. I do indeed assume that there is no categorical boundary between lexicon and grammar. Any assumption to the contrary would seem to be inconsistent with both grammaticalization theory and most versions of Construction Grammar. Is there a problem with that? I wonder whether the source of your confusion regarding the variable status of adjectives stems from a failure to distinguish between an expression’s actual information status as a token in a given utterance and the expression’s inherent capability as a type of expressing at-issue content. Only the latter, not the former, is part of the proposed definition of restrictors (which I’ll remind you is merely a subtype of functional expressions - I’m *not* actually claiming that *all* functional expressions are inherently backgrounded. That is where I part company with Boye & Harder 2012, to whom I otherwise owe a debt of gratitude, as Kasper pointed out). Adjectives *can* express at-issue content, restrictors cannot. Adjectives do not become restrictors just because they are used in a backgrounded position in a given utterance. It’s type properties not matter, not token properties. What you say about adjectives and classifiers in Chacobo is of great interest to me. There is a similar phenomenon in Mayan languages: so-called ‘positionals’ (I prefer ‘dispositionals’, since the great majority of the roots lexicalize properties of inanimate referents, not postures) constitute a lexical category in their own right in Mayan. They surface as both verbs and stative predicates (traditionally, but arguably misleadingly, the latter are considered participles), but subsets of them require derivational morphology in both cases. Mayan languages have hundreds of such roots. Crucially for present purposes, many if not most of these roots can also be used as numeral classifiers. And when they are, I treat them as functional expressions. I consider this polysemy - that is to say, I assume that there is a single lexicon entry that licenses both the dispositional predicate uses and the classifier uses. In other words, I put less distance between these two uses of dispositional morphemes than I put between, say, _have_ used as a possessive predicators vs. auxiliary. That’s because it seems to me that speakers draft dispositional roots into classifier duty on the fly creatively. In other words, I see the relation between the two kinds of uses as more dynamic than static. Bottomline: we should definitely not assume that we can sort the morphemes of a language (and here I mean strings of sound used as one or multiple signs in the speech community) neatly into two buckets, one labeled “lexicon”, the other “grammar”. That is just really not how natural languages work. I’m surprised that this seems controversial? Best — Juergen Berlin, B. (1968). Tzeltal numeral classifiers: A study in ethnographic semantics. The Hague: Mouton. Büring, Daniel (1997). The 59th Street Bridge Accent. London: Routledge. Büring, Daniel (2003). On D-trees, beans, and B-accents. Linguistics and Philosophy 26: 511-545. Carlson, Lauri. 1982. Dialogue games: an approach to discourse analysis (Synthese Language Library 17). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel. Klein, W., & Von Stutterheim, C. (1987). Quaestio und referenzielle Bewegung in Erzählungen [Quaestio and referential shift in narratives]. Linguistische Berichte 109: 163-183. --- (2002). Quaestio and L-perspectivation. In C. F. Graumann, & W. Kallmeyer (Eds.), Perspective and perspectivation in discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 59-88. Roberts, C. (1996). Information Structure in Discourse: Towards an Integrated Formal Theory of Pragmatics. In Jae Hak Yoon and Andreas Kathol (eds.), Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 49. Roberts, C. (2012). Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. Semantics & Pragmatics 5 (Article 6): 1-69. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1995). Discourse structure, topicality and questioning. Linguistics 31, 109–147. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1996). Inferring from topics. Linguistics and Philosophy 19, 393–443. > On Jun 20, 2020, at 10:19 AM, TALLMAN Adam wrote: > > Dear all, > > A few of you have elaborated on my question about the meaning of "functional" and and then critiqued Juergen's terminological choices. I wonder if my question about adjectives was interpreted facetiously (like "wouldn't it be absurd if adjectives were considered functional?!"). > > Actually, it was not meant as a facetious question at all as I was attempting to understand Juergen's research question in its own terms to discern whether there was anything in the languages I was familiar with that would count as functional, but diachronically lexical without contact. > > Juergen, you answered my question, in the sense, that I think I have a better idea of how one might go about operationalizing a distinction between lexical and functional. But now I am less sure about what your original question to the listserve was. Allow me to elaborate. > > Here is your new definition: > > "a ‘lexical category’ is a class of expressions defined in terms of shared morphosyntactic properties. The members of lexical categories are inherently suitable for expressing ‘at-issue’ content and are backgrounded only when they appear in certain syntactic positions (e.g., attributive as opposed to predicative adjectives). Their combinatorial types (e.g., in a Categorial Grammar framework) are relatively simple. They express concepts of basic ontological categories." > > I think this points in the right* direction and makes me understand where you are coming from (I assume at-issue just means anything that is not presuppositional nor just implicates some meaning). But crucially the concept is now scalar or gradient (depending on how we operationalize the notion). Saying that it concerns at-issue meaning in "certain syntactic positions" (I would prefer "morphosyntactic" positions) means that for some set of morphemes / constructs / categories or whatever a, b, c, d … we could rank them in terms of the number of positions they can occur in where they express (or tend to express?) at-issue content a>b>c>d …. Or we could formulate this in terms of tokens in discourse rather than constructions abstracted from their use, but you get my point. And indeed you state. > > > "It might be best to treat this list of properties as defining the notion of ‘lexical category’ as a cluster/radio/prototype concept." > > > But now there is no nonarbitrary cut-off point between lexical and grammatical. If there is a boundary it will refer to quantal shifts in the distribution of elements along the lexical-grammatical scale: or stated another way, we know there is some sort of boundary because the distribution of elements along the scale is bimodal and elements in between the modes are statistically marginal. > > To make this more concrete, in Chácobo there are some adjectives / > adverbials that express small size or small amount of time. In certain > syntactic positions they are more likely to express backgrounded > information and in a classifier like manner appear "redundantly", but > plausibly help to track referents (referring to someone as honi yoi > 'poor man' throughout the discourse). If I scan around related > languages (I haven't done this, but let's just say hypothetically) and > I find that in these other languages they more typically display > at-issue notions (perhaps they more commonly appear in a predicative > function), have I found a case of a "functional element" that has > grammaticalized? Certainly, it expresses at-issue content less often > than others … > > I think there are *a lot* of morphemes like this in Amazonia. In my description of Chacobo I actually called them "semi-functional" (it includes associated motion morphemes, time of day adverbials, temporal distance markers) and I try to make the explicit argument that temporal distance morphemes mix and match properties of temporal adverbials with those of tense. It would be hard for me to make the case that these were not a result of contact (in fact, myself and Pattie Epps have a paper where we argue that such liminal cases might be an areal property of Southwestern Amazonia), but the point is that I find a performative contradiction in your attempt to exclude (certain types of?) adjectives and adverbs and the definition you supply. Seems like if you really wanted to test the idea that languages grammaticalize functional notions for the specific reasons you claim, you would need to actually include all of these liminal cases and explain why they do not all disappear under communicative pressure or else drop off of the grammaticalization cline and become lexical / primarily at-issue expressing elements. > > So the upshot is that I was actually wondering whether you would consider adjectives, adverbs etc. but not because they are lexical or functional, but rather because, according to your own definition they awkwardly sit in between. I was interested in what you would say about them, not whether they should be classified discretely as lexical versus functional. > > Adam > > *By "right direction" I mean interesting direction in that it could lead to developing testable hypotheses with an operationalizable set of variables that define the domain of lexical versus functional categories. I am not making the essentialist claim that it is the best definition regardless of the problem context, research question, or audience. > > > > > > > > Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin) ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant > CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, > Lyon (07) Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867 De : Lingtyp > [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] de la part de Idiatov > Dmitry [honohiiri at yandex.ru] Envoyé : samedi 20 juin 2020 15:23 À : > Kasper Boye; Dan I.SLOBIN Cc : lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; > Peter Harder Objet : Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Kasper, a quick reaction to this passage: > > “Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else – and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion.” > > While the application of the criterion of obligatoriness is surely a > delicate matter, nobody is obliged to say anything… > > To avoid the kind of logical figures that you bring up, let’s say that grammatical categories are those sets of mutually exclusive discourse prominence secondary meanings whose expression is obligatory in the constructions to which they apply. > > Dmitry > > > 20.06.2020, 15:12, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear Dmitry and all, > > First a comment on obligatoriness, then one closed classes. > > Jürgen Bohnemeyer pointed out that obligatoriness is too restrictive as a definiens of grammatical status. Another problem is that it is also too inclusive. Consider a language like German where indicative verbs are inflected for past and present tense. The intuition (which is backed up by the “encoded secondariness” definition; Boye & Harder 2012) is that the tense inflections are grammatical. But neither the past nor the present tense inflection is of course obligatory in itself: instead of past we can choose present, and vice versa. So, instead we have to say that the tense paradigm – or the choice between tenses – is obligatory: whenever you select an indicative verb, you also have to select a tense inflection. Now comes the problem. Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else – and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion. Of course, there are many ways in which obligatoriness can be saved as a definiens, but they all require that this notion is combined with something else. > > Dan Slobin pointed to the fact that items that are intuitively (and by the “encoded secondariness” definition) lexical, may form closed classes. I would like to add that closed classes may comprise both lexical and grammatical members. Within the classes of prepositions and pronouns, for instance, distinctions have occasionally been made between lexical and grammatical prepositions. Just as closed class membership seems to have a processing impact, so does the contrast between grammatical and lexical. For instance, Ishkhanyan et al. (2017) showed that the production of French pronouns identified as grammatical based on Boye & Harder (2017) is more severely impaired in agrammatic aphasia than the production of pronouns classified as lexical, and Messerschmidt et al. (2019) showed that Danish prepositions classified as grammatical attract less attention than prepositions classified as lexical. > > Best wishes, > Kasper > > Boye, K. & P. Harder. 2012. "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization". Language 88.1. 1-44. > > Ishkhanyan, B., H. Sahraoui, P. Harder, J. Mogensen & K. Boye. 2017. "Grammatical and lexical pronoun dissociation in French speakers with agrammatic aphasia: A usage-based account and REF-based hypothesis". Journal of Neurolinguistics 44. 1-16. > > Messerschmidt, M., K. Boye, M.M. Overmark, S.T. Kristensen & P. Harder. 2018. "Sondringen mellem grammatiske og leksikalske præpositioner" [’The distinction between grammatical and lexical prepositions’]. Ny forskning i grammatik 25. 89-106. > > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af > Dan I. SLOBIN > Sendt: 19. juni 2020 23:59 > Til: Idiatov Dmitry > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency—all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as “grammatical” elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb—entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. > > Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, Dan > > On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > Dear Juergen, > > I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. > > The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of “optionality” possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. > > However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. > > The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. > > Best, > Dmitry > > > 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : > Dear Dmitry — I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. > > A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. > > My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ‘inflection’ that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It’s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. > > So what I’m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. > > (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ‘functional > expressions’ (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label > expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional > ‘syncategoremata’. But, I also believe that we should worry about the > concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I > realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) > Whorfian :-)) > > Best — Juergen > > > On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > > I would like to react to Kasper Boye’s summary of the “solutions to the problem of defining ‘grammatical’ on the market”. > > There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson “Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey” (see https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flinguistlist.org%2Fissues%2F6%2F6-411.html&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668709238&sdata=2oApFblvdWuo%2Fh6Az6pMUZl%2BH4NE0BZSt%2FrPwZetsxU%3D&reserved=0). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)’s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining “grammatical”, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)’s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. > > Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case “grammatical meaning”, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of “grammatical meaning”, for example because it’s easier to apply consistently. > > Best wishes, > Dmitry > > -------- > Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. > (accessible at: > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffile > sender.renater.fr%2F%3Fs%3Ddownload%26token%3D24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0- > bd739bd16d95&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904f > e36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282 > 648668719231&sdata=O0qLFjyJn3jUGIFdbd8M9L90FTzOL2EJ72eaF3pnnng%3D& > amp;reserved=0 ; it’s also available from my website, but the server > has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) > > > 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear all, > > I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas about the job grammatical items do. > > There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ”grammatical” on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. > > Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. > > Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. > > If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. > > Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar’s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. > > With best wishes, > Kasper > > References > Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. > Link: > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww. > jstor.org%2Fstable%2Fpdf%2F41348882.pdf&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%4 > 0hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c > 9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=%2FOW1%2BzYhXVfMlfsy > 7r8SPkQH3iQGKvwjpUHII5QUmzk%3D&reserved=0 > > Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. > > Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. > > Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. > Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs > in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi. > org%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0186685&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hu > m.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1 > ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=fsFk32aQ4ZHDCQ8QfJEec1N > ipSIJa0HDCv39YGpJoCE%3D&reserved=0 > > Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. > Link: > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi. > org%2F10.1080%2F23273798.2019.1616104&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40h > um.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f > 1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=pbAdP0mwCENSzfjLjzPAnC > pWF2mgHYOSinCIgz9zFJc%3D&reserved=0 > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af > David Gil > Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 > Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Juergen and all, > > My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. > > Best, > > David > > > McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. > McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. > McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) > "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. > > > On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. > > Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in > which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in > one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, > with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the > former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) > there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of > the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to > include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically > interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of > contact models.) > > I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. > > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > > As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). > > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I > receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen > > -- > David Gil > > Senior Scientist (Associate) > 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): > +62-81344082091 , _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists > erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 > Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd > a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL > u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists > erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 > Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd > a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL > u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 > > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics > and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy > Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http:%2F%2Fwww.acs > u.buffalo.edu%2F~jb77%2F&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7e > c0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0% > 7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=CiDmvMRipRj7%2FqbWgbkzsNeeGn2nSZB6W > jB4fiUeJJs%3D&reserved=0 > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard > Cohen) > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists > erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 > Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd > a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL > u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 > > > -- > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > Dan I. Slobin > Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics University of > California, Berkeley > email: slobin at berkeley.edu > address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists > erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 > Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd > a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL > u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http:%2F%2Fwww.acsu.buffalo.edu%2F~jb77%2F&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668729225&sdata=meBLy8QTd8n01rsw6NFWAOMWUe8TeLg6VJKNaMaYoeA%3D&reserved=0 Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flistserv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668729225&sdata=wwgzwTj%2BdwW80HsR3BKkHf3yZDGFFG0vi4bm9qliMxo%3D&reserved=0 From jb77 at buffalo.edu Tue Jun 23 23:09:28 2020 From: jb77 at buffalo.edu (Bohnemeyer, Juergen) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2020 03:09:28 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED341@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> <3180F818-F44B-43FF-A3C9-7053002AFBBF@buffalo.edu> Message-ID: <1A010095-9961-4B8A-AA7D-61EF65057CFD@buffalo.edu> Dear Kasper — There are many kinds of functional expressions that are not inherently backgrounded, such as negation, quantificational determiners, modals, demonstratives, emphatic pronouns, and so on. If I remember Boyer & Harder (2012) correctly (apologies if I don’t!), you treat these as not grammaticalized. I consider them weakly grammaticalized. But more to the point, I consider them functional expressions, i.e., part of the grammatical = combinatorial system of language. At the moment, I’m working with a classification of six subtypes of functional expressions. Here are some informal characterizations: Placeholders such as pronominal elements are indexical representations of referents. Their referents may be at-issue content, but their lexical meanings are not, as they merely specify search domains for the referents. Functors such as negation, numerals, adnominal or adverbial quantificational expressions, and modal operators express monovalent conceptual operators that are part of the speaker’s intended message and thus may be at-issue content. Relators such as adpositions, connectives, and “semantic”/”lexical” case-markers, express conceptual relations that are part of the speaker’s intended message. Social deictics, or ‘honorifics’ in a technical sense of that term, cannot be at-issue content and do not contribute to the truth-conditions of an utterance. Their presence in an utterance satisfies pragmatic felicity conditions that arise from societal norms of interpersonal relation management. Restrictors, such as markers of tense, viewpoint aspect, mood, gender/noun class, number, or structural case, as well as complementizers, are redundant expressions of parts of the speaker’s communicative intention that cannot be at-issue content. Their presence in an utterance, which may or may not be morphosyntactically required, is motivated by a reduction of the hearer’s inference load. Restrictors are at the heart of the book. The theory employs a continuous probabilistic notion of redundancy/informativeness according to which an expression is the more redundant/less informative in a given context the more predictable its occurrence in the context is. A possible sixths class is formed by facilitators, which like restrictors are metalinguistic expressions that help clarify the speaker’s communicative intention rather than to be themselves “essential” (non-redundant) expressions of part of the communicative intent. Facilitators differ from restrictors in that, rather than to clarify the lexical content of the utterance, they serve to facilitate the coordination between the interlocutors. Examples include illocutionary expressions, but also some interjections and discourse particles. (It is at present not clear to me whether it is necessary for an evolutionary theory of functional categories to distinguish between restrictors and facilitators.) As you can see, the lower half of these are inherently backgrounded = non-at-issue, whereas the upper half are not. But I’m primarily interested in restrictors, and as far as those are concerned, our approaches appear to be in agreement. Best — Juergen On Jun 22, 2020, at 6:03 AM, Kasper Boye > wrote: Dear Jürgen, I am not sure I understand what you mean is the difference between your approach and Peter's and mine. We define grammatical items as those that are coded (= conventionalized) as backgrounded/secondary/'not at issue', and lexical items as those that have the potential to be foregrounded/etc. in usage. That is, we make a clear distinction between language potential and language usage, and define grammatical status as applying to language potential. How does this differ from yours? Just to make sure: all adjectives I can think of just now in the languages I know of are lexical by our definition - they can be focalized, addressed and modified. But whether adjectives are lexical or grammatical is really an empirical question. As for the issue of whether you can divide all items of a given language into two buckets, one lexical and one grammatical, I fully agree that it cannot be done neatly. The issue is complicated by e.g. polyselmy, layering and the gradualness of conventionalization. If you distinguish meanings or variants of the same items, it gets less complicated. Obviously, full verbal "have" ('I have a book') is lexical, while perfect auxiliary 'have' is grammatical, for instance. As for the question whether lexical and grammatical items can have the same inherent-semantic meaning, at least they can be very close, cf. harmonic combination. What is important, however, is that some meaning domains can be expressed both lexically and grammatically. This means that grammatical status cannot be defined in terms of inherent-semantic meaning (some grammaticalizable notions can be expressed also lexically). As for grammatical meaning, it can be defined in analogy with grammatical items. Grammatical meaning is meaning that is coded as backgrounded/secondary/not at issue. According to this definition, the past tense meaning of the English suffix "-ed" is grammatical, but so is the past tense meaning of "went". "Went" also has lexical meaning ('go'), and it is by virtue of this meaning that the item as a whole is lexical. Best wishes, Kasper -----Oprindelig meddelelse----- Fra: Lingtyp > På vegne af Bohnemeyer, Juergen Sendt: 20. juni 2020 17:46 Til: TALLMAN Adam > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Adam — The notion of ‘at-issue content’ is defined in models of information structure that assume that utterances in their discourse contexts introduce or answer explicit or implicit ‘questions under discussion’ (QuDs). Craige Robert’s work is probably the most widely known exponent of this approach (Roberts 1996, 2012). Others include Büring (1997, 2003), Carlson (1982), Klein & von Stutterheim (1987, 2002), and van Kuppevelt (1995, 1996). The at-issue content of an utterance (if any) is that part of its content that provides a (complete or partial) answer to the QuD of the utterance context. I do indeed assume that there is no categorical boundary between lexicon and grammar. Any assumption to the contrary would seem to be inconsistent with both grammaticalization theory and most versions of Construction Grammar. Is there a problem with that? I wonder whether the source of your confusion regarding the variable status of adjectives stems from a failure to distinguish between an expression’s actual information status as a token in a given utterance and the expression’s inherent capability as a type of expressing at-issue content. Only the latter, not the former, is part of the proposed definition of restrictors (which I’ll remind you is merely a subtype of functional expressions - I’m *not* actually claiming that *all* functional expressions are inherently backgrounded. That is where I part company with Boye & Harder 2012, to whom I otherwise owe a debt of gratitude, as Kasper pointed out). Adjectives *can* express at-issue content, restrictors cannot. Adjectives do not become restrictors just because they are used in a backgrounded position in a given utterance. It’s type properties not matter, not token properties. What you say about adjectives and classifiers in Chacobo is of great interest to me. There is a similar phenomenon in Mayan languages: so-called ‘positionals’ (I prefer ‘dispositionals’, since the great majority of the roots lexicalize properties of inanimate referents, not postures) constitute a lexical category in their own right in Mayan. They surface as both verbs and stative predicates (traditionally, but arguably misleadingly, the latter are considered participles), but subsets of them require derivational morphology in both cases. Mayan languages have hundreds of such roots. Crucially for present purposes, many if not most of these roots can also be used as numeral classifiers. And when they are, I treat them as functional expressions. I consider this polysemy - that is to say, I assume that there is a single lexicon entry that licenses both the dispositional predicate uses and the classifier uses. In other words, I put less distance between these two uses of dispositional morphemes than I put between, say, _have_ used as a possessive predicators vs. auxiliary. That’s because it seems to me that speakers draft dispositional roots into classifier duty on the fly creatively. In other words, I see the relation between the two kinds of uses as more dynamic than static. Bottomline: we should definitely not assume that we can sort the morphemes of a language (and here I mean strings of sound used as one or multiple signs in the speech community) neatly into two buckets, one labeled “lexicon”, the other “grammar”. That is just really not how natural languages work. I’m surprised that this seems controversial? Best — Juergen Berlin, B. (1968). Tzeltal numeral classifiers: A study in ethnographic semantics. The Hague: Mouton. Büring, Daniel (1997). The 59th Street Bridge Accent. London: Routledge. Büring, Daniel (2003). On D-trees, beans, and B-accents. Linguistics and Philosophy 26: 511-545. Carlson, Lauri. 1982. Dialogue games: an approach to discourse analysis (Synthese Language Library 17). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel. Klein, W., & Von Stutterheim, C. (1987). Quaestio und referenzielle Bewegung in Erzählungen [Quaestio and referential shift in narratives]. Linguistische Berichte 109: 163-183. --- (2002). Quaestio and L-perspectivation. In C. F. Graumann, & W. Kallmeyer (Eds.), Perspective and perspectivation in discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 59-88. Roberts, C. (1996). Information Structure in Discourse: Towards an Integrated Formal Theory of Pragmatics. In Jae Hak Yoon and Andreas Kathol (eds.), Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 49. Roberts, C. (2012). Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. Semantics & Pragmatics 5 (Article 6): 1-69. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1995). Discourse structure, topicality and questioning. Linguistics 31, 109–147. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1996). Inferring from topics. Linguistics and Philosophy 19, 393–443. On Jun 20, 2020, at 10:19 AM, TALLMAN Adam > wrote: Dear all, A few of you have elaborated on my question about the meaning of "functional" and and then critiqued Juergen's terminological choices. I wonder if my question about adjectives was interpreted facetiously (like "wouldn't it be absurd if adjectives were considered functional?!"). Actually, it was not meant as a facetious question at all as I was attempting to understand Juergen's research question in its own terms to discern whether there was anything in the languages I was familiar with that would count as functional, but diachronically lexical without contact. Juergen, you answered my question, in the sense, that I think I have a better idea of how one might go about operationalizing a distinction between lexical and functional. But now I am less sure about what your original question to the listserve was. Allow me to elaborate. Here is your new definition: "a ‘lexical category’ is a class of expressions defined in terms of shared morphosyntactic properties. The members of lexical categories are inherently suitable for expressing ‘at-issue’ content and are backgrounded only when they appear in certain syntactic positions (e.g., attributive as opposed to predicative adjectives). Their combinatorial types (e.g., in a Categorial Grammar framework) are relatively simple. They express concepts of basic ontological categories." I think this points in the right* direction and makes me understand where you are coming from (I assume at-issue just means anything that is not presuppositional nor just implicates some meaning). But crucially the concept is now scalar or gradient (depending on how we operationalize the notion). Saying that it concerns at-issue meaning in "certain syntactic positions" (I would prefer "morphosyntactic" positions) means that for some set of morphemes / constructs / categories or whatever a, b, c, d … we could rank them in terms of the number of positions they can occur in where they express (or tend to express?) at-issue content a>b>c>d …. Or we could formulate this in terms of tokens in discourse rather than constructions abstracted from their use, but you get my point. And indeed you state. "It might be best to treat this list of properties as defining the notion of ‘lexical category’ as a cluster/radio/prototype concept." But now there is no nonarbitrary cut-off point between lexical and grammatical. If there is a boundary it will refer to quantal shifts in the distribution of elements along the lexical-grammatical scale: or stated another way, we know there is some sort of boundary because the distribution of elements along the scale is bimodal and elements in between the modes are statistically marginal. To make this more concrete, in Chácobo there are some adjectives / adverbials that express small size or small amount of time. In certain syntactic positions they are more likely to express backgrounded information and in a classifier like manner appear "redundantly", but plausibly help to track referents (referring to someone as honi yoi 'poor man' throughout the discourse). If I scan around related languages (I haven't done this, but let's just say hypothetically) and I find that in these other languages they more typically display at-issue notions (perhaps they more commonly appear in a predicative function), have I found a case of a "functional element" that has grammaticalized? Certainly, it expresses at-issue content less often than others … I think there are *a lot* of morphemes like this in Amazonia. In my description of Chacobo I actually called them "semi-functional" (it includes associated motion morphemes, time of day adverbials, temporal distance markers) and I try to make the explicit argument that temporal distance morphemes mix and match properties of temporal adverbials with those of tense. It would be hard for me to make the case that these were not a result of contact (in fact, myself and Pattie Epps have a paper where we argue that such liminal cases might be an areal property of Southwestern Amazonia), but the point is that I find a performative contradiction in your attempt to exclude (certain types of?) adjectives and adverbs and the definition you supply. Seems like if you really wanted to test the idea that languages grammaticalize functional notions for the specific reasons you claim, you would need to actually include all of these liminal cases and explain why they do not all disappear under communicative pressure or else drop off of the grammaticalization cline and become lexical / primarily at-issue expressing elements. So the upshot is that I was actually wondering whether you would consider adjectives, adverbs etc. but not because they are lexical or functional, but rather because, according to your own definition they awkwardly sit in between. I was interested in what you would say about them, not whether they should be classified discretely as lexical versus functional. Adam *By "right direction" I mean interesting direction in that it could lead to developing testable hypotheses with an operationalizable set of variables that define the domain of lexical versus functional categories. I am not making the essentialist claim that it is the best definition regardless of the problem context, research question, or audience. Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin) ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, Lyon (07) Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867 De : Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] de la part de Idiatov Dmitry [honohiiri at yandex.ru] Envoyé : samedi 20 juin 2020 15:23 À : Kasper Boye; Dan I.SLOBIN Cc : lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder Objet : Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Kasper, a quick reaction to this passage: “Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else – and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion.” While the application of the criterion of obligatoriness is surely a delicate matter, nobody is obliged to say anything… To avoid the kind of logical figures that you bring up, let’s say that grammatical categories are those sets of mutually exclusive discourse prominence secondary meanings whose expression is obligatory in the constructions to which they apply. Dmitry 20.06.2020, 15:12, "Kasper Boye" >: Dear Dmitry and all, First a comment on obligatoriness, then one closed classes. Jürgen Bohnemeyer pointed out that obligatoriness is too restrictive as a definiens of grammatical status. Another problem is that it is also too inclusive. Consider a language like German where indicative verbs are inflected for past and present tense. The intuition (which is backed up by the “encoded secondariness” definition; Boye & Harder 2012) is that the tense inflections are grammatical. But neither the past nor the present tense inflection is of course obligatory in itself: instead of past we can choose present, and vice versa. So, instead we have to say that the tense paradigm – or the choice between tenses – is obligatory: whenever you select an indicative verb, you also have to select a tense inflection. Now comes the problem. Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else – and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion. Of course, there are many ways in which obligatoriness can be saved as a definiens, but they all require that this notion is combined with something else. Dan Slobin pointed to the fact that items that are intuitively (and by the “encoded secondariness” definition) lexical, may form closed classes. I would like to add that closed classes may comprise both lexical and grammatical members. Within the classes of prepositions and pronouns, for instance, distinctions have occasionally been made between lexical and grammatical prepositions. Just as closed class membership seems to have a processing impact, so does the contrast between grammatical and lexical. For instance, Ishkhanyan et al. (2017) showed that the production of French pronouns identified as grammatical based on Boye & Harder (2017) is more severely impaired in agrammatic aphasia than the production of pronouns classified as lexical, and Messerschmidt et al. (2019) showed that Danish prepositions classified as grammatical attract less attention than prepositions classified as lexical. Best wishes, Kasper Boye, K. & P. Harder. 2012. "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization". Language 88.1. 1-44. Ishkhanyan, B., H. Sahraoui, P. Harder, J. Mogensen & K. Boye. 2017. "Grammatical and lexical pronoun dissociation in French speakers with agrammatic aphasia: A usage-based account and REF-based hypothesis". Journal of Neurolinguistics 44. 1-16. Messerschmidt, M., K. Boye, M.M. Overmark, S.T. Kristensen & P. Harder. 2018. "Sondringen mellem grammatiske og leksikalske præpositioner" [’The distinction between grammatical and lexical prepositions’]. Ny forskning i grammatik 25. 89-106. Fra: Lingtyp > På vegne af Dan I. SLOBIN Sendt: 19. juni 2020 23:59 Til: Idiatov Dmitry > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency—all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as “grammatical” elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb—entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, Dan On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: Dear Juergen, I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of “optionality” possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. Best, Dmitry 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" >: Dear Dmitry — I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ‘inflection’ that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It’s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. So what I’m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ‘functional expressions’ (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ‘syncategoremata’. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) Best — Juergen On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: I would like to react to Kasper Boye’s summary of the “solutions to the problem of defining ‘grammatical’ on the market”. There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson “Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey” (see https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flinguistlist.org%2Fissues%2F6%2F6-411.html&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668709238&sdata=2oApFblvdWuo%2Fh6Az6pMUZl%2BH4NE0BZSt%2FrPwZetsxU%3D&reserved=0). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)’s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining “grammatical”, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)’s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case “grammatical meaning”, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of “grammatical meaning”, for example because it’s easier to apply consistently. Best wishes, Dmitry -------- Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. (accessible at: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffile sender.renater.fr%2F%3Fs%3Ddownload%26token%3D24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0- bd739bd16d95&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904f e36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282 648668719231&sdata=O0qLFjyJn3jUGIFdbd8M9L90FTzOL2EJ72eaF3pnnng%3D& amp;reserved=0 ; it’s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : Dear all, I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas about the job grammatical items do. There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ”grammatical” on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar’s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. With best wishes, Kasper References Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. Link: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww. jstor.org%2Fstable%2Fpdf%2F41348882.pdf&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%4 0hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c 9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=%2FOW1%2BzYhXVfMlfsy 7r8SPkQH3iQGKvwjpUHII5QUmzk%3D&reserved=0 Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi. org%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0186685&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hu m.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1 ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=fsFk32aQ4ZHDCQ8QfJEec1N ipSIJa0HDCv39YGpJoCE%3D&reserved=0 Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. Link: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi. org%2F10.1080%2F23273798.2019.1616104&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40h um.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f 1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=pbAdP0mwCENSzfjLjzPAnC pWF2mgHYOSinCIgz9zFJc%3D&reserved=0 Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af David Gil Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Juergen and all, My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. Best, David McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 , _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http:%2F%2Fwww.acs u.buffalo.edu%2F~jb77%2F&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7e c0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0% 7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=CiDmvMRipRj7%2FqbWgbkzsNeeGn2nSZB6W jB4fiUeJJs%3D&reserved=0 Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 -- <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Dan I. Slobin Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics University of California, Berkeley email: slobin at berkeley.edu address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http:%2F%2Fwww.acsu.buffalo.edu%2F~jb77%2F&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668729225&sdata=meBLy8QTd8n01rsw6NFWAOMWUe8TeLg6VJKNaMaYoeA%3D&reserved=0 Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flistserv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668729225&sdata=wwgzwTj%2BdwW80HsR3BKkHf3yZDGFFG0vi4bm9qliMxo%3D&reserved=0 -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From boye at hum.ku.dk Wed Jun 24 04:56:38 2020 From: boye at hum.ku.dk (Kasper Boye) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2020 08:56:38 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <1A010095-9961-4B8A-AA7D-61EF65057CFD@buffalo.edu> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED341@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> <3180F818-F44B-43FF-A3C9-7053002AFBBF@buffalo.edu> <1A010095-9961-4B8A-AA7D-61EF65057CFD@buffalo.edu> Message-ID: Dear Jürgen, Thank you very much for the clarification! Yes, if they are not conventionalized as carriers of background information, we would treat them as not grammaticalized. For some of the classes you distinguish, we would claim that they may have both lexical and grammatical members (this is a language-specific and empirical issue, however). For instance, some adpositions and pronouns (e.g. English off, that) are lexical, others grammatical (e.g. of, it). The former can be modified (it went straight off the road; I hate exactly that), the latter cannot (*they live within 10 miles straight of the city; *I hate exactly it). I look forward to following your work. Over and out – with best wishes, Kasper Fra: Bohnemeyer, Juergen Sendt: 24. juni 2020 05:09 Til: Kasper Boye Cc: TALLMAN Adam ; lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Kasper — There are many kinds of functional expressions that are not inherently backgrounded, such as negation, quantificational determiners, modals, demonstratives, emphatic pronouns, and so on. If I remember Boyer & Harder (2012) correctly (apologies if I don’t!), you treat these as not grammaticalized. I consider them weakly grammaticalized. But more to the point, I consider them functional expressions, i.e., part of the grammatical = combinatorial system of language. At the moment, I’m working with a classification of six subtypes of functional expressions. Here are some informal characterizations: Placeholders such as pronominal elements are indexical representations of referents. Their referents may be at-issue content, but their lexical meanings are not, as they merely specify search domains for the referents. Functors such as negation, numerals, adnominal or adverbial quantificational expressions, and modal operators express monovalent conceptual operators that are part of the speaker’s intended message and thus may be at-issue content. Relators such as adpositions, connectives, and “semantic”/”lexical” case-markers, express conceptual relations that are part of the speaker’s intended message. Social deictics, or ‘honorifics’ in a technical sense of that term, cannot be at-issue content and do not contribute to the truth-conditions of an utterance. Their presence in an utterance satisfies pragmatic felicity conditions that arise from societal norms of interpersonal relation management. Restrictors, such as markers of tense, viewpoint aspect, mood, gender/noun class, number, or structural case, as well as complementizers, are redundant expressions of parts of the speaker’s communicative intention that cannot be at-issue content. Their presence in an utterance, which may or may not be morphosyntactically required, is motivated by a reduction of the hearer’s inference load. Restrictors are at the heart of the book. The theory employs a continuous probabilistic notion of redundancy/informativeness according to which an expression is the more redundant/less informative in a given context the more predictable its occurrence in the context is. A possible sixths class is formed by facilitators, which like restrictors are metalinguistic expressions that help clarify the speaker’s communicative intention rather than to be themselves “essential” (non-redundant) expressions of part of the communicative intent. Facilitators differ from restrictors in that, rather than to clarify the lexical content of the utterance, they serve to facilitate the coordination between the interlocutors. Examples include illocutionary expressions, but also some interjections and discourse particles. (It is at present not clear to me whether it is necessary for an evolutionary theory of functional categories to distinguish between restrictors and facilitators.) As you can see, the lower half of these are inherently backgrounded = non-at-issue, whereas the upper half are not. But I’m primarily interested in restrictors, and as far as those are concerned, our approaches appear to be in agreement. Best — Juergen On Jun 22, 2020, at 6:03 AM, Kasper Boye > wrote: Dear Jürgen, I am not sure I understand what you mean is the difference between your approach and Peter's and mine. We define grammatical items as those that are coded (= conventionalized) as backgrounded/secondary/'not at issue', and lexical items as those that have the potential to be foregrounded/etc. in usage. That is, we make a clear distinction between language potential and language usage, and define grammatical status as applying to language potential. How does this differ from yours? Just to make sure: all adjectives I can think of just now in the languages I know of are lexical by our definition - they can be focalized, addressed and modified. But whether adjectives are lexical or grammatical is really an empirical question. As for the issue of whether you can divide all items of a given language into two buckets, one lexical and one grammatical, I fully agree that it cannot be done neatly. The issue is complicated by e.g. polyselmy, layering and the gradualness of conventionalization. If you distinguish meanings or variants of the same items, it gets less complicated. Obviously, full verbal "have" ('I have a book') is lexical, while perfect auxiliary 'have' is grammatical, for instance. As for the question whether lexical and grammatical items can have the same inherent-semantic meaning, at least they can be very close, cf. harmonic combination. What is important, however, is that some meaning domains can be expressed both lexically and grammatically. This means that grammatical status cannot be defined in terms of inherent-semantic meaning (some grammaticalizable notions can be expressed also lexically). As for grammatical meaning, it can be defined in analogy with grammatical items. Grammatical meaning is meaning that is coded as backgrounded/secondary/not at issue. According to this definition, the past tense meaning of the English suffix "-ed" is grammatical, but so is the past tense meaning of "went". "Went" also has lexical meaning ('go'), and it is by virtue of this meaning that the item as a whole is lexical. Best wishes, Kasper -----Oprindelig meddelelse----- Fra: Lingtyp > På vegne af Bohnemeyer, Juergen Sendt: 20. juni 2020 17:46 Til: TALLMAN Adam > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Adam — The notion of ‘at-issue content’ is defined in models of information structure that assume that utterances in their discourse contexts introduce or answer explicit or implicit ‘questions under discussion’ (QuDs). Craige Robert’s work is probably the most widely known exponent of this approach (Roberts 1996, 2012). Others include Büring (1997, 2003), Carlson (1982), Klein & von Stutterheim (1987, 2002), and van Kuppevelt (1995, 1996). The at-issue content of an utterance (if any) is that part of its content that provides a (complete or partial) answer to the QuD of the utterance context. I do indeed assume that there is no categorical boundary between lexicon and grammar. Any assumption to the contrary would seem to be inconsistent with both grammaticalization theory and most versions of Construction Grammar. Is there a problem with that? I wonder whether the source of your confusion regarding the variable status of adjectives stems from a failure to distinguish between an expression’s actual information status as a token in a given utterance and the expression’s inherent capability as a type of expressing at-issue content. Only the latter, not the former, is part of the proposed definition of restrictors (which I’ll remind you is merely a subtype of functional expressions - I’m *not* actually claiming that *all* functional expressions are inherently backgrounded. That is where I part company with Boye & Harder 2012, to whom I otherwise owe a debt of gratitude, as Kasper pointed out). Adjectives *can* express at-issue content, restrictors cannot. Adjectives do not become restrictors just because they are used in a backgrounded position in a given utterance. It’s type properties not matter, not token properties. What you say about adjectives and classifiers in Chacobo is of great interest to me. There is a similar phenomenon in Mayan languages: so-called ‘positionals’ (I prefer ‘dispositionals’, since the great majority of the roots lexicalize properties of inanimate referents, not postures) constitute a lexical category in their own right in Mayan. They surface as both verbs and stative predicates (traditionally, but arguably misleadingly, the latter are considered participles), but subsets of them require derivational morphology in both cases. Mayan languages have hundreds of such roots. Crucially for present purposes, many if not most of these roots can also be used as numeral classifiers. And when they are, I treat them as functional expressions. I consider this polysemy - that is to say, I assume that there is a single lexicon entry that licenses both the dispositional predicate uses and the classifier uses. In other words, I put less distance between these two uses of dispositional morphemes than I put between, say, _have_ used as a possessive predicators vs. auxiliary. That’s because it seems to me that speakers draft dispositional roots into classifier duty on the fly creatively. In other words, I see the relation between the two kinds of uses as more dynamic than static. Bottomline: we should definitely not assume that we can sort the morphemes of a language (and here I mean strings of sound used as one or multiple signs in the speech community) neatly into two buckets, one labeled “lexicon”, the other “grammar”. That is just really not how natural languages work. I’m surprised that this seems controversial? Best — Juergen Berlin, B. (1968). Tzeltal numeral classifiers: A study in ethnographic semantics. The Hague: Mouton. Büring, Daniel (1997). The 59th Street Bridge Accent. London: Routledge. Büring, Daniel (2003). On D-trees, beans, and B-accents. Linguistics and Philosophy 26: 511-545. Carlson, Lauri. 1982. Dialogue games: an approach to discourse analysis (Synthese Language Library 17). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel. Klein, W., & Von Stutterheim, C. (1987). Quaestio und referenzielle Bewegung in Erzählungen [Quaestio and referential shift in narratives]. Linguistische Berichte 109: 163-183. --- (2002). Quaestio and L-perspectivation. In C. F. Graumann, & W. Kallmeyer (Eds.), Perspective and perspectivation in discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 59-88. Roberts, C. (1996). Information Structure in Discourse: Towards an Integrated Formal Theory of Pragmatics. In Jae Hak Yoon and Andreas Kathol (eds.), Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 49. Roberts, C. (2012). Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. Semantics & Pragmatics 5 (Article 6): 1-69. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1995). Discourse structure, topicality and questioning. Linguistics 31, 109–147. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1996). Inferring from topics. Linguistics and Philosophy 19, 393–443. On Jun 20, 2020, at 10:19 AM, TALLMAN Adam > wrote: Dear all, A few of you have elaborated on my question about the meaning of "functional" and and then critiqued Juergen's terminological choices. I wonder if my question about adjectives was interpreted facetiously (like "wouldn't it be absurd if adjectives were considered functional?!"). Actually, it was not meant as a facetious question at all as I was attempting to understand Juergen's research question in its own terms to discern whether there was anything in the languages I was familiar with that would count as functional, but diachronically lexical without contact. Juergen, you answered my question, in the sense, that I think I have a better idea of how one might go about operationalizing a distinction between lexical and functional. But now I am less sure about what your original question to the listserve was. Allow me to elaborate. Here is your new definition: "a ‘lexical category’ is a class of expressions defined in terms of shared morphosyntactic properties. The members of lexical categories are inherently suitable for expressing ‘at-issue’ content and are backgrounded only when they appear in certain syntactic positions (e.g., attributive as opposed to predicative adjectives). Their combinatorial types (e.g., in a Categorial Grammar framework) are relatively simple. They express concepts of basic ontological categories." I think this points in the right* direction and makes me understand where you are coming from (I assume at-issue just means anything that is not presuppositional nor just implicates some meaning). But crucially the concept is now scalar or gradient (depending on how we operationalize the notion). Saying that it concerns at-issue meaning in "certain syntactic positions" (I would prefer "morphosyntactic" positions) means that for some set of morphemes / constructs / categories or whatever a, b, c, d … we could rank them in terms of the number of positions they can occur in where they express (or tend to express?) at-issue content a>b>c>d …. Or we could formulate this in terms of tokens in discourse rather than constructions abstracted from their use, but you get my point. And indeed you state. "It might be best to treat this list of properties as defining the notion of ‘lexical category’ as a cluster/radio/prototype concept." But now there is no nonarbitrary cut-off point between lexical and grammatical. If there is a boundary it will refer to quantal shifts in the distribution of elements along the lexical-grammatical scale: or stated another way, we know there is some sort of boundary because the distribution of elements along the scale is bimodal and elements in between the modes are statistically marginal. To make this more concrete, in Chácobo there are some adjectives / adverbials that express small size or small amount of time. In certain syntactic positions they are more likely to express backgrounded information and in a classifier like manner appear "redundantly", but plausibly help to track referents (referring to someone as honi yoi 'poor man' throughout the discourse). If I scan around related languages (I haven't done this, but let's just say hypothetically) and I find that in these other languages they more typically display at-issue notions (perhaps they more commonly appear in a predicative function), have I found a case of a "functional element" that has grammaticalized? Certainly, it expresses at-issue content less often than others … I think there are *a lot* of morphemes like this in Amazonia. In my description of Chacobo I actually called them "semi-functional" (it includes associated motion morphemes, time of day adverbials, temporal distance markers) and I try to make the explicit argument that temporal distance morphemes mix and match properties of temporal adverbials with those of tense. It would be hard for me to make the case that these were not a result of contact (in fact, myself and Pattie Epps have a paper where we argue that such liminal cases might be an areal property of Southwestern Amazonia), but the point is that I find a performative contradiction in your attempt to exclude (certain types of?) adjectives and adverbs and the definition you supply. Seems like if you really wanted to test the idea that languages grammaticalize functional notions for the specific reasons you claim, you would need to actually include all of these liminal cases and explain why they do not all disappear under communicative pressure or else drop off of the grammaticalization cline and become lexical / primarily at-issue expressing elements. So the upshot is that I was actually wondering whether you would consider adjectives, adverbs etc. but not because they are lexical or functional, but rather because, according to your own definition they awkwardly sit in between. I was interested in what you would say about them, not whether they should be classified discretely as lexical versus functional. Adam *By "right direction" I mean interesting direction in that it could lead to developing testable hypotheses with an operationalizable set of variables that define the domain of lexical versus functional categories. I am not making the essentialist claim that it is the best definition regardless of the problem context, research question, or audience. Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin) ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, Lyon (07) Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867 De : Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] de la part de Idiatov Dmitry [honohiiri at yandex.ru] Envoyé : samedi 20 juin 2020 15:23 À : Kasper Boye; Dan I.SLOBIN Cc : lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder Objet : Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Kasper, a quick reaction to this passage: “Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else – and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion.” While the application of the criterion of obligatoriness is surely a delicate matter, nobody is obliged to say anything… To avoid the kind of logical figures that you bring up, let’s say that grammatical categories are those sets of mutually exclusive discourse prominence secondary meanings whose expression is obligatory in the constructions to which they apply. Dmitry 20.06.2020, 15:12, "Kasper Boye" >: Dear Dmitry and all, First a comment on obligatoriness, then one closed classes. Jürgen Bohnemeyer pointed out that obligatoriness is too restrictive as a definiens of grammatical status. Another problem is that it is also too inclusive. Consider a language like German where indicative verbs are inflected for past and present tense. The intuition (which is backed up by the “encoded secondariness” definition; Boye & Harder 2012) is that the tense inflections are grammatical. But neither the past nor the present tense inflection is of course obligatory in itself: instead of past we can choose present, and vice versa. So, instead we have to say that the tense paradigm – or the choice between tenses – is obligatory: whenever you select an indicative verb, you also have to select a tense inflection. Now comes the problem. Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else – and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion. Of course, there are many ways in which obligatoriness can be saved as a definiens, but they all require that this notion is combined with something else. Dan Slobin pointed to the fact that items that are intuitively (and by the “encoded secondariness” definition) lexical, may form closed classes. I would like to add that closed classes may comprise both lexical and grammatical members. Within the classes of prepositions and pronouns, for instance, distinctions have occasionally been made between lexical and grammatical prepositions. Just as closed class membership seems to have a processing impact, so does the contrast between grammatical and lexical. For instance, Ishkhanyan et al. (2017) showed that the production of French pronouns identified as grammatical based on Boye & Harder (2017) is more severely impaired in agrammatic aphasia than the production of pronouns classified as lexical, and Messerschmidt et al. (2019) showed that Danish prepositions classified as grammatical attract less attention than prepositions classified as lexical. Best wishes, Kasper Boye, K. & P. Harder. 2012. "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization". Language 88.1. 1-44. Ishkhanyan, B., H. Sahraoui, P. Harder, J. Mogensen & K. Boye. 2017. "Grammatical and lexical pronoun dissociation in French speakers with agrammatic aphasia: A usage-based account and REF-based hypothesis". Journal of Neurolinguistics 44. 1-16. Messerschmidt, M., K. Boye, M.M. Overmark, S.T. Kristensen & P. Harder. 2018. "Sondringen mellem grammatiske og leksikalske præpositioner" [’The distinction between grammatical and lexical prepositions’]. Ny forskning i grammatik 25. 89-106. Fra: Lingtyp > På vegne af Dan I. SLOBIN Sendt: 19. juni 2020 23:59 Til: Idiatov Dmitry > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency—all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as “grammatical” elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb—entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, Dan On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: Dear Juergen, I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of “optionality” possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. Best, Dmitry 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" >: Dear Dmitry — I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ‘inflection’ that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It’s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. So what I’m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ‘functional expressions’ (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ‘syncategoremata’. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) Best — Juergen On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: I would like to react to Kasper Boye’s summary of the “solutions to the problem of defining ‘grammatical’ on the market”. There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson “Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey” (see https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flinguistlist.org%2Fissues%2F6%2F6-411.html&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668709238&sdata=2oApFblvdWuo%2Fh6Az6pMUZl%2BH4NE0BZSt%2FrPwZetsxU%3D&reserved=0). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)’s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining “grammatical”, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)’s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case “grammatical meaning”, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of “grammatical meaning”, for example because it’s easier to apply consistently. Best wishes, Dmitry -------- Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. (accessible at: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffile sender.renater.fr%2F%3Fs%3Ddownload%26token%3D24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0- bd739bd16d95&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904f e36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282 648668719231&sdata=O0qLFjyJn3jUGIFdbd8M9L90FTzOL2EJ72eaF3pnnng%3D& amp;reserved=0 ; it’s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" >: Dear all, I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas about the job grammatical items do. There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ”grammatical” on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar’s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. With best wishes, Kasper References Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. Link: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww. jstor.org%2Fstable%2Fpdf%2F41348882.pdf&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%4 0hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c 9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=%2FOW1%2BzYhXVfMlfsy 7r8SPkQH3iQGKvwjpUHII5QUmzk%3D&reserved=0 Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi. org%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0186685&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hu m.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1 ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=fsFk32aQ4ZHDCQ8QfJEec1N ipSIJa0HDCv39YGpJoCE%3D&reserved=0 Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. Link: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi. org%2F10.1080%2F23273798.2019.1616104&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40h um.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f 1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=pbAdP0mwCENSzfjLjzPAnC pWF2mgHYOSinCIgz9zFJc%3D&reserved=0 Fra: Lingtyp > På vegne af David Gil Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Juergen and all, My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. Best, David McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 , _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http:%2F%2Fwww.acs u.buffalo.edu%2F~jb77%2F&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7e c0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0% 7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=CiDmvMRipRj7%2FqbWgbkzsNeeGn2nSZB6W jB4fiUeJJs%3D&reserved=0 Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 -- <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Dan I. Slobin Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics University of California, Berkeley email: slobin at berkeley.edu address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http:%2F%2Fwww.acsu.buffalo.edu%2F~jb77%2F&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668729225&sdata=meBLy8QTd8n01rsw6NFWAOMWUe8TeLg6VJKNaMaYoeA%3D&reserved=0 Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flistserv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668729225&sdata=wwgzwTj%2BdwW80HsR3BKkHf3yZDGFFG0vi4bm9qliMxo%3D&reserved=0 -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. 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URL: From laura.emcpherson at gmail.com Wed Jun 24 22:19:46 2020 From: laura.emcpherson at gmail.com (Laura McPherson) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2020 22:19:46 -0400 Subject: [Lingtyp] CfP: "Surrogate languages and the grammar of language-based music" Message-ID: **Apologies for cross listing** Call for papers for a special issue in Frontiers in Communication: Language Sciences: "Surrogate Languages and the Grammar of Language-Based Music" Guest Editors: Dr. Yoad Winter, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands Dr. Laura McPherson, Dartmouth College, Hanover, United States Traditional usages of musical instruments as speech surrogates have been documented for centuries. This common practice is just one example of the tight connection between language and music. More generally, musical practices across cultures often rely on linguistic structures, demonstrating a closer contact between language and music than is familiar in most Western traditions. It is only recently that linguists have started to uncover the relevance of surrogate languages and language-based music to linguistic theory. While available data are still scarce, it has become clear that analyzing traditional speech surrogates and language-based music has exciting implications for all areas of linguistics. This enterprise promises to enhance our understanding of both musical and linguistic faculties in humans. As many language-based musical traditions are endangered, it has become urgent that linguists study the ways in which grammatical information is encoded in musical modalities. Questions about musical vehicles of languages appear at all levels of linguistic description and analysis. Phonologically, it is important to analyze how parameters like tone, vowel height, or syllable structure are represented in speech surrogates, and whether properties of the musical instrument have any effect on that representation. Morphologically, we need to understand whether lexical units are represented on instruments independently, or partially independently, of their phonetic and phonological properties in speech. Syntactically, it should be clarified to what extent musical expression of language can show grammatical properties that are not manifested in the linguistic grammar, and to what extent grammatical operations may be simplified when they are conveyed musically. Semantically, we are interested in the way in which the content of language-based music is formally distinguished from those of spoken language. Other, more specific questions, concern the possible structural distinctions between whistling and speech surrogacy on musical instruments, the distinctions between language-based musics with tonal and atonal languages, productivity of language encoding in music, and comprehensibility of speech surrogacy among native speakers (practitioners and non-practitioners). We also welcome contributions comparing musical surrogate languages to other kinds of language-based music. This Research Topic welcomes contributions on any of these aspects and related ones. Contributions from field linguistics, theoretical linguists and musicology are equally encouraged, especially ones that deal with structural aspects of speech surrogacy and language-based music. Contributions may be Original Research, Review, Perspective, Data Report or Brief Research Report. Abstract submission deadline August 15, 2020 For accepted abstracts, the manuscript submission deadline is December 13, 2020. 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URL: From jb77 at buffalo.edu Wed Jun 24 22:46:46 2020 From: jb77 at buffalo.edu (Bohnemeyer, Juergen) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2020 02:46:46 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <151811592999422@mail.yandex.ru> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED341@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> <3180F818-F44B-43FF-A3C9-7053002AFBBF@buffalo.edu> <1A010095-9961-4B8A-AA7D-61EF65057CFD@buffalo.edu> <151811592999422@mail.yandex.ru> Message-ID: Dear Peter — Great question! At-issue content is semantically focal (I mean “semantically” focal in the sense that it is focal even when no expressive device, not even stress, clearly marks it as such). What I mean by ‘inherently backgrounded’ is that the expressions in question are incapable of being in focus (other than in metalinguistic focus). Now, ‘backgrounding’ is more commonly used in a different, albeit related, sense, namely in that of presupposition or, more broadly, what e.g. Tonhauser et al. (2013) call ‘projective content’. Strictly speaking, there is a series of inclusion relations here: non-at-issue ⊃ “projective" ⊃ presupposed (I.e., every proposition that is presupposed is projective, but not vice versa, and every proposition that is projective is necessarily not at issue, but not vice versa.) (The difference between projective content and presupposition isn’t relevant to present matters. But the most commonly cited case in point are non-restrictive relatives: their content is not entailed by the matrix sentence, and creates a truth value gap for the matrix sentence when it isn’t true; but it’s not presupposed in the Stalnakerian sense since it’s neither in the common ground nor accommodated.) When I said that I consider restrictors inherently backgrounded, I meant that they are inherently non-at-issue, not that they are (necessarily) presuppositional or projective. Pronouns and demonstratives (which I treat as placeholders, not as restrictors) are often said to introduce metalinguistic presuppositions regarding the presence of suitable referents/antecedents in the discourse. One could treat definite articles in the same way, extending this type of behavior to a subset of restrictors, and some authors treat tenses in the same way. I’m actually not sure that I agree that these metalinguistic meanings should be treated as presuppositions. Meanwhile, there can be no doubt that restrictors contribute to the truth-conditional content of the utterances in which they occur. If I were to say “I’ve written a book on the evolution of functional categories”, I would be using viewpoint aspect to dish out a lie, since I’m at present only working on such a book, and it’s (unfortunately) far from complete. I hope this clarifies it a bit! — Best — Juergen Tonhauser, J., D. Beaver, C. Roberts, & M. Simons. (2013). Toward a classification of projective content. Language 89(1): 66-109. > On Jun 24, 2020, at 7:58 AM, Peter Arkadiev wrote: > > Dear Juergen, dear colleagues, > > I have been following this discussion with great interest, but refrained from participating. However, I think I now have a question to Juergen and possibly to Kasper as well: what is, in your (plural distributive) view(s), the relation between "at issue content" / "part of the speaker's indended message" and "having truth-conditional content"? This is especially relevant for Juergen's "restrictors", since at least some of them, i.e. tense and aspect operators as well as number, have, to my knowledge, always been analysed as bearing on the truth-conditional content of utterances. Does this have any bearing on the issue under discussion? > > Thanks in advance and best regards, > > Peter > > > 24.06.2020, 06:11, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : > Dear Kasper — There are many kinds of functional expressions that are not inherently backgrounded, such as negation, quantificational determiners, modals, demonstratives, emphatic pronouns, and so on. If I remember Boyer & Harder (2012) correctly (apologies if I don’t!), you treat these as not grammaticalized. I consider them weakly grammaticalized. But more to the point, I consider them functional expressions, i.e., part of the grammatical = combinatorial system of language. > > At the moment, I’m working with a classification of six subtypes of functional expressions. Here are some informal characterizations: > > Placeholders such as pronominal elements are indexical representations of referents. Their referents may be at-issue content, but their lexical meanings are not, as they merely specify search domains for the referents. > > Functors such as negation, numerals, adnominal or adverbial quantificational expressions, and modal operators express monovalent conceptual operators that are part of the speaker’s intended message and thus may be at-issue content. > > Relators such as adpositions, connectives, and “semantic”/”lexical” case-markers, express conceptual relations that are part of the speaker’s intended message. > > Social deictics, or ‘honorifics’ in a technical sense of that term, cannot be at-issue content and do not contribute to the truth-conditions of an utterance. Their presence in an utterance satisfies pragmatic felicity conditions that arise from societal norms of interpersonal relation management. > > Restrictors, such as markers of tense, viewpoint aspect, mood, gender/noun class, number, or structural case, as well as complementizers, are redundant expressions of parts of the speaker’s communicative intention that cannot be at-issue content. Their presence in an utterance, which may or may not be morphosyntactically required, is motivated by a reduction of the hearer’s inference load. Restrictors are at the heart of the book. The theory employs a continuous probabilistic notion of redundancy/informativeness according to which an expression is the more redundant/less informative in a given context the more predictable its occurrence in the context is. > > A possible sixths class is formed by facilitators, which like restrictors are metalinguistic expressions that help clarify the speaker’s communicative intention rather than to be themselves “essential” (non-redundant) expressions of part of the communicative intent. Facilitators differ from restrictors in that, rather than to clarify the lexical content of the utterance, they serve to facilitate the coordination between the interlocutors. Examples include illocutionary expressions, but also some interjections and discourse particles. (It is at present not clear to me whether it is necessary for an evolutionary theory of functional categories to distinguish between restrictors and facilitators.) > > As you can see, the lower half of these are inherently backgrounded = non-at-issue, whereas the upper half are not. > > But I’m primarily interested in restrictors, and as far as those are concerned, our approaches appear to be in agreement. > > Best — Juergen > > On Jun 22, 2020, at 6:03 AM, Kasper Boye wrote: > > Dear Jürgen, > > I am not sure I understand what you mean is the difference between your approach and Peter's and mine. We define grammatical items as those that are coded (= conventionalized) as backgrounded/secondary/'not at issue', and lexical items as those that have the potential to be foregrounded/etc. in usage. That is, we make a clear distinction between language potential and language usage, and define grammatical status as applying to language potential. How does this differ from yours? > > Just to make sure: all adjectives I can think of just now in the languages I know of are lexical by our definition - they can be focalized, addressed and modified. But whether adjectives are lexical or grammatical is really an empirical question. > > As for the issue of whether you can divide all items of a given language into two buckets, one lexical and one grammatical, I fully agree that it cannot be done neatly. The issue is complicated by e.g. polyselmy, layering and the gradualness of conventionalization. If you distinguish meanings or variants of the same items, it gets less complicated. Obviously, full verbal "have" ('I have a book') is lexical, while perfect auxiliary 'have' is grammatical, for instance. > > As for the question whether lexical and grammatical items can have the same inherent-semantic meaning, at least they can be very close, cf. harmonic combination. What is important, however, is that some meaning domains can be expressed both lexically and grammatically. This means that grammatical status cannot be defined in terms of inherent-semantic meaning (some grammaticalizable notions can be expressed also lexically). > > As for grammatical meaning, it can be defined in analogy with grammatical items. Grammatical meaning is meaning that is coded as backgrounded/secondary/not at issue. According to this definition, the past tense meaning of the English suffix "-ed" is grammatical, but so is the past tense meaning of "went". "Went" also has lexical meaning ('go'), and it is by virtue of this meaning that the item as a whole is lexical. > > Best wishes, > Kasper > > > > > -----Oprindelig meddelelse----- > Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af Bohnemeyer, Juergen > Sendt: 20. juni 2020 17:46 > Til: TALLMAN Adam > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Adam — The notion of ‘at-issue content’ is defined in models of information structure that assume that utterances in their discourse contexts introduce or answer explicit or implicit ‘questions under discussion’ (QuDs). Craige Robert’s work is probably the most widely known exponent of this approach (Roberts 1996, 2012). Others include Büring (1997, 2003), Carlson (1982), Klein & von Stutterheim (1987, 2002), and van Kuppevelt (1995, 1996). The at-issue content of an utterance (if any) is that part of its content that provides a (complete or partial) answer to the QuD of the utterance context. > > I do indeed assume that there is no categorical boundary between lexicon and grammar. Any assumption to the contrary would seem to be inconsistent with both grammaticalization theory and most versions of Construction Grammar. Is there a problem with that? > > I wonder whether the source of your confusion regarding the variable status of adjectives stems from a failure to distinguish between an expression’s actual information status as a token in a given utterance and the expression’s inherent capability as a type of expressing at-issue content. Only the latter, not the former, is part of the proposed definition of restrictors (which I’ll remind you is merely a subtype of functional expressions - I’m *not* actually claiming that *all* functional expressions are inherently backgrounded. That is where I part company with Boye & Harder 2012, to whom I otherwise owe a debt of gratitude, as Kasper pointed out). Adjectives *can* express at-issue content, restrictors cannot. Adjectives do not become restrictors just because they are used in a backgrounded position in a given utterance. It’s type properties not matter, not token properties. > > What you say about adjectives and classifiers in Chacobo is of great interest to me. There is a similar phenomenon in Mayan languages: so-called ‘positionals’ (I prefer ‘dispositionals’, since the great majority of the roots lexicalize properties of inanimate referents, not postures) constitute a lexical category in their own right in Mayan. They surface as both verbs and stative predicates (traditionally, but arguably misleadingly, the latter are considered participles), but subsets of them require derivational morphology in both cases. Mayan languages have hundreds of such roots. > > Crucially for present purposes, many if not most of these roots can also be used as numeral classifiers. And when they are, I treat them as functional expressions. I consider this polysemy - that is to say, I assume that there is a single lexicon entry that licenses both the dispositional predicate uses and the classifier uses. In other words, I put less distance between these two uses of dispositional morphemes than I put between, say, _have_ used as a possessive predicators vs. auxiliary. That’s because it seems to me that speakers draft dispositional roots into classifier duty on the fly creatively. In other words, I see the relation between the two kinds of uses as more dynamic than static. > > Bottomline: we should definitely not assume that we can sort the morphemes of a language (and here I mean strings of sound used as one or multiple signs in the speech community) neatly into two buckets, one labeled “lexicon”, the other “grammar”. That is just really not how natural languages work. I’m surprised that this seems controversial? > > Best — Juergen > > Berlin, B. (1968). Tzeltal numeral classifiers: A study in ethnographic semantics. The Hague: Mouton. > Büring, Daniel (1997). The 59th Street Bridge Accent. London: Routledge. > Büring, Daniel (2003). On D-trees, beans, and B-accents. Linguistics and Philosophy 26: 511-545. > Carlson, Lauri. 1982. Dialogue games: an approach to discourse analysis (Synthese Language Library 17). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel. > Klein, W., & Von Stutterheim, C. (1987). Quaestio und referenzielle Bewegung in Erzählungen [Quaestio and referential shift in narratives]. Linguistische Berichte 109: 163-183. > --- (2002). Quaestio and L-perspectivation. In C. F. Graumann, & W. Kallmeyer (Eds.), Perspective and perspectivation in discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 59-88. > Roberts, C. (1996). Information Structure in Discourse: Towards an Integrated Formal Theory of Pragmatics. In Jae Hak Yoon and Andreas Kathol (eds.), Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 49. > Roberts, C. (2012). Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. Semantics & Pragmatics 5 (Article 6): 1-69. > van Kuppevelt, Jan (1995). Discourse structure, topicality and questioning. Linguistics 31, 109–147. > van Kuppevelt, Jan (1996). Inferring from topics. Linguistics and Philosophy 19, 393–443. > > > > On Jun 20, 2020, at 10:19 AM, TALLMAN Adam wrote: > > Dear all, > > A few of you have elaborated on my question about the meaning of "functional" and and then critiqued Juergen's terminological choices. I wonder if my question about adjectives was interpreted facetiously (like "wouldn't it be absurd if adjectives were considered functional?!"). > > Actually, it was not meant as a facetious question at all as I was attempting to understand Juergen's research question in its own terms to discern whether there was anything in the languages I was familiar with that would count as functional, but diachronically lexical without contact. > > Juergen, you answered my question, in the sense, that I think I have a better idea of how one might go about operationalizing a distinction between lexical and functional. But now I am less sure about what your original question to the listserve was. Allow me to elaborate. > > Here is your new definition: > > "a ‘lexical category’ is a class of expressions defined in terms of shared morphosyntactic properties. The members of lexical categories are inherently suitable for expressing ‘at-issue’ content and are backgrounded only when they appear in certain syntactic positions (e.g., attributive as opposed to predicative adjectives). Their combinatorial types (e.g., in a Categorial Grammar framework) are relatively simple. They express concepts of basic ontological categories." > > I think this points in the right* direction and makes me understand where you are coming from (I assume at-issue just means anything that is not presuppositional nor just implicates some meaning). But crucially the concept is now scalar or gradient (depending on how we operationalize the notion). Saying that it concerns at-issue meaning in "certain syntactic positions" (I would prefer "morphosyntactic" positions) means that for some set of morphemes / constructs / categories or whatever a, b, c, d … we could rank them in terms of the number of positions they can occur in where they express (or tend to express?) at-issue content a>b>c>d …. Or we could formulate this in terms of tokens in discourse rather than constructions abstracted from their use, but you get my point. And indeed you state. > > > "It might be best to treat this list of properties as defining the notion of ‘lexical category’ as a cluster/radio/prototype concept." > > > But now there is no nonarbitrary cut-off point between lexical and grammatical. If there is a boundary it will refer to quantal shifts in the distribution of elements along the lexical-grammatical scale: or stated another way, we know there is some sort of boundary because the distribution of elements along the scale is bimodal and elements in between the modes are statistically marginal. > > To make this more concrete, in Chácobo there are some adjectives / > adverbials that express small size or small amount of time. In certain > syntactic positions they are more likely to express backgrounded > information and in a classifier like manner appear "redundantly", but > plausibly help to track referents (referring to someone as honi yoi > 'poor man' throughout the discourse). If I scan around related > languages (I haven't done this, but let's just say hypothetically) and > I find that in these other languages they more typically display > at-issue notions (perhaps they more commonly appear in a predicative > function), have I found a case of a "functional element" that has > grammaticalized? Certainly, it expresses at-issue content less often > than others … > > I think there are *a lot* of morphemes like this in Amazonia. In my description of Chacobo I actually called them "semi-functional" (it includes associated motion morphemes, time of day adverbials, temporal distance markers) and I try to make the explicit argument that temporal distance morphemes mix and match properties of temporal adverbials with those of tense. It would be hard for me to make the case that these were not a result of contact (in fact, myself and Pattie Epps have a paper where we argue that such liminal cases might be an areal property of Southwestern Amazonia), but the point is that I find a performative contradiction in your attempt to exclude (certain types of?) adjectives and adverbs and the definition you supply. Seems like if you really wanted to test the idea that languages grammaticalize functional notions for the specific reasons you claim, you would need to actually include all of these liminal cases and explain why they do not all disappear under communicative pressure or else drop off of the grammaticalization cline and become lexical / primarily at-issue expressing elements. > > So the upshot is that I was actually wondering whether you would consider adjectives, adverbs etc. but not because they are lexical or functional, but rather because, according to your own definition they awkwardly sit in between. I was interested in what you would say about them, not whether they should be classified discretely as lexical versus functional. > > Adam > > *By "right direction" I mean interesting direction in that it could lead to developing testable hypotheses with an operationalizable set of variables that define the domain of lexical versus functional categories. I am not making the essentialist claim that it is the best definition regardless of the problem context, research question, or audience. > > > > > > > > Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin) ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant > CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, > Lyon (07) Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867 De : Lingtyp > [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] de la part de Idiatov > Dmitry [honohiiri at yandex.ru] Envoyé : samedi 20 juin 2020 15:23 À : > Kasper Boye; Dan I.SLOBIN Cc : lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; > Peter Harder Objet : Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Kasper, a quick reaction to this passage: > > “Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else – and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion.” > > While the application of the criterion of obligatoriness is surely a > delicate matter, nobody is obliged to say anything… > > To avoid the kind of logical figures that you bring up, let’s say that grammatical categories are those sets of mutually exclusive discourse prominence secondary meanings whose expression is obligatory in the constructions to which they apply. > > Dmitry > > > 20.06.2020, 15:12, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear Dmitry and all, > > First a comment on obligatoriness, then one closed classes. > > Jürgen Bohnemeyer pointed out that obligatoriness is too restrictive as a definiens of grammatical status. Another problem is that it is also too inclusive. Consider a language like German where indicative verbs are inflected for past and present tense. The intuition (which is backed up by the “encoded secondariness” definition; Boye & Harder 2012) is that the tense inflections are grammatical. But neither the past nor the present tense inflection is of course obligatory in itself: instead of past we can choose present, and vice versa. So, instead we have to say that the tense paradigm – or the choice between tenses – is obligatory: whenever you select an indicative verb, you also have to select a tense inflection. Now comes the problem. Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else – and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion. Of course, there are many ways in which obligatoriness can be saved as a definiens, but they all require that this notion is combined with something else. > > Dan Slobin pointed to the fact that items that are intuitively (and by the “encoded secondariness” definition) lexical, may form closed classes. I would like to add that closed classes may comprise both lexical and grammatical members. Within the classes of prepositions and pronouns, for instance, distinctions have occasionally been made between lexical and grammatical prepositions. Just as closed class membership seems to have a processing impact, so does the contrast between grammatical and lexical. For instance, Ishkhanyan et al. (2017) showed that the production of French pronouns identified as grammatical based on Boye & Harder (2017) is more severely impaired in agrammatic aphasia than the production of pronouns classified as lexical, and Messerschmidt et al. (2019) showed that Danish prepositions classified as grammatical attract less attention than prepositions classified as lexical. > > Best wishes, > Kasper > > Boye, K. & P. Harder. 2012. "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization". Language 88.1. 1-44. > > Ishkhanyan, B., H. Sahraoui, P. Harder, J. Mogensen & K. Boye. 2017. "Grammatical and lexical pronoun dissociation in French speakers with agrammatic aphasia: A usage-based account and REF-based hypothesis". Journal of Neurolinguistics 44. 1-16. > > Messerschmidt, M., K. Boye, M.M. Overmark, S.T. Kristensen & P. Harder. 2018. "Sondringen mellem grammatiske og leksikalske præpositioner" [’The distinction between grammatical and lexical prepositions’]. Ny forskning i grammatik 25. 89-106. > > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af > Dan I. SLOBIN > Sendt: 19. juni 2020 23:59 > Til: Idiatov Dmitry > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency—all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as “grammatical” elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb—entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. > > Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, Dan > > On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > Dear Juergen, > > I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. > > The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of “optionality” possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. > > However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. > > The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. > > Best, > Dmitry > > > 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : > Dear Dmitry — I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. > > A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. > > My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ‘inflection’ that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It’s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. > > So what I’m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. > > (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ‘functional > expressions’ (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label > expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional > ‘syncategoremata’. But, I also believe that we should worry about the > concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I > realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) > Whorfian :-)) > > Best — Juergen > > > On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > > I would like to react to Kasper Boye’s summary of the “solutions to the problem of defining ‘grammatical’ on the market”. > > There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson “Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey” (see https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flinguistlist.org%2Fissues%2F6%2F6-411.html&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668709238&sdata=2oApFblvdWuo%2Fh6Az6pMUZl%2BH4NE0BZSt%2FrPwZetsxU%3D&reserved=0). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)’s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining “grammatical”, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)’s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. > > Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case “grammatical meaning”, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of “grammatical meaning”, for example because it’s easier to apply consistently. > > Best wishes, > Dmitry > > -------- > Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. > (accessible at: > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffile > sender.renater.fr%2F%3Fs%3Ddownload%26token%3D24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0- > bd739bd16d95&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904f > e36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282 > 648668719231&sdata=O0qLFjyJn3jUGIFdbd8M9L90FTzOL2EJ72eaF3pnnng%3D& > amp;reserved=0 ; it’s also available from my website, but the server > has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) > > > 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear all, > > I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas about the job grammatical items do. > > There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ”grammatical” on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. > > Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. > > Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. > > If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. > > Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar’s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. > > With best wishes, > Kasper > > References > Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. > Link: > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww. > jstor.org%2Fstable%2Fpdf%2F41348882.pdf&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%4 > 0hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c > 9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=%2FOW1%2BzYhXVfMlfsy > 7r8SPkQH3iQGKvwjpUHII5QUmzk%3D&reserved=0 > > Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. > > Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. > > Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. > Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs > in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi. > org%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0186685&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hu > m.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1 > ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=fsFk32aQ4ZHDCQ8QfJEec1N > ipSIJa0HDCv39YGpJoCE%3D&reserved=0 > > Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. > Link: > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi. > org%2F10.1080%2F23273798.2019.1616104&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40h > um.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f > 1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=pbAdP0mwCENSzfjLjzPAnC > pWF2mgHYOSinCIgz9zFJc%3D&reserved=0 > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af > David Gil > Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 > Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Juergen and all, > > My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. > > Best, > > David > > > McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. > McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. > McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) > "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. > > > On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. > > Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in > which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in > one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, > with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the > former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) > there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of > the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to > include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically > interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of > contact models.) > > I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. > > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > > As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). > > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I > receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen > > -- > David Gil > > Senior Scientist (Associate) > 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): > +62-81344082091 , _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists > erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 > Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd > a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL > u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists > erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 > Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd > a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL > u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 > > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics > and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy > Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http:%2F%2Fwww.acs > u.buffalo.edu%2F~jb77%2F&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7e > c0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0% > 7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=CiDmvMRipRj7%2FqbWgbkzsNeeGn2nSZB6W > jB4fiUeJJs%3D&reserved=0 > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard > Cohen) > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists > erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 > Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd > a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL > u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 > > > -- > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > Dan I. Slobin > Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics University of > California, Berkeley > email: slobin at berkeley.edu > address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists > erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 > Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd > a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL > u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http:%2F%2Fwww.acsu.buffalo.edu%2F~jb77%2F&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668729225&sdata=meBLy8QTd8n01rsw6NFWAOMWUe8TeLg6VJKNaMaYoeA%3D&reserved=0 > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flistserv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668729225&sdata=wwgzwTj%2BdwW80HsR3BKkHf3yZDGFFG0vi4bm9qliMxo%3D&reserved=0 > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies > Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science > University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In > (Leonard Cohen) > , > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > Peter Arkadiev, PhD Hab. > Institute of Slavic Studies > Russian Academy of Sciences > Leninsky prospekt 32-A 119334 Moscow > peterarkadiev at yandex.ru > http://inslav.ru/people/arkadev-petr-mihaylovich-peter-arkadiev > -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) From hartmut at ruc.dk Thu Jun 25 12:25:02 2020 From: hartmut at ruc.dk (Hartmut Haberland) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2020 16:25:02 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <60a48ca1bd344e6ebbbfcba3476bbf69@ling.su.se> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED341@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> <3180F818-F44B-43FF-A3C9-7053002AFBBF@buffalo.edu> <60a48ca1bd344e6ebbbfcba3476bbf69@ling.su.se> Message-ID: <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C81C6@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> Je suis contente -----Oprindelig meddelelse----- Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af Östen Dahl Sendt: 21. juni 2020 08:25 Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories The section "Accidence categories and Gricean principles" (p. 11-15) in my 1985 book "Tense and Aspect Systems" argues for the view that the semantic features involved in what I called "accidence categories", which would include tense/aspect and other similar phenomena, "typically do not belong to the 'intended message'". The book can be downloaded from https://www2.ling.su.se/staff/oesten/recycled/Tense&aspectsystems.pdf Östen -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Från: Lingtyp För Bohnemeyer, Juergen Skickat: den 20 juni 2020 17:46 Till: TALLMAN Adam Kopia: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Adam — The notion of ‘at-issue content’ is defined in models of information structure that assume that utterances in their discourse contexts introduce or answer explicit or implicit ‘questions under discussion’ (QuDs). Craige Robert’s work is probably the most widely known exponent of this approach (Roberts 1996, 2012). Others include Büring (1997, 2003), Carlson (1982), Klein & von Stutterheim (1987, 2002), and van Kuppevelt (1995, 1996). The at-issue content of an utterance (if any) is that part of its content that provides a (complete or partial) answer to the QuD of the utterance context. I do indeed assume that there is no categorical boundary between lexicon and grammar. Any assumption to the contrary would seem to be inconsistent with both grammaticalization theory and most versions of Construction Grammar. Is there a problem with that? I wonder whether the source of your confusion regarding the variable status of adjectives stems from a failure to distinguish between an expression’s actual information status as a token in a given utterance and the expression’s inherent capability as a type of expressing at-issue content. Only the latter, not the former, is part of the proposed definition of restrictors (which I’ll remind you is merely a subtype of functional expressions - I’m *not* actually claiming that *all* functional expressions are inherently backgrounded. That is where I part company with Boye & Harder 2012, to whom I otherwise owe a debt of gratitude, as Kasper pointed out). Adjectives *can* express at-issue content, restrictors cannot. Adjectives do not become restrictors just because they are used in a backgrounded position in a given utterance. It’s type properties not matter, not token properties. What you say about adjectives and classifiers in Chacobo is of great interest to me. There is a similar phenomenon in Mayan languages: so-called ‘positionals’ (I prefer ‘dispositionals’, since the great majority of the roots lexicalize properties of inanimate referents, not postures) constitute a lexical category in their own right in Mayan. They surface as both verbs and stative predicates (traditionally, but arguably misleadingly, the latter are considered participles), but subsets of them require derivational morphology in both cases. Mayan languages have hundreds of such roots. Crucially for present purposes, many if not most of these roots can also be used as numeral classifiers. And when they are, I treat them as functional expressions. I consider this polysemy - that is to say, I assume that there is a single lexicon entry that licenses both the dispositional predicate uses and the classifier uses. In other words, I put less distance between these two uses of dispositional morphemes than I put between, say, _have_ used as a possessive predicators vs. auxiliary. That’s because it seems to me that speakers draft dispositional roots into classifier duty on the fly creatively. In other words, I see the relation between the two kinds of uses as more dynamic than static. Bottomline: we should definitely not assume that we can sort the morphemes of a language (and here I mean strings of sound used as one or multiple signs in the speech community) neatly into two buckets, one labeled “lexicon”, the other “grammar”. That is just really not how natural languages work. I’m surprised that this seems controversial? Best — Juergen Berlin, B. (1968). Tzeltal numeral classifiers: A study in ethnographic semantics. The Hague: Mouton. Büring, Daniel (1997). The 59th Street Bridge Accent. London: Routledge. Büring, Daniel (2003). On D-trees, beans, and B-accents. Linguistics and Philosophy 26: 511-545. Carlson, Lauri. 1982. Dialogue games: an approach to discourse analysis (Synthese Language Library 17). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel. Klein, W., & Von Stutterheim, C. (1987). Quaestio und referenzielle Bewegung in Erzählungen [Quaestio and referential shift in narratives]. Linguistische Berichte 109: 163-183. --- (2002). Quaestio and L-perspectivation. In C. F. Graumann, & W. Kallmeyer (Eds.), Perspective and perspectivation in discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 59-88. Roberts, C. (1996). Information Structure in Discourse: Towards an Integrated Formal Theory of Pragmatics. In Jae Hak Yoon and Andreas Kathol (eds.), Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 49. Roberts, C. (2012). Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. Semantics & Pragmatics 5 (Article 6): 1-69. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1995). Discourse structure, topicality and questioning. Linguistics 31, 109–147. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1996). Inferring from topics. Linguistics and Philosophy 19, 393–443. > On Jun 20, 2020, at 10:19 AM, TALLMAN Adam wrote: > > Dear all, > > A few of you have elaborated on my question about the meaning of "functional" and and then critiqued Juergen's terminological choices. I wonder if my question about adjectives was interpreted facetiously (like "wouldn't it be absurd if adjectives were considered functional?!"). > > Actually, it was not meant as a facetious question at all as I was attempting to understand Juergen's research question in its own terms to discern whether there was anything in the languages I was familiar with that would count as functional, but diachronically lexical without contact. > > Juergen, you answered my question, in the sense, that I think I have a better idea of how one might go about operationalizing a distinction between lexical and functional. But now I am less sure about what your original question to the listserve was. Allow me to elaborate. > > Here is your new definition: > > "a ‘lexical category’ is a class of expressions defined in terms of shared morphosyntactic properties. The members of lexical categories are inherently suitable for expressing ‘at-issue’ content and are backgrounded only when they appear in certain syntactic positions (e.g., attributive as opposed to predicative adjectives). Their combinatorial types (e.g., in a Categorial Grammar framework) are relatively simple. They express concepts of basic ontological categories." > > I think this points in the right* direction and makes me understand where you are coming from (I assume at-issue just means anything that is not presuppositional nor just implicates some meaning). But crucially the concept is now scalar or gradient (depending on how we operationalize the notion). Saying that it concerns at-issue meaning in "certain syntactic positions" (I would prefer "morphosyntactic" positions) means that for some set of morphemes / constructs / categories or whatever a, b, c, d … we could rank them in terms of the number of positions they can occur in where they express (or tend to express?) at-issue content a>b>c>d …. Or we could formulate this in terms of tokens in discourse rather than constructions abstracted from their use, but you get my point. And indeed you state. > > > "It might be best to treat this list of properties as defining the notion of ‘lexical category’ as a cluster/radio/prototype concept." > > > But now there is no nonarbitrary cut-off point between lexical and grammatical. If there is a boundary it will refer to quantal shifts in the distribution of elements along the lexical-grammatical scale: or stated another way, we know there is some sort of boundary because the distribution of elements along the scale is bimodal and elements in between the modes are statistically marginal. > > To make this more concrete, in Chácobo there are some adjectives / > adverbials that express small size or small amount of time. In certain > syntactic positions they are more likely to express backgrounded > information and in a classifier like manner appear "redundantly", but > plausibly help to track referents (referring to someone as honi yoi > 'poor man' throughout the discourse). If I scan around related > languages (I haven't done this, but let's just say hypothetically) and > I find that in these other languages they more typically display > at-issue notions (perhaps they more commonly appear in a predicative > function), have I found a case of a "functional element" that has > grammaticalized? Certainly, it expresses at-issue content less often > than others … > > I think there are *a lot* of morphemes like this in Amazonia. In my description of Chacobo I actually called them "semi-functional" (it includes associated motion morphemes, time of day adverbials, temporal distance markers) and I try to make the explicit argument that temporal distance morphemes mix and match properties of temporal adverbials with those of tense. It would be hard for me to make the case that these were not a result of contact (in fact, myself and Pattie Epps have a paper where we argue that such liminal cases might be an areal property of Southwestern Amazonia), but the point is that I find a performative contradiction in your attempt to exclude (certain types of?) adjectives and adverbs and the definition you supply. Seems like if you really wanted to test the idea that languages grammaticalize functional notions for the specific reasons you claim, you would need to actually include all of these liminal cases and explain why they do not all disappear under communicative pressure or else drop off of the grammaticalization cline and become lexical / primarily at-issue expressing elements. > > So the upshot is that I was actually wondering whether you would consider adjectives, adverbs etc. but not because they are lexical or functional, but rather because, according to your own definition they awkwardly sit in between. I was interested in what you would say about them, not whether they should be classified discretely as lexical versus functional. > > Adam > > *By "right direction" I mean interesting direction in that it could lead to developing testable hypotheses with an operationalizable set of variables that define the domain of lexical versus functional categories. I am not making the essentialist claim that it is the best definition regardless of the problem context, research question, or audience. > > > > > > > > Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin) ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant > CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, > Lyon (07) Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867 De : Lingtyp > [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] de la part de Idiatov > Dmitry [honohiiri at yandex.ru] Envoyé : samedi 20 juin 2020 15:23 À : > Kasper Boye; Dan I.SLOBIN Cc : lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; > Peter Harder Objet : Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Kasper, a quick reaction to this passage: > > “Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else – and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion.” > > While the application of the criterion of obligatoriness is surely a > delicate matter, nobody is obliged to say anything… > > To avoid the kind of logical figures that you bring up, let’s say that grammatical categories are those sets of mutually exclusive discourse prominence secondary meanings whose expression is obligatory in the constructions to which they apply. > > Dmitry > > > 20.06.2020, 15:12, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear Dmitry and all, > > First a comment on obligatoriness, then one closed classes. > > Jürgen Bohnemeyer pointed out that obligatoriness is too restrictive as a definiens of grammatical status. Another problem is that it is also too inclusive. Consider a language like German where indicative verbs are inflected for past and present tense. The intuition (which is backed up by the “encoded secondariness” definition; Boye & Harder 2012) is that the tense inflections are grammatical. But neither the past nor the present tense inflection is of course obligatory in itself: instead of past we can choose present, and vice versa. So, instead we have to say that the tense paradigm – or the choice between tenses – is obligatory: whenever you select an indicative verb, you also have to select a tense inflection. Now comes the problem. Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else – and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion. Of course, there are many ways in which obligatoriness can be saved as a definiens, but they all require that this notion is combined with something else. > > Dan Slobin pointed to the fact that items that are intuitively (and by the “encoded secondariness” definition) lexical, may form closed classes. I would like to add that closed classes may comprise both lexical and grammatical members. Within the classes of prepositions and pronouns, for instance, distinctions have occasionally been made between lexical and grammatical prepositions. Just as closed class membership seems to have a processing impact, so does the contrast between grammatical and lexical. For instance, Ishkhanyan et al. (2017) showed that the production of French pronouns identified as grammatical based on Boye & Harder (2017) is more severely impaired in agrammatic aphasia than the production of pronouns classified as lexical, and Messerschmidt et al. (2019) showed that Danish prepositions classified as grammatical attract less attention than prepositions classified as lexical. > > Best wishes, > Kasper > > Boye, K. & P. Harder. 2012. "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization". Language 88.1. 1-44. > > Ishkhanyan, B., H. Sahraoui, P. Harder, J. Mogensen & K. Boye. 2017. "Grammatical and lexical pronoun dissociation in French speakers with agrammatic aphasia: A usage-based account and REF-based hypothesis". Journal of Neurolinguistics 44. 1-16. > > Messerschmidt, M., K. Boye, M.M. Overmark, S.T. Kristensen & P. Harder. 2018. "Sondringen mellem grammatiske og leksikalske præpositioner" [’The distinction between grammatical and lexical prepositions’]. Ny forskning i grammatik 25. 89-106. > > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af > Dan I. SLOBIN > Sendt: 19. juni 2020 23:59 > Til: Idiatov Dmitry > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency—all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as “grammatical” elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb—entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. > > Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, Dan > > On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > Dear Juergen, > > I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. > > The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of “optionality” possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. > > However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. > > The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. > > Best, > Dmitry > > > 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : > Dear Dmitry — I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. > > A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. > > My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ‘inflection’ that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It’s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. > > So what I’m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. > > (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ‘functional > expressions’ (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label > expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional > ‘syncategoremata’. But, I also believe that we should worry about the > concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I > realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) > Whorfian :-)) > > Best — Juergen > > > On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > > I would like to react to Kasper Boye’s summary of the “solutions to the problem of defining ‘grammatical’ on the market”. > > There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson “Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey” (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)’s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining “grammatical”, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)’s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. > > Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case “grammatical meaning”, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of “grammatical meaning”, for example because it’s easier to apply consistently. > > Best wishes, > Dmitry > > -------- > Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. > (accessible at: > https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da > 0-bd739bd16d95 ; it’s also available from my website, but the server > has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) > > > 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear all, > > I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas about the job grammatical items do. > > There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ”grammatical” on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. > > Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. > > Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. > > If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. > > Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar’s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. > > With best wishes, > Kasper > > References > Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. > Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf > > Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. > > Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. > > Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. > Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs > in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. > https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 > > Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. > Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af > David Gil > Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 > Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Juergen and all, > > My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. > > Best, > > David > > > McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. > McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750. > McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) > "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. > > > On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. > > Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in > which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in > one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, > with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the > former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) > there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of > the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to > include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically > interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of > contact models.) > > I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. > > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > > As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). > > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I > receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen > > -- > David Gil > > Senior Scientist (Associate) > 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): > +62-81344082091 , _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics > and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy > Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard > Cohen) > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > -- > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > Dan I. Slobin > Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics University of > California, Berkeley > email: slobin at berkeley.edu > address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp From joo at shh.mpg.de Thu Jun 25 23:56:30 2020 From: joo at shh.mpg.de (joo at shh.mpg.de) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 12:56:30 +0900 Subject: [Lingtyp] Citing text in European languages without translation References: Message-ID: <02c9571d-179a-484d-835d-54362e750f05@Spark> Dear all, In linguistics, it is common to see in-text citation of text written in different European languages without giving translation, such as an English paper quoting French text without additional translation, assuming that the reader is able to read these languages. I believe that this practice is problematic and we should not assume the readers to be able to read French, German, or other European languages (unless the topic of the paper is directly related to one of these languages). Why do we assume the reader to read a European language but not a non-European language such as Chinese or Turkish? Clearly the latter two are also languages used extensively in academic works, why should they almost always be given translation when European languages like French or German are very often exempted from translation? I would like to know your opinion on this. I’m writing this on this mailing list because I believe this happens more often in typology than in many other subfields. Regards, Ian Joo -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk Fri Jun 26 00:36:13 2020 From: nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk (Nigel Vincent) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 04:36:13 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Citing text in European languages without translation In-Reply-To: <02c9571d-179a-484d-835d-54362e750f05@Spark> References: , <02c9571d-179a-484d-835d-54362e750f05@Spark> Message-ID: Does this still happen? It's certainly true that in older scholarship written in English one often finds passages in French or German untranslated or conversely scholarship written in French or German with untranslated English, but the journals I have worked with in recent years insist on translation in such circumstances. Nigel Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Lingtyp on behalf of joo at shh.mpg.de Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 5:56 AM To: LINGTYP Subject: [Lingtyp] Citing text in European languages without translation Dear all, In linguistics, it is common to see in-text citation of text written in different European languages without giving translation, such as an English paper quoting French text without additional translation, assuming that the reader is able to read these languages. I believe that this practice is problematic and we should not assume the readers to be able to read French, German, or other European languages (unless the topic of the paper is directly related to one of these languages). Why do we assume the reader to read a European language but not a non-European language such as Chinese or Turkish? Clearly the latter two are also languages used extensively in academic works, why should they almost always be given translation when European languages like French or German are very often exempted from translation? I would like to know your opinion on this. I’m writing this on this mailing list because I believe this happens more often in typology than in many other subfields. Regards, Ian Joo -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk Fri Jun 26 01:51:46 2020 From: nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk (Nigel Vincent) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 05:51:46 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Message-ID: A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? Nigel Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mattis.list at lingpy.org Fri Jun 26 02:03:58 2020 From: mattis.list at lingpy.org (Mattis List) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 08:03:58 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Citing text in European languages without translation In-Reply-To: <02c9571d-179a-484d-835d-54362e750f05@Spark> References: <02c9571d-179a-484d-835d-54362e750f05@Spark> Message-ID: <25e40d67-18f9-4ba2-2f1e-7b2b3f869079@lingpy.org> Dear Ian, I think the reason for this practice is the history of the field of linguistics (in Europe), where lots of the early linguistic work was written in French, German, and less so in English. French was one of the languages that were listed as basic conditions (or recommendations) for starting the study of Indo-European linguistics in Berlin, when I was a student, although this was never tested. Many people who grow up in an English academic context studying philosophy still consider it important to learn German. In German work, we rarely translate English texts, and some do the same with French texts, even in English journalism, some journalists consider it as okay to mix some German and French words or phrases here and there. Clearly, knowing French and German as a linguist can be an advantage, if one is interested in reading the classics in the original, such as Gabelentz (who wrote an excellent Chinese grammar that has not been translated yet) or Meillet (for his numerous contributions to methodology), and there are many others. But so are other languages with linguistic and philosophical traditions, and depending on the subfield, knowledge of them is almost obligatory. Ideally, all linguists would be able to read as many of the languages in which scholarly work is produced as possible. And ideally, all linguists would also write scientific work in their mother tongue, as this may encourage younger scholars and students. As to the practice of not translating: I followed this in my dissertation, since this was what I had learned: German and French should not be translated. Having been teaching a lot more in the meantime, however, and also having been giving courses in different contexts where this "Indo-Europeanist" tradition differs, I have dropped it now and provide translations for German and French, as I would do it for Chinese and Russian. But still, in some cases, journals don't even allow you to provide translations of the titles in the references (few style guides include recommendations for translated titles or for quoting a book you have read in translation along with the original). Interestingly, the ancient Europe, which we use to justify the mix of German, English, and French, was apparently not that multilingual as one tends to imagine it: August Schleicher did not write his famous comment on Darwin's Origin of Species until he was given a German translation. Nowadays, he'd probably would have written his comment in bad English, who knows. I find it difficult to say what is better: embracing multlingualism in scientific work or embracing English monolingualism, where all those who do not have English as a mothertongue are also in disadvantage. Maybe there's a way in the middle. But translations should always be given into the language in which you write your text (at least that's what I think now), including titles in the references. We do our scientific work not only to convince people, but also to give our colleagues a chance to learn more. By providing a translation, you provide insights into a work to those who are not able to read it directly, so one could say it is some kind of a scientific service, maybe even a duty. Best, Mattis On 26.06.20 05:56, joo at shh.mpg.de wrote: > Dear all, > > In linguistics, it is common to see in-text citation of text written in > different European languages without giving translation, such as an > English paper quoting French text without additional translation, > assuming that the reader is able to read these languages. > I believe that this practice is problematic and we should not assume the > readers to be able to read French, German, or other European languages > (unless the topic of the paper is directly related to one of these > languages). Why do we assume the reader to read a European language but > not a non-European language such as Chinese or Turkish? Clearly the > latter two are also languages used extensively in academic works, why > should they almost always be given translation when European languages > like French or German are very often exempted from translation? > I would like to know your opinion on this. I’m writing this on this > mailing list because I believe this happens more often in typology than > in many other subfields. > > Regards, > Ian Joo > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > From hyman at berkeley.edu Fri Jun 26 02:12:24 2020 From: hyman at berkeley.edu (Larry M. HYMAN) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2020 23:12:24 -0700 Subject: [Lingtyp] Citing text in European languages without translation In-Reply-To: <25e40d67-18f9-4ba2-2f1e-7b2b3f869079@lingpy.org> References: <02c9571d-179a-484d-835d-54362e750f05@Spark> <25e40d67-18f9-4ba2-2f1e-7b2b3f869079@lingpy.org> Message-ID: I wonder if I can add another issue: whether to translate the glosses of forms that one cites, e.g. from French when writing in English? I have found this difficult at times because sometimes you don't know which sense of word was meant. (I'm usually doing this to illustrate a phonological property.) When I submitted two papers on Yaka (Bantu, Democratic Republic of Congo), citing from the Ruttenberg Yaka-French dictionary, I left the French glosses. One journal (*Studies in African Linguistics* in 1995) allowed them to stand; the other journal (*Phonology* in 1998) required that the glosses all be translated into English. Nowadays I translate the glosses whenever I can--and hope I get them right! On Thu, Jun 25, 2020 at 11:04 PM Mattis List wrote: > Dear Ian, > > I think the reason for this practice is the history of the field of > linguistics (in Europe), where lots of the early linguistic work was > written in French, German, and less so in English. French was one of the > languages that were listed as basic conditions (or recommendations) for > starting the study of Indo-European linguistics in Berlin, when I was a > student, although this was never tested. Many people who grow up in an > English academic context studying philosophy still consider it important > to learn German. In German work, we rarely translate English texts, and > some do the same with French texts, even in English journalism, some > journalists consider it as okay to mix some German and French words or > phrases here and there. > > Clearly, knowing French and German as a linguist can be an advantage, if > one is interested in reading the classics in the original, such as > Gabelentz (who wrote an excellent Chinese grammar that has not been > translated yet) or Meillet (for his numerous contributions to > methodology), and there are many others. But so are other languages with > linguistic and philosophical traditions, and depending on the subfield, > knowledge of them is almost obligatory. Ideally, all linguists would be > able to read as many of the languages in which scholarly work is > produced as possible. And ideally, all linguists would also write > scientific work in their mother tongue, as this may encourage younger > scholars and students. > > As to the practice of not translating: I followed this in my > dissertation, since this was what I had learned: German and French > should not be translated. Having been teaching a lot more in the > meantime, however, and also having been giving courses in different > contexts where this "Indo-Europeanist" tradition differs, I have dropped > it now and provide translations for German and French, as I would do it > for Chinese and Russian. But still, in some cases, journals don't even > allow you to provide translations of the titles in the references (few > style guides include recommendations for translated titles or for > quoting a book you have read in translation along with the original). > > Interestingly, the ancient Europe, which we use to justify the mix of > German, English, and French, was apparently not that multilingual as one > tends to imagine it: August Schleicher did not write his famous comment > on Darwin's Origin of Species until he was given a German translation. > Nowadays, he'd probably would have written his comment in bad English, > who knows. I find it difficult to say what is better: embracing > multlingualism in scientific work or embracing English monolingualism, > where all those who do not have English as a mothertongue are also in > disadvantage. Maybe there's a way in the middle. But translations should > always be given into the language in which you write your text (at least > that's what I think now), including titles in the references. We do our > scientific work not only to convince people, but also to give our > colleagues a chance to learn more. By providing a translation, you > provide insights into a work to those who are not able to read it > directly, so one could say it is some kind of a scientific service, > maybe even a duty. > > Best, > > Mattis > > On 26.06.20 05:56, joo at shh.mpg.de wrote: > > Dear all, > > > > In linguistics, it is common to see in-text citation of text written in > > different European languages without giving translation, such as an > > English paper quoting French text without additional translation, > > assuming that the reader is able to read these languages. > > I believe that this practice is problematic and we should not assume the > > readers to be able to read French, German, or other European languages > > (unless the topic of the paper is directly related to one of these > > languages). Why do we assume the reader to read a European language but > > not a non-European language such as Chinese or Turkish? Clearly the > > latter two are also languages used extensively in academic works, why > > should they almost always be given translation when European languages > > like French or German are very often exempted from translation? > > I would like to know your opinion on this. I’m writing this on this > > mailing list because I believe this happens more often in typology than > > in many other subfields. > > > > Regards, > > Ian Joo > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Lingtyp mailing list > > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -- Larry M. Hyman, Professor of Linguistics & Executive Director, France-Berkeley Fund Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/person_detail.php?person=19 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gilles.authier at gmail.com Fri Jun 26 03:35:15 2020 From: gilles.authier at gmail.com (Gilles Authier) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 09:35:15 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les références jugées indispensables sont écrites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir être rejeté, oui. GA On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent < nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> wrote: > A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns > the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access > relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions > asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has > not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? > Nigel > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > The University of Manchester > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wiemerb at uni-mainz.de Fri Jun 26 03:44:11 2020 From: wiemerb at uni-mainz.de (Wiemer, Bjoern) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 07:44:11 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> Je pense que oui… Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)… BW Von: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] Im Auftrag von Gilles Authier Gesendet: Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 An: Nigel Vincent Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Betreff: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les références jugées indispensables sont écrites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir être rejeté, oui. GA On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent > wrote: A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? Nigel Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk Fri Jun 26 04:03:55 2020 From: nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk (Nigel Vincent) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 08:03:55 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> References: , <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> Message-ID: Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les références jugées indispensables sont écrites en allemand ou en danois … ? Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Wiemer, Bjoern Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM To: Gilles Authier ; Nigel Vincent Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Subject: AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Je pense que oui… Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)… BW Von: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] Im Auftrag von Gilles Authier Gesendet: Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 An: Nigel Vincent Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Betreff: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les références jugées indispensables sont écrites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir être rejeté, oui. GA On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent > wrote: A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? Nigel Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Johanna.Mattissen at uni-koeln.de Fri Jun 26 04:58:39 2020 From: Johanna.Mattissen at uni-koeln.de (Johanna Mattissen) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 10:58:39 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Citing text in European languages without translation In-Reply-To: <02c9571d-179a-484d-835d-54362e750f05@Spark> References: <02c9571d-179a-484d-835d-54362e750f05@Spark> Message-ID: <6c9b13c6-a55d-1e84-3ca1-e5a1ae34bfd3@uni-koeln.de> Dear all, by the way, heaps of non-native speakers are forced to write in English and to read English, a language they have probably learnt at school. School English is just one variety of English, sometimes with outlooks on vocabulary of other varieties. Now, I have often come across native speakers using insider's idiomatic expressions and examples from different and lesser known varieties of English in their contributions without explaining what they mean. Paraphrasing would help in these cases as well. Regards, Johanna Mattissen European Legal Linguistics University of Cologne Am 26.06.2020 um 05:56 schrieb joo at shh.mpg.de: > Dear all, > > In linguistics, it is common to see in-text citation of text written > in different European languages without giving translation, such as an > English paper quoting French text without additional translation, > assuming that the reader is able to read these languages. > I believe that this practice is problematic and we should not assume > the readers to be able to read French, German, or other European > languages (unless the topic of the paper is directly related to one of > these languages). Why do we assume the reader to read a European > language but not a non-European language such as Chinese or Turkish? > Clearly the latter two are also languages used extensively in academic > works, why should they almost always be given translation when > European languages like French or German are very often exempted from > translation? > I would like to know your opinion on this. I’m writing this on this > mailing list because I believe this happens more often in typology > than in many other subfields. > > Regards, > Ian Joo > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hartmut at ruc.dk Fri Jun 26 05:22:05 2020 From: hartmut at ruc.dk (Hartmut Haberland) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 09:22:05 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: , <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> Message-ID: <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se référer à la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou française (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in one language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, "More people can make out what it is about in French than actually read it".) To take a concrete example: Acta Linguistica Hafniensia was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. Today, it still calls itself an 'international journal', but now practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least not passively monolingual. Hartmut Haberland Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af Nigel Vincent Sendt: 26. juni 2020 10:04 Til: Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les références jugées indispensables sont écrites en allemand ou en danois ... ? Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Wiemer, Bjoern > Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM To: Gilles Authier >; Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Subject: AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Je pense que oui... Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)... BW Von: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] Im Auftrag von Gilles Authier Gesendet: Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 An: Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Betreff: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les références jugées indispensables sont écrites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir être rejeté, oui. GA On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent > wrote: A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? Nigel Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk Fri Jun 26 05:39:11 2020 From: nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk (Nigel Vincent) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 09:39:11 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> References: , <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> , <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> Message-ID: I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special issue of 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on suppletion last year - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - we were able to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be published in French. [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cover/1467968x] The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the Philological Society: Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online Library If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email with instructions to retrieve your username onlinelibrary.wiley.com Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Hartmut Haberland Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM To: Nigel Vincent ; Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Subject: SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se référer à la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou française (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in one language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, “More people can make out what it is about in French than actually read it”.) To take a concrete example: Acta Linguistica Hafniensia was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. Today, it still calls itself an ‘international journal’, but now practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least not passively monolingual. Hartmut Haberland Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af Nigel Vincent Sendt: 26. juni 2020 10:04 Til: Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les références jugées indispensables sont écrites en allemand ou en danois … ? Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Wiemer, Bjoern > Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM To: Gilles Authier >; Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Subject: AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Je pense que oui… Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)… BW Von: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] Im Auftrag von Gilles Authier Gesendet: Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 An: Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Betreff: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les références jugées indispensables sont écrites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir être rejeté, oui. GA On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent > wrote: A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? Nigel Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From haspelmath at shh.mpg.de Fri Jun 26 05:43:09 2020 From: haspelmath at shh.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 11:43:09 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> Message-ID: <213e7bdc-3105-4497-4f0a-38d55b052854@shh.mpg.de> Maybe if you're Danish (like Hartmut and Nigel), or were otherwise raised in some small (and rich) European country, then understanding many of these languages is kind of natural. But somehow asking *all linguists* to be like this seems Eurocentric to me. Korean/Chinese linguists (like Ian Joo) or African linguists will simply not have the chance to encounter so many languages in which other linguists have written relevant work. (In Africa, even big languages like Hausa and Yoruba are rarely used for academic purposes, it seems.) On the other hand, it's also ethnocentric to only cite work by American linguists and somehow assume that there is nothing else of relevance. So what's the solution? I think it must be (i) practical universalism (only use English/Globish), combined with (ii) awareness of the parochialism of English-language traditions. As an example of the latter, consider the term "agreement": As I realized only after reading Cysouw (2011) (https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/17668/1/thli.2011.011.pdf), this term did not exist in linguistics before Bloomfield (1933), and the relevant concepts didn't exist earlier either. Same with "grammatical relation" (due to Chomsky 1965), "focus" (due to Chomsky 1970), and quite a few other terms. Natural as these terms seem to us, they may not be the results of scientific discoveries that we made, but mostly due to the spread of the English language (and the influence of a few linguists working at rich U.S. universities). Universalism and parochialism are in a certain tension, but I think we really need to adopt both at the same time if we want to progress in our scientific understanding of language(s). Martin Am 26.06.20 um 11:22 schrieb Hartmut Haberland: > > Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se référer > à la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou française > (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in /one/ > language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just > two or three languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but > how many do? > > (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, “More people > can make out what it is about in French than actually read it”.) > > To take a concrete example: /Acta Linguistica Hafniensia /was founded > in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and > English. Today, it still calls itself an ‘international journal’, but > now practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. > However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one > paper specifically dealing with English, there are references to > literature in German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So > linguists are at least not passively monolingual. > > Hartmut Haberland > > *Fra:*Lingtyp *På vegne af > *Nigel Vincent > *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 > *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier > > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les références jugées > indispensables sont écrites en allemand ou en danois … ? > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > The University of Manchester > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > *From:*Wiemer, Bjoern > > *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM > *To:* Gilles Authier >; Nigel Vincent > > > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > > *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > Je pense que oui…  Actually, the same applies to articles on (a > language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups > (e.g., Scandinavian)… > > BW > > *Von:*Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *Im > Auftrag von *Gilles Authier > *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 > *An:* Nigel Vincent > > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les références jugées > indispensables sont écrites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait > devoir être rejeté, oui. > > GA > > On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent > > wrote: > > A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about > concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in > order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper > be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English > on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written > in a language other than English? > > Nigel > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > The University of Manchester > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Martin Haspelmath (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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ilja.serzants at uni-leipzig.de Fri Jun 26 05:57:11 2020 From: ilja.serzants at uni-leipzig.de (=?UTF-8?Q?Ilja_Ser=c5=beant?=) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 11:57:11 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> Message-ID: <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> Dear all, if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive knowledge of other languages is, of course, important and if a paper does not cite an important paper on the topic written in a language other than English that is, of course, a good reason for sending the paper back for revision. However, a very different topic is publishing new papers in languages other than English. I personally have strong reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual understanding even larger by publishing in languages other than English (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even more, perhaps, research English itself should also be different from the native English in that one should try to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, write in short sentences, etc. If you publish in languages other than English then you need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not. I think this issue is difficult to resolve in a fair way. Best, Ilja Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: > I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special issue of > 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on suppletion last year - > https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 > - we were > able to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be > published in French. > > > The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the Philological Society: > Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online Library > > If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email > with instructions to retrieve your username > onlinelibrary.wiley.com > > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > The University of Manchester > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* Hartmut Haberland > *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM > *To:* Nigel Vincent ; Wiemer, Bjoern > ; Gilles Authier > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se référer > à la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou française > (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in /one/ > language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just > two or three languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but > how many do? > > (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, “More people > can make out what it is about in French than actually read it”.) > > To take a concrete example: /Acta Linguistica Hafniensia /was founded > in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and > English. Today, it still calls itself an ‘international journal’, but > now practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. > However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one > paper specifically dealing with English, there are references to > literature in German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So > linguists are at least not passively monolingual. > > Hartmut Haberland > > *Fra:*Lingtyp *På vegne af > *Nigel Vincent > *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 > *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier > > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les références jugées > indispensables sont écrites en allemand ou en danois … ? > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > The University of Manchester > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > *From:*Wiemer, Bjoern > > *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM > *To:* Gilles Authier >; Nigel Vincent > > > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > > *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > Je pense que oui…  Actually, the same applies to articles on (a > language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups > (e.g., Scandinavian)… > > BW > > *Von:*Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *Im > Auftrag von *Gilles Authier > *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 > *An:* Nigel Vincent > > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les références jugées > indispensables sont écrites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait > devoir être rejeté, oui. > > GA > > On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent > > wrote: > > A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about > concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in > order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper > be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English > on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written > in a language other than English? > > Nigel > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > The University of Manchester > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Ilja A. Seržant, postdoc Project "Grammatical Universals" Universität Leipzig (IPF 141199) Nikolaistraße 6-10 04109 Leipzig URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 Room 5.22 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk Fri Jun 26 05:58:39 2020 From: nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk (Nigel Vincent) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 09:58:39 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <213e7bdc-3105-4497-4f0a-38d55b052854@shh.mpg.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk>, <213e7bdc-3105-4497-4f0a-38d55b052854@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: But the term 'agreement' has been around in writings about grammar for centuries. Here is the relevant entry from the OED: 6. Grammar. The fact or condition of agreeing in number, gender, case, person, etc., with another element in the sentence or clause. Cf. concord n.1 6. 1549 W. Lily Shorte Introd. Gram. (new ed.) To Rdr. sig. Aiii Lette hym passe to the Concordes, to knowe the agreement of partes amonge theim selues. 1669 J. Milton Accedence 41 The agreement of words together in Number, Gender, Case, and Person, which is call'd Concord. 1787 H. Blair Lect. Rhetoric (ed. 3) I. viii. 200 When I say, in Latin, ‘Formosa fortis viri uxor’, it is only the agreement, in gender, number, and case, of the adjective ‘formosa’..with the substantive ‘uxor’..that declares the meaning. 1879 J. A. H. Murray in Trans. Philol. Soc. 619 In the English ‘the men push the stone,’ we have neither formal expression of the destination [of the action] nor formal agreement of verb and subject. 1979 Amer. Speech 1976 51 134 Of the nine problems covered, subject-verb agreement receives a thorough treatment. 2004 H. Barber et al. in M. Carreiras & C. Clifton On-line Study Sentence Comprehension xv. 315 Agreement in gender between nouns and adjectives is mandatory in Spanish. Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Lingtyp on behalf of Martin Haspelmath Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 11:43 AM To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Maybe if you're Danish (like Hartmut and Nigel), or were otherwise raised in some small (and rich) European country, then understanding many of these languages is kind of natural. But somehow asking *all linguists* to be like this seems Eurocentric to me. Korean/Chinese linguists (like Ian Joo) or African linguists will simply not have the chance to encounter so many languages in which other linguists have written relevant work. (In Africa, even big languages like Hausa and Yoruba are rarely used for academic purposes, it seems.) On the other hand, it's also ethnocentric to only cite work by American linguists and somehow assume that there is nothing else of relevance. So what's the solution? I think it must be (i) practical universalism (only use English/Globish), combined with (ii) awareness of the parochialism of English-language traditions. As an example of the latter, consider the term "agreement": As I realized only after reading Cysouw (2011) (https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/17668/1/thli.2011.011.pdf), this term did not exist in linguistics before Bloomfield (1933), and the relevant concepts didn't exist earlier either. Same with "grammatical relation" (due to Chomsky 1965), "focus" (due to Chomsky 1970), and quite a few other terms. Natural as these terms seem to us, they may not be the results of scientific discoveries that we made, but mostly due to the spread of the English language (and the influence of a few linguists working at rich U.S. universities). Universalism and parochialism are in a certain tension, but I think we really need to adopt both at the same time if we want to progress in our scientific understanding of language(s). Martin Am 26.06.20 um 11:22 schrieb Hartmut Haberland: Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se référer à la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou française (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in one language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, “More people can make out what it is about in French than actually read it”.) To take a concrete example: Acta Linguistica Hafniensia was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. Today, it still calls itself an ‘international journal’, but now practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least not passively monolingual. Hartmut Haberland Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af Nigel Vincent Sendt: 26. juni 2020 10:04 Til: Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les références jugées indispensables sont écrites en allemand ou en danois … ? Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Wiemer, Bjoern > Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM To: Gilles Authier >; Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Subject: AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Je pense que oui… Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)… BW Von: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] Im Auftrag von Gilles Authier Gesendet: Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 An: Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Betreff: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les références jugées indispensables sont écrites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir être rejeté, oui. GA On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent > wrote: A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? Nigel Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Martin Haspelmath (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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From oesten at ling.su.se Fri Jun 26 06:02:22 2020 From: oesten at ling.su.se (=?iso-8859-1?Q?=D6sten_Dahl?=) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 10:02:22 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk>, <213e7bdc-3105-4497-4f0a-38d55b052854@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: <97eefc4cf208422180876b4b2727b415@ling.su.se> Yes, and actually Bloomfield used "agreement" as a cover term for "concord", "government", and "cross-reference", but as Cysouw notes in the paper Martin refers to, the term is now normally restricted to what was earlier called "concord". Östen Från: Lingtyp För Nigel Vincent Skickat: den 26 juni 2020 11:59 Till: Martin Haspelmath ; lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship But the term 'agreement' has been around in writings about grammar for centuries. Here is the relevant entry from the OED: 6. Grammar. The fact or condition of agreeing in number, gender, case, person, etc., with another element in the sentence or clause. Cf. concord n.1 6. 1549 W. Lily Shorte Introd. Gram. (new ed.) To Rdr. sig. Aiii Lette hym passe to the Concordes, to knowe the agreement of partes amonge theim selues. 1669 J. Milton Accedence 41 The agreement of words together in Number, Gender, Case, and Person, which is call'd Concord. 1787 H. Blair Lect. Rhetoric (ed. 3) I. viii. 200 When I say, in Latin, 'Formosa fortis viri uxor', it is only the agreement, in gender, number, and case, of the adjective 'formosa'..with the substantive 'uxor'..that declares the meaning. 1879 J. A. H. Murray in Trans. Philol. Soc. 619 In the English 'the men push the stone,' we have neither formal expression of the destination [of the action] nor formal agreement of verb and subject. 1979 Amer. Speech 1976 51 134 Of the nine problems covered, subject-verb agreement receives a thorough treatment. 2004 H. Barber et al. in M. Carreiras & C. Clifton On-line Study Sentence Comprehension xv. 315 Agreement in gender between nouns and adjectives is mandatory in Spanish. Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Lingtyp > on behalf of Martin Haspelmath > Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 11:43 AM To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Maybe if you're Danish (like Hartmut and Nigel), or were otherwise raised in some small (and rich) European country, then understanding many of these languages is kind of natural. But somehow asking *all linguists* to be like this seems Eurocentric to me. Korean/Chinese linguists (like Ian Joo) or African linguists will simply not have the chance to encounter so many languages in which other linguists have written relevant work. (In Africa, even big languages like Hausa and Yoruba are rarely used for academic purposes, it seems.) On the other hand, it's also ethnocentric to only cite work by American linguists and somehow assume that there is nothing else of relevance. So what's the solution? I think it must be (i) practical universalism (only use English/Globish), combined with (ii) awareness of the parochialism of English-language traditions. As an example of the latter, consider the term "agreement": As I realized only after reading Cysouw (2011) (https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/17668/1/thli.2011.011.pdf), this term did not exist in linguistics before Bloomfield (1933), and the relevant concepts didn't exist earlier either. Same with "grammatical relation" (due to Chomsky 1965), "focus" (due to Chomsky 1970), and quite a few other terms. Natural as these terms seem to us, they may not be the results of scientific discoveries that we made, but mostly due to the spread of the English language (and the influence of a few linguists working at rich U.S. universities). Universalism and parochialism are in a certain tension, but I think we really need to adopt both at the same time if we want to progress in our scientific understanding of language(s). Martin Am 26.06.20 um 11:22 schrieb Hartmut Haberland: Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se référer à la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou française (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in one language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, "More people can make out what it is about in French than actually read it".) To take a concrete example: Acta Linguistica Hafniensia was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. Today, it still calls itself an 'international journal', but now practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least not passively monolingual. Hartmut Haberland Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af Nigel Vincent Sendt: 26. juni 2020 10:04 Til: Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les références jugées indispensables sont écrites en allemand ou en danois ... ? Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Wiemer, Bjoern > Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM To: Gilles Authier >; Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Subject: AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Je pense que oui... Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)... BW Von: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] Im Auftrag von Gilles Authier Gesendet: Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 An: Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Betreff: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les références jugées indispensables sont écrites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir être rejeté, oui. GA On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent > wrote: A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? Nigel Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Martin Haspelmath (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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From haspelmath at shh.mpg.de Fri Jun 26 06:07:59 2020 From: haspelmath at shh.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 12:07:59 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <213e7bdc-3105-4497-4f0a-38d55b052854@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: Yes, Nigel, but as you know: In the 16th-17th century, English was irrelevant because Latin was the language of scholarship in Europe. In the 18th century, English was irrelevant because French was the language of scholarship. In the 19th century, English was irrelevant because German was the primary language of linguistics (it was Karl Ferdinand Becker, for example, who made the distinction between "subject" and "object" popular). So looking at the OED gives a wrong impression – it appears to project the current supremacy of English back into the past. (Apparently, the established Latin term "concord" needed to be explained to English readers.) That's one of the reasons why we should call out common language "Globish". There's no real continuity with "English". Martin Am 26.06.20 um 11:58 schrieb Nigel Vincent: > But the term 'agreement' has been around in writings about grammar for > centuries. Here is the relevant entry from the OED: > > > *6.* /Grammar/. The fact or condition of agreeing in number, > gender, case, person, etc., with another element in the sentence > or clause. Cf. concord n.^1 6 > . > > 1549 W. Lily /Shorte Introd. Gram./ (new ed.) To Rdr. sig. Aiii Lette > hym passe to the Concordes, to knowe the agreement of partes amonge > theim selues. > 1669 J. Milton /Accedence/ 41   The agreement of words together in > Number, Gender, Case, and Person, which is call'd Concord. > 1787 H. Blair /Lect. Rhetoric/ (ed. 3) I. viii. 200   When I say, in > Latin, ‘Formosa fortis viri uxor’, it is only the agreement, in > gender, number, and case, of the adjective ‘formosa’..with the > substantive ‘uxor’..that declares the meaning. > 1879 J. A. H. Murray in /Trans. Philol. Soc./ 619   In the English > ‘the men push the stone,’ we have neither formal expression of the > destination [of the action] nor formal agreement of verb and subject. > 1979 /Amer. Speech 1976/ *51* 134   Of the nine problems covered, > subject-verb agreement receives a thorough treatment. > 2004 H. Barber et al. in M. Carreiras & C. Clifton /On-line Study > Sentence Comprehension/ xv. 315 Agreement in gender between nouns and > adjectives is mandatory in Spanish. > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > The University of Manchester > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* Lingtyp on behalf > of Martin Haspelmath > *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:43 AM > *To:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > Maybe if you're Danish (like Hartmut and Nigel), or were otherwise > raised in some small (and rich) European country, then understanding > many of these languages is kind of natural. > > But somehow asking *all linguists* to be like this seems Eurocentric > to me. Korean/Chinese linguists (like Ian Joo) or African linguists > will simply not have the chance to encounter so many languages in > which other linguists have written relevant work. (In Africa, even big > languages like Hausa and Yoruba are rarely used for academic purposes, > it seems.) > > On the other hand, it's also ethnocentric to only cite work by > American linguists and somehow assume that there is nothing else of > relevance. > > So what's the solution? I think it must be (i) practical universalism > (only use English/Globish), combined with (ii) awareness of the > parochialism of English-language traditions. > > As an example of the latter, consider the term "agreement": As I > realized only after reading Cysouw (2011) > (https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/17668/1/thli.2011.011.pdf), this term > did not exist in linguistics before Bloomfield (1933), and the > relevant concepts didn't exist earlier either. Same with "grammatical > relation" (due to Chomsky 1965), "focus" (due to Chomsky 1970), and > quite a few other terms. Natural as these terms seem to us, they may > not be the results of scientific discoveries that we made, but mostly > due to the spread of the English language (and the influence of a few > linguists working at rich U.S. universities). > > Universalism and parochialism are in a certain tension, but I think we > really need to adopt both at the same time if we want to progress in > our scientific understanding of language(s). > > Martin > > Am 26.06.20 um 11:22 schrieb Hartmut Haberland: >> >> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se référer >> à la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou française >> (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in /one/ >> language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just >> two or three languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but >> how many do? >> >> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, “More people >> can make out what it is about in French than actually read it”.) >> >> To take a concrete example: /Acta Linguistica Hafniensia /was founded >> in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and >> English. Today, it still calls itself an ‘international journal’, but >> now practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. >> However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one >> paper specifically dealing with English, there are references to >> literature in German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So >> linguists are at least not passively monolingual. >> >> Hartmut Haberland >> >> *Fra:*Lingtyp >> *På vegne af >> *Nigel Vincent >> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 >> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern >> ; Gilles Authier >> >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les références jugées >> indispensables sont écrites en allemand ou en danois … ? >> >> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> The University of Manchester >> >> Linguistics & English Language >> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> >> The University of Manchester >> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> >> *From:*Wiemer, Bjoern > > >> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM >> *To:* Gilles Authier > >; Nigel Vincent >> > >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> > > >> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> Je pense que oui… Actually, the same applies to articles on (a >> language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups >> (e.g., Scandinavian)… >> >> BW >> >> *Von:*Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *Im >> Auftrag von *Gilles Authier >> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 >> *An:* Nigel Vincent > > >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les références jugées >> indispensables sont écrites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait >> devoir être rejeté, oui. >> >> GA >> >> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent >> > > wrote: >> >> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about >> concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in >> order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a >> paper be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in >> English on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work >> written in a language other than English? >> >> Nigel >> >> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> The University of Manchester >> >> Linguistics & English Language >> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> >> The University of Manchester >> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > -- > Martin Haspelmath (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 -- Martin Haspelmath (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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bernhard.hurch at uni-graz.at Fri Jun 26 06:57:41 2020 From: bernhard.hurch at uni-graz.at (Hurch, Bernhard (bernhard.hurch@uni-graz.at)) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 10:57:41 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> Message-ID: What is raised here is, to my advice a rather superficial question of style and of appearance. There is a more general point about this question: those colleagues who are not able to read and appropriately understand a quotation in let's say French or German or Spanish or Russian will not be able to receive and understand scientific essays, linguistic sources and materials in these languages. They will also be unable to understand and critically evaluate a quotation if they can't approach the source of the quotation. In other words: if your abilities are limited to read and understand only English you will miss about 90% of the relevant literature and sources etc. on e.g. Latin-American indigenous languages. 90% of the relevant literature on Caucasian languages etc. Do we want the linguistic discourse be of this limited type? Unfortunately we are speeding up on our way in this annoying direction. Instead of a further restriction we should think about appropriate ways to re-open the scientific discourse strategies. PS: By the way, Schuchardt 100 years ago published in 12 different languages and coresponded in 22 different languages (http://schuchardt.uni-graz.at). Why should internationalization of scientific discourse only mean ‘anglification’. I do agree, it is a question of power (Make America great again). But still it is unpleasant and not really forward-looking. Bernhard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pa2 at soas.ac.uk Fri Jun 26 07:21:43 2020 From: pa2 at soas.ac.uk (Peter Austin) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 12:21:43 +0100 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> Message-ID: With all due respect, I find it incredible that someone could write: "publishing new papers in languages other than English. I personally have strong reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual understanding even larger by publishing in languages other than English (unless there is absolutely no escape). ... If you publish in languages other than English then you need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not". There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics and related fields published annually in languages like Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which never pierces the consciousness of English-only researchers because of attitudes like having language hierarchies composed entirely of European languages. Sheesh. Peter On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Seržant wrote: > Dear all, > > > if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive knowledge of > other languages is, of course, important and if a paper does not cite an > important paper on the topic written in a language other than English that > is, of course, a good reason for sending the paper back for revision. > > > However, a very different topic is publishing new papers in languages > other than English. I personally have strong reservations here. Linguistics > is such a complicated matter and it is often so difficult to exactly > understand others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual > understanding even larger by publishing in languages other than English > (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even more, perhaps, research > English itself should also be different from the native English in that one > should try to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, write > in short sentences, etc. > > > If you publish in languages other than English then you need a sort of > hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable (German, French, > Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not. I think this issue is difficult > to resolve in a fair way. > > > Best, > > Ilja > > > Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: > > I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special issue of > 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on suppletion last year - > https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - we were able to > persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be published in > French. > > The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the Philological Society: Vol > 117, No 3 - Wiley Online Library > > If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email with > instructions to retrieve your username > onlinelibrary.wiley.com > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > The University of Manchester > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > ------------------------------ > *From:* Hartmut Haberland > *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM > *To:* Nigel Vincent > ; Wiemer, Bjoern > ; Gilles Authier > > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se référer à la > tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou française (Roussel, > Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in *one* language is myopic. > Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three languages to > keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? > > (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, “More people can > make out what it is about in French than actually read it”.) > > To take a concrete example: *Acta Linguistica Hafniensia *was founded in > 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. > Today, it still calls itself an ‘international journal’, but now > practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, > if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper > specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in > German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least > not passively monolingual. > > Hartmut Haberland > > *Fra:* Lingtyp > *På vegne af *Nigel Vincent > *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 > *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern ; > Gilles Authier > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les références jugées > indispensables sont écrites en allemand ou en danois … ? > > > > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > ------------------------------ > > *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern > *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM > *To:* Gilles Authier ; Nigel Vincent < > nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > Je pense que oui… Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language > from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., > Scandinavian)… > > BW > > > > *Von:* Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org > ] *Im Auftrag von *Gilles > Authier > *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 > *An:* Nigel Vincent > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les références jugées > indispensables sont écrites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir > être rejeté, oui. > > GA > > > > On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent < > nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> wrote: > > A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns > the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access > relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions > asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has > not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? > > Nigel > > > > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > -- > Ilja A. Seržant, postdoc > Project "Grammatical Universals" > Universität Leipzig (IPF 141199) > Nikolaistraße 6-10 > 04109 Leipzig > > URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ > > Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 > Room 5.22 > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -- Prof Peter K. Austin Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS Visiting Researcher, Oxford University Foundation Editor, EL Publishing Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society Department of Linguistics, SOAS Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square London WC1H 0XG United Kingdom -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hartmut at ruc.dk Fri Jun 26 07:26:30 2020 From: hartmut at ruc.dk (Hartmut Haberland) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 11:26:30 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> Message-ID: <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813CA0EB@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> I also want to add that publishing in several languages is an extremely useful intellectual exercise and leads to self-discipline and self-awareness when you realize that what you have written in one language simply does not work in one of the others – a good reason to rethink what you have written. Hartmut Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af Peter Austin Sendt: 26. juni 2020 13:22 Til: Ilja Seržant Cc: Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship With all due respect, I find it incredible that someone could write: "publishing new papers in languages other than English. I personally have strong reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual understanding even larger by publishing in languages other than English (unless there is absolutely no escape). ... If you publish in languages other than English then you need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not". There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics and related fields published annually in languages like Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which never pierces the consciousness of English-only researchers because of attitudes like having language hierarchies composed entirely of European languages. Sheesh. Peter On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Seržant > wrote: Dear all, if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive knowledge of other languages is, of course, important and if a paper does not cite an important paper on the topic written in a language other than English that is, of course, a good reason for sending the paper back for revision. However, a very different topic is publishing new papers in languages other than English. I personally have strong reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual understanding even larger by publishing in languages other than English (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even more, perhaps, research English itself should also be different from the native English in that one should try to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, write in short sentences, etc. If you publish in languages other than English then you need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not. I think this issue is difficult to resolve in a fair way. Best, Ilja Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special issue of 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on suppletion last year - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - we were able to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be published in French. [Billede fjernet af afsender.] The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the Philological Society: Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online Library If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email with instructions to retrieve your username onlinelibrary.wiley.com Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Hartmut Haberland Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM To: Nigel Vincent ; Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Subject: SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se référer à la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou française (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in one language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, “More people can make out what it is about in French than actually read it”.) To take a concrete example: Acta Linguistica Hafniensia was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. Today, it still calls itself an ‘international journal’, but now practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least not passively monolingual. Hartmut Haberland Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af Nigel Vincent Sendt: 26. juni 2020 10:04 Til: Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les références jugées indispensables sont écrites en allemand ou en danois … ? Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Wiemer, Bjoern > Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM To: Gilles Authier >; Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Subject: AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Je pense que oui… Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)… BW Von: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] Im Auftrag von Gilles Authier Gesendet: Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 An: Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Betreff: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les références jugées indispensables sont écrites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir être rejeté, oui. GA On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent > wrote: A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? Nigel Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Ilja A. Seržant, postdoc Project "Grammatical Universals" Universität Leipzig (IPF 141199) Nikolaistraße 6-10 04109 Leipzig URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 Room 5.22 _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Prof Peter K. Austin Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS Visiting Researcher, Oxford University Foundation Editor, EL Publishing Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society Department of Linguistics, SOAS Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square London WC1H 0XG United Kingdom -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 804 bytes Desc: image001.jpg URL: From pa2 at soas.ac.uk Fri Jun 26 07:29:13 2020 From: pa2 at soas.ac.uk (Peter Austin) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 12:29:13 +0100 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <213e7bdc-3105-4497-4f0a-38d55b052854@shh.mpg.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <213e7bdc-3105-4497-4f0a-38d55b052854@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: Can we please be careful with making statements like "African linguists will simply not have the chance to encounter so many languages in which other linguists have written relevant work. (In Africa, even big languages like Hausa and Yoruba are rarely used for academic purposes, it seems.)". Africa is a large and diverse continent and there are many colleagues there who are familiar with relevant literature in English, French, Arabic, Portuguese since these are the languages of higher education and research in their countries. Peter On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:43, Martin Haspelmath wrote: > Maybe if you're Danish (like Hartmut and Nigel), or were otherwise raised > in some small (and rich) European country, then understanding many of these > languages is kind of natural. > > But somehow asking *all linguists* to be like this seems Eurocentric to > me. Korean/Chinese linguists (like Ian Joo) or African linguists will > simply not have the chance to encounter so many languages in which other > linguists have written relevant work. (In Africa, even big languages like > Hausa and Yoruba are rarely used for academic purposes, it seems.) > > On the other hand, it's also ethnocentric to only cite work by American > linguists and somehow assume that there is nothing else of relevance. > > So what's the solution? I think it must be (i) practical universalism > (only use English/Globish), combined with (ii) awareness of the > parochialism of English-language traditions. > > As an example of the latter, consider the term "agreement": As I realized > only after reading Cysouw (2011) ( > https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/17668/1/thli.2011.011.pdf), this term did > not exist in linguistics before Bloomfield (1933), and the relevant > concepts didn't exist earlier either. Same with "grammatical relation" (due > to Chomsky 1965), "focus" (due to Chomsky 1970), and quite a few other > terms. Natural as these terms seem to us, they may not be the results of > scientific discoveries that we made, but mostly due to the spread of the > English language (and the influence of a few linguists working at rich U.S. > universities). > > Universalism and parochialism are in a certain tension, but I think we > really need to adopt both at the same time if we want to progress in our > scientific understanding of language(s). > > Martin > > Am 26.06.20 um 11:22 schrieb Hartmut Haberland: > > Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se référer à la > tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou française (Roussel, > Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in *one* language is myopic. > Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three languages to > keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? > > (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, “More people can > make out what it is about in French than actually read it”.) > > To take a concrete example: *Acta Linguistica Hafniensia *was founded in > 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. > Today, it still calls itself an ‘international journal’, but now > practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, > if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper > specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in > German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least > not passively monolingual. > > Hartmut Haberland > > *Fra:* Lingtyp > *På vegne af *Nigel Vincent > *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 > *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern ; > Gilles Authier > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les références jugées > indispensables sont écrites en allemand ou en danois … ? > > > > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > ------------------------------ > > *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern > *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM > *To:* Gilles Authier ; Nigel Vincent < > nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > Je pense que oui… Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language > from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., > Scandinavian)… > > BW > > > > *Von:* Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org > ] *Im Auftrag von *Gilles > Authier > *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 > *An:* Nigel Vincent > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les références jugées > indispensables sont écrites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir > être rejeté, oui. > > GA > > > > On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent < > nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> wrote: > > A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns > the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access > relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions > asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has > not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? > > Nigel > > > > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > -- > Martin Haspelmath (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 > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -- Prof Peter K. Austin Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS Visiting Researcher, Oxford University Foundation Editor, EL Publishing Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society Department of Linguistics, SOAS Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square London WC1H 0XG United Kingdom -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk Fri Jun 26 07:31:47 2020 From: nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk (Nigel Vincent) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 11:31:47 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <213e7bdc-3105-4497-4f0a-38d55b052854@shh.mpg.de> , Message-ID: Let's not oversimplify things, Martin. I think the right answer is not to say 'X is the language of scholarship in century Y'. There certainly was a period when Latin was dominant but already in the early 17th century other languages were being used - e.g. Galileo's 'Dialogo' in 1632 - and until relatively recently there were several languages commonly used before the current dominance of English. The history is well discussed in Michael Gordin's Scientific Babel: The Language of Science from the Fall of Latin to the Rise of English Chicago: Chicago University Press (2015). What the OED does is document the various uses but it is not projecting modern usage back. And it is interesting that it cites a use of 'agreement' as equivalent to 'concord' from the same grammar by Lily that Cysouw cites. Also since there is at least one use of 'agreement' in a specialist journal (Murray in Transactions of the Philological Society') in 1879, I would conclude that Cysouw is just plain wrong in attributing the first modern use to Bloomfield. On the more general issue, I agree with Bernhard and Peter. It is ironic that a couple of years ago I was asked if I would mind giving my invited plenary at a specialist conference on Italian linguistics in Italian because most of the native speakers had chosen to give their papers in English! Nigel Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Martin Haspelmath Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 12:07 PM To: Nigel Vincent ; lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Yes, Nigel, but as you know: In the 16th-17th century, English was irrelevant because Latin was the language of scholarship in Europe. In the 18th century, English was irrelevant because French was the language of scholarship. In the 19th century, English was irrelevant because German was the primary language of linguistics (it was Karl Ferdinand Becker, for example, who made the distinction between "subject" and "object" popular). So looking at the OED gives a wrong impression – it appears to project the current supremacy of English back into the past. (Apparently, the established Latin term "concord" needed to be explained to English readers.) That's one of the reasons why we should call out common language "Globish". There's no real continuity with "English". Martin Am 26.06.20 um 11:58 schrieb Nigel Vincent: But the term 'agreement' has been around in writings about grammar for centuries. Here is the relevant entry from the OED: 6. Grammar. The fact or condition of agreeing in number, gender, case, person, etc., with another element in the sentence or clause. Cf. concord n.1 6. 1549 W. Lily Shorte Introd. Gram. (new ed.) To Rdr. sig. Aiii Lette hym passe to the Concordes, to knowe the agreement of partes amonge theim selues. 1669 J. Milton Accedence 41 The agreement of words together in Number, Gender, Case, and Person, which is call'd Concord. 1787 H. Blair Lect. Rhetoric (ed. 3) I. viii. 200 When I say, in Latin, ‘Formosa fortis viri uxor’, it is only the agreement, in gender, number, and case, of the adjective ‘formosa’..with the substantive ‘uxor’..that declares the meaning. 1879 J. A. H. Murray in Trans. Philol. Soc. 619 In the English ‘the men push the stone,’ we have neither formal expression of the destination [of the action] nor formal agreement of verb and subject. 1979 Amer. Speech 1976 51 134 Of the nine problems covered, subject-verb agreement receives a thorough treatment. 2004 H. Barber et al. in M. Carreiras & C. Clifton On-line Study Sentence Comprehension xv. 315 Agreement in gender between nouns and adjectives is mandatory in Spanish. Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Lingtyp on behalf of Martin Haspelmath Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 11:43 AM To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Maybe if you're Danish (like Hartmut and Nigel), or were otherwise raised in some small (and rich) European country, then understanding many of these languages is kind of natural. But somehow asking *all linguists* to be like this seems Eurocentric to me. Korean/Chinese linguists (like Ian Joo) or African linguists will simply not have the chance to encounter so many languages in which other linguists have written relevant work. (In Africa, even big languages like Hausa and Yoruba are rarely used for academic purposes, it seems.) On the other hand, it's also ethnocentric to only cite work by American linguists and somehow assume that there is nothing else of relevance. So what's the solution? I think it must be (i) practical universalism (only use English/Globish), combined with (ii) awareness of the parochialism of English-language traditions. As an example of the latter, consider the term "agreement": As I realized only after reading Cysouw (2011) (https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/17668/1/thli.2011.011.pdf), this term did not exist in linguistics before Bloomfield (1933), and the relevant concepts didn't exist earlier either. Same with "grammatical relation" (due to Chomsky 1965), "focus" (due to Chomsky 1970), and quite a few other terms. Natural as these terms seem to us, they may not be the results of scientific discoveries that we made, but mostly due to the spread of the English language (and the influence of a few linguists working at rich U.S. universities). Universalism and parochialism are in a certain tension, but I think we really need to adopt both at the same time if we want to progress in our scientific understanding of language(s). Martin Am 26.06.20 um 11:22 schrieb Hartmut Haberland: Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se référer à la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou française (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in one language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, “More people can make out what it is about in French than actually read it”.) To take a concrete example: Acta Linguistica Hafniensia was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. Today, it still calls itself an ‘international journal’, but now practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least not passively monolingual. Hartmut Haberland Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af Nigel Vincent Sendt: 26. juni 2020 10:04 Til: Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les références jugées indispensables sont écrites en allemand ou en danois … ? Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Wiemer, Bjoern > Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM To: Gilles Authier >; Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Subject: AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Je pense que oui… Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)… BW Von: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] Im Auftrag von Gilles Authier Gesendet: Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 An: Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Betreff: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les références jugées indispensables sont écrites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir être rejeté, oui. GA On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent > wrote: A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? Nigel Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Martin Haspelmath (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 -- Martin Haspelmath (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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From harald.hammarstrom at gmail.com Fri Jun 26 07:32:28 2020 From: harald.hammarstrom at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?Harald_Hammarstr=C3=B6m?=) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 13:32:28 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <213e7bdc-3105-4497-4f0a-38d55b052854@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: I did a quick-and-dirty search over older (pre-1933) grammars (written in English) and there are many grammars from at least the 1850s and on which do use the term and concept agreement, e.g. * O'Donovan, J. (1845) A Grammar of the Irish Language. Dublin: Hodges and Smith. "Of the Agreement of the Article with its Substantive, and of its Collocation" "Of the Collocation and Agreement of Pronouns with their Antecedents" "Of the Agreement of a Verb with its Nominative Case" ... * Davies, J. (1851) A Tahitian and English dictionary, with introductory remarks on the Polynesian language, and a short grammar of the Tahitian dialect. Tahiti: London Missionary Society. "The rules of syntax are usually comprised under those of concord or agreement of words, and those of government or dependence of words; many of the English rules of concord and government will not apply to the Tahitian dialect, but the following observations may be of some use." "There is nothing inherent in the verb, (a few of the reduplicates only excepted) to signify persons numbers non gender, and consequently the rules about their concord or agreement with the verb have no place in Tahitian." ... * Buckner, H. F. & G. Herrod. (1860) Grammar of the Maskwke, or Creek Language. Marion, Alabama: Domestic and Indian Mission Board of the Southern Baptists Convention. "The part of Grammar called Syntax has reference to the agreement and government of words; and of their proper arrangement in sentences. Agreement is nothing more than the obedience which one word pays to the law of the governing word ; as, in English, a verb agrees with its nominal live case, because the nominative case governs the verb. Government in language consists in the power which one Word has over another, according to tho laws which are founded upon tho established use of the best speakers or writers of the language." Pada tanggal Jum, 26 Jun 2020 pukul 12.07 Martin Haspelmath < haspelmath at shh.mpg.de> menulis: > Yes, Nigel, but as you know: In the 16th-17th century, English was > irrelevant because Latin was the language of scholarship in Europe. > > In the 18th century, English was irrelevant because French was the > language of scholarship. > > In the 19th century, English was irrelevant because German was the primary > language of linguistics (it was Karl Ferdinand Becker, for example, who > made the distinction between "subject" and "object" popular). > > So looking at the OED gives a wrong impression – it appears to project the > current supremacy of English back into the past. (Apparently, the > established Latin term "concord" needed to be explained to English readers.) > > That's one of the reasons why we should call out common language > "Globish". There's no real continuity with "English". > > Martin > > Am 26.06.20 um 11:58 schrieb Nigel Vincent: > > But the term 'agreement' has been around in writings about grammar for > centuries. Here is the relevant entry from the OED: > > *6.* *Grammar*. The fact or condition of agreeing in number, gender, > case, person, etc., with another element in the sentence or clause. Cf. > concord n.1 6 . > 1549 W. Lily *Shorte Introd. Gram.* (new ed.) To Rdr. sig. Aiii Lette > hym passe to the Concordes, to knowe the agreement of partes amonge theim > selues. > 1669 J. Milton *Accedence* 41 The agreement of words together in > Number, Gender, Case, and Person, which is call'd Concord. > 1787 H. Blair *Lect. Rhetoric* (ed. 3) I. viii. 200 When I say, in > Latin, ‘Formosa fortis viri uxor’, it is only the agreement, in gender, > number, and case, of the adjective ‘formosa’..with the substantive > ‘uxor’..that declares the meaning. > 1879 J. A. H. Murray in *Trans. Philol. Soc.* 619 In the English ‘the > men push the stone,’ we have neither formal expression of the destination > [of the action] nor formal agreement of verb and subject. > 1979 *Amer. Speech 1976* * 51* 134 Of the nine problems covered, > subject-verb agreement receives a thorough treatment. > 2004 H. Barber et al. in M. Carreiras & C. Clifton *On-line Study > Sentence Comprehension* xv. 315 Agreement in gender between nouns and > adjectives is mandatory in Spanish. > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > The University of Manchester > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > ------------------------------ > *From:* Lingtyp > on behalf of Martin > Haspelmath > *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:43 AM > *To:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > Maybe if you're Danish (like Hartmut and Nigel), or were otherwise raised > in some small (and rich) European country, then understanding many of these > languages is kind of natural. > > But somehow asking *all linguists* to be like this seems Eurocentric to > me. Korean/Chinese linguists (like Ian Joo) or African linguists will > simply not have the chance to encounter so many languages in which other > linguists have written relevant work. (In Africa, even big languages like > Hausa and Yoruba are rarely used for academic purposes, it seems.) > > On the other hand, it's also ethnocentric to only cite work by American > linguists and somehow assume that there is nothing else of relevance. > > So what's the solution? I think it must be (i) practical universalism > (only use English/Globish), combined with (ii) awareness of the > parochialism of English-language traditions. > > As an example of the latter, consider the term "agreement": As I realized > only after reading Cysouw (2011) ( > https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/17668/1/thli.2011.011.pdf), this term did > not exist in linguistics before Bloomfield (1933), and the relevant > concepts didn't exist earlier either. Same with "grammatical relation" (due > to Chomsky 1965), "focus" (due to Chomsky 1970), and quite a few other > terms. Natural as these terms seem to us, they may not be the results of > scientific discoveries that we made, but mostly due to the spread of the > English language (and the influence of a few linguists working at rich U.S. > universities). > > Universalism and parochialism are in a certain tension, but I think we > really need to adopt both at the same time if we want to progress in our > scientific understanding of language(s). > > Martin > > Am 26.06.20 um 11:22 schrieb Hartmut Haberland: > > Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se référer à la > tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou française (Roussel, > Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in *one* language is myopic. > Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three languages to > keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? > > (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, “More people can > make out what it is about in French than actually read it”.) > > To take a concrete example: *Acta Linguistica Hafniensia *was founded in > 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. > Today, it still calls itself an ‘international journal’, but now > practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, > if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper > specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in > German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least > not passively monolingual. > > Hartmut Haberland > > *Fra:* Lingtyp > *På vegne af *Nigel Vincent > *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 > *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern ; > Gilles Authier > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les références jugées > indispensables sont écrites en allemand ou en danois … ? > > > > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > ------------------------------ > > *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern > *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM > *To:* Gilles Authier ; Nigel Vincent < > nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > Je pense que oui… Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language > from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., > Scandinavian)… > > BW > > > > *Von:* Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org > ] *Im Auftrag von *Gilles > Authier > *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 > *An:* Nigel Vincent > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les références jugées > indispensables sont écrites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir > être rejeté, oui. > > GA > > > > On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent < > nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> wrote: > > A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns > the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access > relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions > asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has > not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? > > Nigel > > > > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > -- > Martin Haspelmath (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 > > > -- > Martin Haspelmath (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 > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From haspelmath at shh.mpg.de Fri Jun 26 07:35:02 2020 From: haspelmath at shh.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 13:35:02 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> Message-ID: <909f67ec-435f-5e8b-8e1a-a6c5ea9920c3@shh.mpg.de> Peter, are there actually linguistics papers published in Arabic? Is Portuguese still being used to write about African languages? (It seems to me that only English and French are relevant for African linguistics these days.) But to the larger point: Some Europeans may be proud of the various other (European) languages they can read, but de facto, young linguists are not competitive if they publish in other languages. And certainly, papers in general linguistics usually have zero impact if they are not written in English. Sad as it may be, this is the reality of the 21st century. We may deplore it, but we will hardly be able to change it. (What we *may* be able to do is change the name we use for our common language: Globish.) Martin P.S. Thanks to Nigel and Harald for the additional info on "agreement" – really useful! Am 26.06.20 um 13:21 schrieb Peter Austin: > With all due respect, I find it incredible that someone could write: > "publishing new papers in languages other than English. I personally > have strong reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated > matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand others. I > think one should not make the problem of mutual understanding even > larger by publishing in languages other than English (unless there is > absolutely no escape). ... If you publish in languages other than > English then you need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are > considered publishable (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and > which are not". > > There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics and > related fields published annually in languages like Chinese, Japanese > and Arabic, much of which never pierces the consciousness of > English-only researchers because of attitudes like having language > hierarchies composed entirely of European languages. Sheesh. > > Peter > > > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Seržant > > > wrote: > > Dear all, > > > if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive > knowledge of other languages is, of course, important and if a > paper does not cite an important paper on the topic written in a > language other than English that is, of course, a good reason for > sending the paper back for revision. > > > However, a very different topic is publishing new papers in > languages other than English. I personally have strong > reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated matter and it > is often so difficult to exactly understand others. I think one > should not make the problem of mutual understanding even larger by > publishing in languages other than English (unless there is > absolutely no escape). Even more, perhaps, research English itself > should also be different from the native English in that one > should try to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic > expressions, write in short sentences, etc. > > > If you publish in languages other than English then you need a > sort of hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable > (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not. I think > this issue is difficult to resolve in a fair way. > > > Best, > > Ilja > > > Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: >> I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special issue >> of 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on suppletion last >> year - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 >> - we >> were able to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles >> to be published in French. >> >> >> The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the Philological >> Society: Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online Library >> >> If the address matches an existing account you will receive an >> email with instructions to retrieve your username >> onlinelibrary.wiley.com >> >> >> >> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> The University of Manchester >> >> Linguistics & English Language >> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> The University of Manchester >> >> >> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> *From:* Hartmut Haberland >> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM >> *To:* Nigel Vincent >> ; Wiemer, Bjoern >> ; Gilles >> Authier >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> >> >> *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se >> référer à la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou >> française (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses >> in /one/ language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read >> more than just two or three languages to keep up with the >> relevant literature, but how many do? >> >> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, “More >> people can make out what it is about in French than actually read >> it”.) >> >> To take a concrete example: /Acta Linguistica Hafniensia /was >> founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, >> French and English. Today, it still calls itself an >> ‘international journal’, but now practically all papers are in >> English, with very few exceptions. However, if you take a random >> issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper specifically >> dealing with English, there are references to literature in >> German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are >> at least not passively monolingual. >> >> Hartmut Haberland >> >> *Fra:*Lingtyp >> *På vegne af >> *Nigel Vincent >> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 >> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern >> ; Gilles Authier >> >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les références >> jugées indispensables sont écrites en allemand ou en danois … ? >> >> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> The University of Manchester >> >> Linguistics & English Language >> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> >> The University of Manchester >> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> >> *From:*Wiemer, Bjoern > > >> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM >> *To:* Gilles Authier > >; Nigel Vincent >> > > >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> > > >> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> Je pense que oui…  Actually, the same applies to articles on (a >> language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups >> (e.g., Scandinavian)… >> >> BW >> >> *Von:*Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] >> *Im Auftrag von *Gilles Authier >> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 >> *An:* Nigel Vincent > > >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les références >> jugées indispensables sont écrites dans une langue romane, il me >> semblerait devoir être rejeté, oui. >> >> GA >> >> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent >> > > wrote: >> >> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought >> about concerns the languages a researcher should be able to >> read in order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for >> example, a paper be rejected or revisions asked for if >> someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has >> not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? >> >> Nigel >> >> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> The University of Manchester >> >> Linguistics & English Language >> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> >> The University of Manchester >> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > -- > Ilja A. Seržant, postdoc > Project "Grammatical Universals" > Universität Leipzig (IPF 141199) > Nikolaistraße 6-10 > 04109 Leipzig > > URL:http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ > > Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 > Room 5.22 > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > Prof Peter K. Austin > Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS > Visiting Researcher, Oxford University > Foundation Editor, EL Publishing > Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society > > Department of Linguistics, SOAS > Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square > London WC1H 0XG > United Kingdom > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Martin Haspelmath (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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil at shh.mpg.de Fri Jun 26 07:46:39 2020 From: gil at shh.mpg.de (David Gil) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 14:46:39 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <909f67ec-435f-5e8b-8e1a-a6c5ea9920c3@shh.mpg.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <909f67ec-435f-5e8b-8e1a-a6c5ea9920c3@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: Just a historical anecdote. back in the late '70, R.B. Lees was instrumental in setting up a generatively-oriented linguistics department at Tel Aviv University.  Although he spoke fluent Hebrew, he insisted that he and his colleagues teach only in English (contrary to all other subjects at the same university that were being taught in Hebrew).  When I (then a beginning TA) took him to task on this, his response was that modern linguistics could not be taught in Hebrew because there were no equivalents for crucial methodological turns of phrase such as "account for".  To which my response was Well then coin a new expression, and if that doesn't work then maybe there is something incoherent in an expression that resists translation into another language.  I lost the argument of course. David -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 From christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de Fri Jun 26 07:50:39 2020 From: christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de (Christian Lehmann) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 13:50:39 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <909f67ec-435f-5e8b-8e1a-a6c5ea9920c3@shh.mpg.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <909f67ec-435f-5e8b-8e1a-a6c5ea9920c3@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: <07f42ebe-6887-61cd-d546-74d15a2f09eb@Uni-Erfurt.De> Dear all, thanks for this lively and heterogeneous discussion! It inspired me to add a page to my website which I have long been planning to write: https://www.christianlehmann.eu/ling/ling_meth/metalanguage/index.php?open=language_of_linguistics If you continue with this discussion, I will, of course, update this text. Christian PS 1: Those who are not familiar with my style will notice the lack of political correctness. Yes. PS 2: Those who know my earlier publications will note that I have learnt something in the matter actually occupying us. In "Der Relativsatz", I wrote that examples in certain European languages do not need an interlinear gloss, let alone a translation. Meanwhile it has become clear to me that (while everybody is, of course, free to learn to read as many languages as he desires), I cannot simply expect a Japanese or Korean colleague to read those European languages in which I have been educated. -- Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann Rudolfstr. 4 99092 Erfurt Deutschland Tel.: +49/361/2113417 E-Post: christianw_lehmann at arcor.de Web: https://www.christianlehmann.eu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pa2 at soas.ac.uk Fri Jun 26 07:59:35 2020 From: pa2 at soas.ac.uk (Peter Austin) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 12:59:35 +0100 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <909f67ec-435f-5e8b-8e1a-a6c5ea9920c3@shh.mpg.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <909f67ec-435f-5e8b-8e1a-a6c5ea9920c3@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: Martin I defer to colleagues more knowledgeable than I (especially those at LLACAN, Paris) but there are certainly recent publications on Cape Verde Creole (located in West Africa) in Portuguese, and maybe also on Angolan languages. My former colleague Lameen Souag compiled a listing some years ago of resources about endangered languages in Arabic that ran to hundreds of entries so perhaps he or others can comment. I am reluctant to accept a defeatist attitude re publication in languages other than English -- it seems to me just as you took on closed access publishers with Language Science Press there is a place for multilingual activism in publication, especially in support of early career colleagues in places like Latin America or Francophonie. If Nigel can get TPhS to publish an article in French then why not you with LSP? Peter On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 12:36, Martin Haspelmath wrote: > Peter, are there actually linguistics papers published in Arabic? Is > Portuguese still being used to write about African languages? (It seems to > me that only English and French are relevant for African linguistics these > days.) > > But to the larger point: Some Europeans may be proud of the various other > (European) languages they can read, but de facto, young linguists are not > competitive if they publish in other languages. And certainly, papers in > general linguistics usually have zero impact if they are not written in > English. > > Sad as it may be, this is the reality of the 21st century. We may deplore > it, but we will hardly be able to change it. (What we *may* be able to do > is change the name we use for our common language: Globish.) > > Martin > > P.S. Thanks to Nigel and Harald for the additional info on "agreement" – > really useful! > > Am 26.06.20 um 13:21 schrieb Peter Austin: > > With all due respect, I find it incredible that someone could write: > "publishing new papers in languages other than English. I personally have > strong reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated matter and it > is often so difficult to exactly understand others. I think one should not > make the problem of mutual understanding even larger by publishing in > languages other than English (unless there is absolutely no escape). ... If > you publish in languages other than English then you need a sort of > hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable (German, French, > Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not". > > There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics and related > fields published annually in languages like Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, > much of which never pierces the consciousness of English-only researchers > because of attitudes like having language hierarchies composed entirely of > European languages. Sheesh. > > Peter > > > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Seržant > wrote: > >> Dear all, >> >> >> if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive knowledge of >> other languages is, of course, important and if a paper does not cite an >> important paper on the topic written in a language other than English that >> is, of course, a good reason for sending the paper back for revision. >> >> >> However, a very different topic is publishing new papers in languages >> other than English. I personally have strong reservations here. Linguistics >> is such a complicated matter and it is often so difficult to exactly >> understand others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual >> understanding even larger by publishing in languages other than English >> (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even more, perhaps, research >> English itself should also be different from the native English in that one >> should try to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, write >> in short sentences, etc. >> >> >> If you publish in languages other than English then you need a sort of >> hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable (German, French, >> Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not. I think this issue is difficult >> to resolve in a fair way. >> >> >> Best, >> >> Ilja >> >> >> Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: >> >> I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special issue of >> 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on suppletion last year - >> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - we were able >> to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be published in >> French. >> >> The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the Philological Society: >> Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online Library >> >> If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email with >> instructions to retrieve your username >> onlinelibrary.wiley.com >> >> >> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> The University of Manchester >> >> Linguistics & English Language >> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> The University of Manchester >> >> >> >> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> ------------------------------ >> *From:* Hartmut Haberland >> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM >> *To:* Nigel Vincent >> ; Wiemer, Bjoern >> ; Gilles Authier >> >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> >> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se référer à >> la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou française (Roussel, >> Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in *one* language is >> myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three >> languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? >> >> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, “More people can >> make out what it is about in French than actually read it”.) >> >> To take a concrete example: *Acta Linguistica Hafniensia *was founded in >> 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. >> Today, it still calls itself an ‘international journal’, but now >> practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, >> if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper >> specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in >> German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least >> not passively monolingual. >> >> Hartmut Haberland >> >> *Fra:* Lingtyp >> *På vegne af *Nigel Vincent >> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 >> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern ; >> Gilles Authier >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> >> >> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les références jugées >> indispensables sont écrites en allemand ou en danois … ? >> >> >> >> >> >> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> The University of Manchester >> >> >> >> Linguistics & English Language >> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> >> The University of Manchester >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> ------------------------------ >> >> *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern >> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM >> *To:* Gilles Authier ; Nigel Vincent < >> nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org < >> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> >> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> >> >> Je pense que oui… Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language >> from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., >> Scandinavian)… >> >> BW >> >> >> >> *Von:* Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org >> ] *Im Auftrag von *Gilles >> Authier >> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 >> *An:* Nigel Vincent >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> >> >> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les références jugées >> indispensables sont écrites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir >> être rejeté, oui. >> >> GA >> >> >> >> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent < >> nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> wrote: >> >> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns >> the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access >> relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions >> asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has >> not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? >> >> Nigel >> >> >> >> >> >> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> The University of Manchester >> >> >> >> Linguistics & English Language >> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> >> The University of Manchester >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> -- >> Ilja A. Seržant, postdoc >> Project "Grammatical Universals" >> Universität Leipzig (IPF 141199) >> Nikolaistraße 6-10 >> 04109 Leipzig >> >> URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ >> >> Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 >> Room 5.22 >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> > > > -- > Prof Peter K. Austin > Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS > Visiting Researcher, Oxford University > Foundation Editor, EL Publishing > Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society > > Department of Linguistics, SOAS > Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square > London WC1H 0XG > United Kingdom > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > -- > Martin Haspelmath (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 > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -- Prof Peter K. Austin Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS Visiting Researcher, Oxford University Foundation Editor, EL Publishing Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society Department of Linguistics, SOAS Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square London WC1H 0XG United Kingdom -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alexberd at gmail.com Fri Jun 26 08:08:03 2020 From: alexberd at gmail.com (Aleksandrs Berdicevskis) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 14:08:03 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> Message-ID: > > There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics and related > fields published annually in languages like Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, > much of which never pierces the consciousness of English-only researchers > because of attitudes like having language hierarchies composed entirely of > European languages. Sheesh. > But is it really because of attitudes? Or rather because very few people are able to master dozens of languages to the level where they can fluently read scholarly work (and keep track of everything published)? And dozens is actually an understatement, if we truly abandon the idea of having the lingua franca of science, it should rather be thousands. It would be great to live in a world like that, but that's hardly possible (excellent work will inevitably remain invisible), and I think the drawbacks of the compartmentalization of science outweigh the benefits of linguistic diversity and multicentric perspectives in this case. Ulrich Ammon put forward a "somewhat utopian" idea of "International English" -- a set of varieties of English where not only Anglophone countries define the norms. I think that's very close to what Martin and Ilja are proposing, and that something like that is actually the best practically possible solution. > > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Seržant > wrote: > >> Dear all, >> >> >> if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive knowledge of >> other languages is, of course, important and if a paper does not cite an >> important paper on the topic written in a language other than English that >> is, of course, a good reason for sending the paper back for revision. >> >> >> However, a very different topic is publishing new papers in languages >> other than English. I personally have strong reservations here. Linguistics >> is such a complicated matter and it is often so difficult to exactly >> understand others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual >> understanding even larger by publishing in languages other than English >> (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even more, perhaps, research >> English itself should also be different from the native English in that one >> should try to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, write >> in short sentences, etc. >> >> >> If you publish in languages other than English then you need a sort of >> hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable (German, French, >> Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not. I think this issue is difficult >> to resolve in a fair way. >> >> >> Best, >> >> Ilja >> >> >> Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: >> >> I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special issue of >> 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on suppletion last year - >> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - we were able >> to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be published in >> French. >> >> The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the Philological Society: >> Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online Library >> >> If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email with >> instructions to retrieve your username >> onlinelibrary.wiley.com >> >> >> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> The University of Manchester >> >> Linguistics & English Language >> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> The University of Manchester >> >> >> >> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> ------------------------------ >> *From:* Hartmut Haberland >> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM >> *To:* Nigel Vincent >> ; Wiemer, Bjoern >> ; Gilles Authier >> >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> >> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se référer à >> la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou française (Roussel, >> Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in *one* language is >> myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three >> languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? >> >> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, “More people can >> make out what it is about in French than actually read it”.) >> >> To take a concrete example: *Acta Linguistica Hafniensia *was founded in >> 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. >> Today, it still calls itself an ‘international journal’, but now >> practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, >> if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper >> specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in >> German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least >> not passively monolingual. >> >> Hartmut Haberland >> >> *Fra:* Lingtyp >> *På vegne af *Nigel Vincent >> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 >> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern ; >> Gilles Authier >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> >> >> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les références jugées >> indispensables sont écrites en allemand ou en danois … ? >> >> >> >> >> >> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> The University of Manchester >> >> >> >> Linguistics & English Language >> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> >> The University of Manchester >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> ------------------------------ >> >> *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern >> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM >> *To:* Gilles Authier ; Nigel Vincent < >> nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org < >> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> >> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> >> >> Je pense que oui… Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language >> from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., >> Scandinavian)… >> >> BW >> >> >> >> *Von:* Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org >> ] *Im Auftrag von *Gilles >> Authier >> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 >> *An:* Nigel Vincent >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> >> >> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les références jugées >> indispensables sont écrites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir >> être rejeté, oui. >> >> GA >> >> >> >> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent < >> nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> wrote: >> >> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns >> the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access >> relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions >> asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has >> not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? >> >> Nigel >> >> >> >> >> >> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> The University of Manchester >> >> >> >> Linguistics & English Language >> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> >> The University of Manchester >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> -- >> Ilja A. Seržant, postdoc >> Project "Grammatical Universals" >> Universität Leipzig (IPF 141199) >> Nikolaistraße 6-10 >> 04109 Leipzig >> >> URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ >> >> Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 >> Room 5.22 >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> > > > -- > Prof Peter K. Austin > Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS > Visiting Researcher, Oxford University > Foundation Editor, EL Publishing > Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society > > Department of Linguistics, SOAS > Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square > London WC1H 0XG > United Kingdom > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rgyalrongskad at gmail.com Fri Jun 26 08:11:13 2020 From: rgyalrongskad at gmail.com (Guillaume Jacques) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 14:11:13 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <909f67ec-435f-5e8b-8e1a-a6c5ea9920c3@shh.mpg.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <909f67ec-435f-5e8b-8e1a-a6c5ea9920c3@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: > > But to the larger point: Some Europeans may be proud of the various other > (European) languages they can read, but de facto, young linguists are not > competitive if they publish in other languages. And certainly, papers in > general linguistics usually have zero impact if they are not written in > English. > There are subfields of linguistics (maybe not general linguistics) where most publications are not in English, and where even English-language publications do not necessarily have the highest impact, though this may not be visible in bibliometrical counts (since many non-English sources are not even indexed in google scholar etc). This is certainly true for Chinese linguistics, Japanese (and Ryukyuan) linguistics, Romance linguistics, (perhaps still) Indo-European linguistics and probably other fields. Knowledge of the relevant languages is one of the basic requirements to do research in those fields. > Sad as it may be, this is the reality of the 21st century. We may deplore > it, but we will hardly be able to change it. (What we *may* be able to do > is change the name we use for our common language: Globish.) > I think that the beauty of linguistic diversity is the reason that motivates most people to do linguistics (at least it is the reason why I do it). As such, I believe that linguists as a community should not embrace the shrinking diversity of scholarly languages. In particular, community-oriented research (such as dictionaries and text collections -- which are as important, if not more, than grammars) should be accessible to native speakers and in my opinion should be written in the national language. Moreover, there are cases when the use of English can be dangerous to non-native speakers (such as myself) when making precise translations of example sentences (from either unwritten languages or from ancient languages) and expressing some fine semantic nuances, even for scholars who use English on a daily basis. Guillaume -- Guillaume Jacques CNRS (CRLAO) - INALCO http://cnrs.academia.edu/GuillaumeJacques http://panchr.hypotheses.org/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From joo at shh.mpg.de Fri Jun 26 08:19:08 2020 From: joo at shh.mpg.de (joo at shh.mpg.de) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 21:19:08 +0900 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> Message-ID: <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> There’s nothing wrong with writing in English or other popular languages to reach a broader audience. However I think that an author should have the full choice to write in whatever language they want. If they choose to write their thesis in Piraha, then so be it, it is their thesis and their choice. Regards, Ian On 26. Jun 2020, 21:09 +0900, Aleksandrs Berdicevskis , wrote: > > > There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics and related fields published annually in languages like Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which never pierces the consciousness of English-only researchers because of attitudes like having language hierarchies composed entirely of European languages. Sheesh. > > > > But is it really because of attitudes? Or rather because very few people are able to master dozens of languages to the level where they can fluently read scholarly work (and keep track of everything published)? And dozens is actually an understatement, if we truly abandon the idea of having the lingua franca of science, it should rather be thousands. It would be great to live in a world like that, but that's hardly possible (excellent work will inevitably remain invisible), and I think the drawbacks of the compartmentalization of science outweigh the benefits of linguistic diversity and multicentric perspectives in this case. > > > > Ulrich Ammon put forward a "somewhat utopian" idea of "International English" -- a set of varieties of English where not only Anglophone countries define the norms. I think that's very close to what Martin and Ilja are proposing, and that something like that is actually the best practically possible solution. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Seržant wrote: > > > > > Dear all, > > > > > > > > > > if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive knowledge of other languages is, of course, important and if a paper does not cite an important paper on the topic written in a language other than English that is, of course, a good reason for sending the paper back for revision. > > > > > > > > > > However, a very different topic is publishing new papers in languages other than English. I personally have strong reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual understanding even larger by publishing in languages other than English (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even more, perhaps, research English itself should also be different from the native English in that one should try to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, write in short sentences, etc. > > > > > > > > > > If you publish in languages other than English then you need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not. I think this issue is difficult to resolve in a fair way. > > > > > > > > > > Best, > > > > > Ilja > > > > > > > > > > Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: > > > > > > I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special issue of 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on suppletion last year - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - we were able to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be published in French. > > > > > > The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the Philological Society: Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online Library > > > > > > If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email with instructions to retrieve your username > > > > > > onlinelibrary.wiley.com > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > > > > > > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > > > > > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > > > > Linguistics & English Language > > > > > > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > > > > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > > > > > > From: Hartmut Haberland > > > > > > Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM > > > > > > To: Nigel Vincent ; Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier > > > > > > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > > > > Subject: SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > > > > > > > > > Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se référer à la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou française (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in one language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? > > > > > > (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, “More people can make out what it is about in French than actually read it”.) > > > > > > To take a concrete example: Acta Linguistica Hafniensia was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. Today, it still calls itself an ‘international journal’, but now practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least not passively monolingual. > > > > > > Hartmut Haberland > > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af Nigel Vincent > > > > > > Sendt: 26. juni 2020 10:04 > > > > > > Til: Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier > > > > > > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > > > > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > > > > > > > > > Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les références jugées indispensables sont écrites en allemand ou en danois … ? > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > > > > > > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > > > > > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > > > > Linguistics & English Language > > > > > > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > > > > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > > > > > > From: Wiemer, Bjoern > > > > > > Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM > > > > > > To: Gilles Authier ; Nigel Vincent > > > > > > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > > > > Subject: AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > > > > > > > > > Je pense que oui…  Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)… > > > > > > BW > > > > > > > > > > > > Von: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] Im Auftrag von Gilles Authier > > > > > > Gesendet: Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 > > > > > > An: Nigel Vincent > > > > > > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > > > > Betreff: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > > > > > > > > > Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les références jugées indispensables sont écrites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir être rejeté, oui. > > > > > > GA > > > > > > > > > > > > On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent wrote: > > > > > > > A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? > > > > > > > Nigel > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > > > > > > > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > > > > > > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Linguistics & English Language > > > > > > > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > > > > > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > > > > Lingtyp mailing list > > > > > > > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > > > > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > > > Lingtyp mailing list > > > > > > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > > > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > > -- > > > > > Ilja A. Seržant, postdoc > > > > > Project "Grammatical Universals" > > > > > Universität Leipzig (IPF 141199) > > > > > Nikolaistraße 6-10 > > > > > 04109 Leipzig > > > > > > > > > > URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ > > > > > > > > > > Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 > > > > > Room 5.22 > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > > Lingtyp mailing list > > > > > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > > > > > > -- > > > Prof Peter K. Austin > > > Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS > > > Visiting Researcher, Oxford University > > > Foundation Editor, EL Publishing > > > Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society > > > > > > Department of Linguistics, SOAS > > > Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square > > > London WC1H 0XG > > > United Kingdom > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Lingtyp mailing list > > > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pa2 at soas.ac.uk Fri Jun 26 08:24:55 2020 From: pa2 at soas.ac.uk (Peter Austin) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 13:24:55 +0100 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> Message-ID: Piraha may be a stretch, but recently there have been PhD dissertations written and defended in Maori, Hawaiian and Inari Sami, among others. The issue at hand is supporting our colleagues to be able to publish (in books and journals) scholarship in these and other languages, it appears. Peter On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 13:20, wrote: > There’s nothing wrong with writing in English or other popular languages > to reach a broader audience. However I think that an author should have the > full choice to write in whatever language they want. If they choose to > write their thesis in Piraha, then so be it, it is their thesis and their > choice. > > Regards, > Ian > On 26. Jun 2020, 21:09 +0900, Aleksandrs Berdicevskis , > wrote: > > There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics and related >> fields published annually in languages like Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, >> much of which never pierces the consciousness of English-only researchers >> because of attitudes like having language hierarchies composed entirely of >> European languages. Sheesh. >> > > But is it really because of attitudes? Or rather because very few people > are able to master dozens of languages to the level where they can fluently > read scholarly work (and keep track of everything published)? And dozens is > actually an understatement, if we truly abandon the idea of having the > lingua franca of science, it should rather be thousands. It would be great > to live in a world like that, but that's hardly possible (excellent work > will inevitably remain invisible), and I think the drawbacks of the > compartmentalization of science outweigh the benefits of linguistic > diversity and multicentric perspectives in this case. > > Ulrich Ammon put forward a "somewhat utopian" idea of "International > English" -- a set of varieties of English where not only Anglophone > countries define the norms. I think that's very close to what Martin and > Ilja are proposing, and that something like that is actually the best > practically possible solution. > > > > > >> >> On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Seržant >> wrote: >> >>> Dear all, >>> >>> >>> if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive knowledge of >>> other languages is, of course, important and if a paper does not cite an >>> important paper on the topic written in a language other than English that >>> is, of course, a good reason for sending the paper back for revision. >>> >>> >>> However, a very different topic is publishing new papers in languages >>> other than English. I personally have strong reservations here. Linguistics >>> is such a complicated matter and it is often so difficult to exactly >>> understand others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual >>> understanding even larger by publishing in languages other than English >>> (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even more, perhaps, research >>> English itself should also be different from the native English in that one >>> should try to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, write >>> in short sentences, etc. >>> >>> >>> If you publish in languages other than English then you need a sort of >>> hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable (German, French, >>> Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not. I think this issue is difficult >>> to resolve in a fair way. >>> >>> >>> Best, >>> >>> Ilja >>> >>> >>> Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: >>> >>> I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special issue of >>> 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on suppletion last year - >>> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - we were able >>> to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be published in >>> French. >>> >>> The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the Philological Society: >>> Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online Library >>> >>> If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email >>> with instructions to retrieve your username >>> onlinelibrary.wiley.com >>> >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> ------------------------------ >>> *From:* Hartmut Haberland >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM >>> *To:* Nigel Vincent >>> ; Wiemer, Bjoern >>> ; Gilles Authier >>> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se référer à >>> la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou française (Roussel, >>> Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in *one* language is >>> myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three >>> languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? >>> >>> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, “More people >>> can make out what it is about in French than actually read it”.) >>> >>> To take a concrete example: *Acta Linguistica Hafniensia* was founded >>> in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. >>> Today, it still calls itself an ‘international journal’, but now >>> practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, >>> if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper >>> specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in >>> German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least >>> not passively monolingual. >>> >>> Hartmut Haberland >>> >>> *Fra:* Lingtyp >>> *På vegne af* Nigel Vincent >>> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 >>> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern ; >>> Gilles Authier >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> >>> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les références jugées >>> indispensables sont écrites en allemand ou en danois … ? >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> ------------------------------ >>> >>> *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM >>> *To:* Gilles Authier ; Nigel Vincent < >>> nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org < >>> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> >>> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> >>> Je pense que oui… Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language >>> from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., >>> Scandinavian)… >>> >>> BW >>> >>> >>> >>> *Von:* Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> ] *Im Auftrag von* Gilles >>> Authier >>> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 >>> *An:* Nigel Vincent >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> >>> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les références jugées >>> indispensables sont écrites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir >>> être rejeté, oui. >>> >>> GA >>> >>> >>> >>> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent < >>> nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> wrote: >>> >>> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns >>> the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access >>> relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions >>> asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has >>> not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? >>> >>> Nigel >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >>> -- >>> Ilja A. Seržant, postdoc >>> Project "Grammatical Universals" >>> Universität Leipzig (IPF 141199) >>> Nikolaistraße 6-10 >>> 04109 Leipzig >>> >>> URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ >>> >>> Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 >>> Room 5.22 >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >> >> >> -- >> Prof Peter K. Austin >> Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS >> Visiting Researcher, Oxford University >> Foundation Editor, EL Publishing >> Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society >> >> Department of Linguistics, SOAS >> Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square >> London WC1H 0XG >> United Kingdom >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -- Prof Peter K. Austin Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS Visiting Researcher, Oxford University Foundation Editor, EL Publishing Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society Department of Linguistics, SOAS Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square London WC1H 0XG United Kingdom -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mattis.list at lingpy.org Fri Jun 26 08:36:23 2020 From: mattis.list at lingpy.org (Johann-Mattis List) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 14:36:23 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> Message-ID: <49f63694-ca8d-0d90-bd17-89928e5ea179@lingpy.org> I know that there is not much to gain scientifically for me in writing a German article nowadays. But as a scientist, one is also obliged to explain the results of one's research to a broader public, which is why I publish regular blog posts in German. Furthermore, I profited a lot from introductory text books and many other German articles on linguistics which I read when reading English was still difficult for me. I think even if we don't use non-English languages for high-end studies in many scientific fields, one can acknowledge the importance of translating work into many languages, or having original work on science written by the scientists in their native tongues, in order to help specifically the younger generations in their education. Best, Mattis On 6/26/20 2:24 PM, Peter Austin wrote: > Piraha may be a stretch, but recently there have been PhD dissertations > written and defended in Maori, Hawaiian and Inari Sami, among others. > The issue at hand is supporting our colleagues to be able to publish (in > books and journals) scholarship in these and other languages, it appears. > > Peter > > > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 13:20, > > wrote: > > There’s nothing wrong with writing in English or other popular > languages to reach a broader audience. However I think that an > author should have the full choice to write in whatever language > they want. If they choose to write their thesis in Piraha, then so > be it, it is their thesis and their choice.  > > Regards,  > Ian > On 26. Jun 2020, 21:09 +0900, Aleksandrs Berdicevskis > >, wrote: >> >> There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics >> and related fields published annually in languages like >> Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which never pierces the >> consciousness of English-only researchers because of attitudes >> like having language hierarchies composed entirely of >> European languages. Sheesh. >> >> >> But is it really because of attitudes? Or rather because very few >> people are able to master dozens of languages to the level where >> they can fluently read scholarly work (and keep track of >> everything published)? And dozens is actually an understatement, >> if we truly abandon the idea of having the lingua franca of >> science, it should rather be thousands. It would be great to live >> in a world like that, but that's hardly possible (excellent work >> will inevitably remain invisible), and I think the drawbacks of >> the compartmentalization of science outweigh the benefits of >> linguistic diversity and multicentric perspectives in this case.  >> >> Ulrich Ammon put forward a "somewhat utopian" idea of >> "International English" -- a set of varieties of English where not >> only Anglophone countries define the norms. I think that's very >> close to what Martin and Ilja are proposing, and that something >> like that is actually the best practically possible solution.  >> >> >> >>   >> >> >> On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Seržant >> > > wrote: >> >> Dear all, >> >> >> if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive >> knowledge of other languages is, of course, important and >> if a paper does not cite an important paper on the topic >> written in a language other than English that is, of >> course, a good reason for sending the paper back for revision. >> >> >> However, a very different topic is publishing new papers >> in languages other than English. I personally have strong >> reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated >> matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand >> others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual >> understanding even larger by publishing in languages other >> than English (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even >> more, perhaps, research English itself should also be >> different from the native English in that one should try >> to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, >> write in short sentences, etc. >> >> >> If you publish in languages other than English then you >> need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are considered >> publishable (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and >> which are not. I think this issue is difficult to resolve >> in a fair way. >> >> >> Best, >> >> Ilja >> >> >> Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: >>> I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special >>> issue of 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on >>> suppletion last year - >>> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - >>> we were able to persuade the publishers to allow one of >>> the articles to be published in French. >>> >>> >>> The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the >>> Philological Society: Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online >>> Library >>> >>> If the address matches an existing account you will >>> receive an email with instructions to retrieve your username >>> onlinelibrary.wiley.com >>> >>> >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> *From:* Hartmut Haberland >>> >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM >>> *To:* Nigel Vincent >>> ; Wiemer, Bjoern >>> ; >>> Gilles Authier >>> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> >>> >>> *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>>   >>> >>> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit >>> souvent se référer à la tradition grammaticale grecque >>> (Tzartzanos) ou française (Roussel, Mirambel). >>> Restricting oneself to discourses in /one/ language is >>> myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just >>> two or three languages to keep up with the relevant >>> literature, but how many do? >>> >>> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, >>> “More people can make out what it is about in French than >>> actually read it”.) >>> >>> To take a concrete example: /Acta Linguistica Hafniensia/ >>> was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers >>> in German, French and English. Today, it still calls >>> itself an ‘international journal’, but now practically >>> all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. >>> However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), >>> apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, >>> there are references to literature in German, French, >>> Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least >>> not passively monolingual. >>> >>> Hartmut Haberland >>> >>> *Fra:* Lingtyp >>> >>> *På >>> vegne af* Nigel Vincent >>> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 >>> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern >>> ; Gilles Authier >>> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>>   >>> >>> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les >>> références jugées indispensables sont écrites en allemand >>> ou en danois … ? >>> >>>   >>> >>>   >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>>   >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>>   >>> >>>   >>> >>>   >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> >>> *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern >> > >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM >>> *To:* Gilles Authier >> >; Nigel Vincent >>> >> > >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> >> > >>> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>>   >>> >>> Je pense que oui…  Actually, the same applies to articles >>> on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) >>> or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)… >>> >>> BW >>> >>>   >>> >>> *Von:* Lingtyp >>> [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *Im >>> Auftrag von* Gilles Authier >>> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 >>> *An:* Nigel Vincent >> > >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>>   >>> >>> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les >>> références jugées indispensables sont écrites dans une >>> langue romane, il me semblerait devoir être rejeté, oui. >>> >>> GA >>> >>>   >>> >>> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent >>> >> > wrote: >>> >>> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes >>> thought about concerns the languages a researcher >>> should be able to read in order to access relevant >>> scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected >>> or revisions asked for if someone writing in English >>> on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant >>> work written in a language other than English? >>> >>> Nigel >>> >>>   >>> >>>   >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>>   >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>>   >>> >>>   >>> >>>   >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> -- >> Ilja A. Seržant, postdoc >> Project "Grammatical Universals" >> Universität Leipzig (IPF 141199) >> Nikolaistraße 6-10 >> 04109 Leipzig >> >> URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ >> >> Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 >> Room 5.22 >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> >> -- >> Prof Peter K. Austin >> Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS >> Visiting Researcher, Oxford University >> Foundation Editor, EL Publishing >> Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society >> >> Department of Linguistics, SOAS >> Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square >> London WC1H 0XG >> United Kingdom >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > Prof Peter K. Austin > Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS > Visiting Researcher, Oxford University > Foundation Editor, EL Publishing > Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society > > Department of Linguistics, SOAS > Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square > London WC1H 0XG > United Kingdom > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > From Johanna.Mattissen at uni-koeln.de Fri Jun 26 08:55:22 2020 From: Johanna.Mattissen at uni-koeln.de (Johanna Mattissen) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 14:55:22 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Citing text in European languages without translation Message-ID: <92017616-bbce-40b9-a3bd-9699877a32b0@uni-koeln.de> > And certainly, papers in general linguistics usually have zero impact > if they are not written in English. La situation est encore pire que Martin la décrit: Les chercheur/ses de l‘Afrique, de l‘Asie et de l‘Europe (en ordre alphabétique) ne sont pas lu/es ni cité/es même en écrivant en anglais à moins qu‘ils/elles n‘aient pas été cité/es dans un oeuvre d‘un/e linguiste des États-Unis ou de l‘Australie auparavant ou qu‘ils/elles n‘aient pas publié dans les quelques rares journaux vedettes (ce qui rétrécie encore considérablement le discours scientifique). A+, Johanna -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jeremy.moss.bradley at univie.ac.at Fri Jun 26 09:25:42 2020 From: jeremy.moss.bradley at univie.ac.at (Jeremy Bradley) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 15:25:42 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> Message-ID: Dear all, Another aspect to consider from the perspective of a smaller discipline (Uralic studies in my case) is that it is essential to uphold a certain continuity with existing scholarship, which up to very recently did not use English as a meta language at all. The more dominant English becomes as a meta-language in the discipline, the more the impression is created that you "don't really need" the other traditional meta-languages (German, Russian, Finnish, Hungarian), and the more you have young scholars separated from essential resources in the discipline operating on a comparatively shallow view of the languages. This is especially dramatic as numerous Uralic varieties went extinct long before English rose to prominence, and you simply cannot access them at all without English. The arguments for publishing in English are obvious, but there is definite pragmatic value for the discipline in maintaining a more diverse set of meta-language. In addition to the ideological dimension: that it's hard to communicate respect for (and more importantly, acknowledge utility of) the languages of smaller speaker communities if we reduce ourselves to using only what we perceive as the most "useful" language at this particular point in time. Jeremy On 26/06/2020 14:24, Peter Austin wrote: > Piraha may be a stretch, but recently there have been PhD > dissertations written and defended in Maori, Hawaiian and Inari Sami, > among others. The issue at hand is supporting our colleagues to be > able to publish (in books and journals) scholarship in these and other > languages, it appears. > > Peter > > > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 13:20, > > wrote: > > There’s nothing wrong with writing in English or other popular > languages to reach a broader audience. However I think that an > author should have the full choice to write in whatever language > they want. If they choose to write their thesis in Piraha, then so > be it, it is their thesis and their choice. > > Regards, > Ian > On 26. Jun 2020, 21:09 +0900, Aleksandrs Berdicevskis > >, wrote: >> >> There are hundreds of excellent research papers in >> linguistics and related fields published annually in >> languages like Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which >> never pierces the consciousness of English-only researchers >> because of attitudes like having language hierarchies >> composed entirely of European languages. Sheesh. >> >> >> But is it really because of attitudes? Or rather because very few >> people are able to master dozens of languages to the level where >> they can fluently read scholarly work (and keep track of >> everything published)? And dozens is actually an understatement, >> if we truly abandon the idea of having the lingua franca of >> science, it should rather be thousands. It would be great to live >> in a world like that, but that's hardly possible (excellent work >> will inevitably remain invisible), and I think the drawbacks of >> the compartmentalization of science outweigh the benefits of >> linguistic diversity and multicentric perspectives in this case. >> >> Ulrich Ammon put forward a "somewhat utopian" idea of >> "International English" -- a set of varieties of English where >> not only Anglophone countries define the norms. I think that's >> very close to what Martin and Ilja are proposing, and that >> something like that is actually the best practically possible >> solution. >> >> >> >> >> On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Seržant >> > > wrote: >> >> Dear all, >> >> >> if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive >> knowledge of other languages is, of course, important and >> if a paper does not cite an important paper on the topic >> written in a language other than English that is, of >> course, a good reason for sending the paper back for >> revision. >> >> >> However, a very different topic is publishing new papers >> in languages other than English. I personally have strong >> reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated >> matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand >> others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual >> understanding even larger by publishing in languages >> other than English (unless there is absolutely no >> escape). Even more, perhaps, research English itself >> should also be different from the native English in that >> one should try to avoid dialectal, non-transparent >> idiomatic expressions, write in short sentences, etc. >> >> >> If you publish in languages other than English then you >> need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are >> considered publishable (German, French, Russian ?, >> Latvian ??) and which are not. I think this issue is >> difficult to resolve in a fair way. >> >> >> Best, >> >> Ilja >> >> >> Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: >>> I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a >>> special issue of 'Transactions of the Philological >>> Society' on suppletion last year - >>> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 >>> - we were able to persuade the publishers to allow one >>> of the articles to be published in French. >>> >>> >>> The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the >>> Philological Society: Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online >>> Library >>> >>> If the address matches an existing account you will >>> receive an email with instructions to retrieve your username >>> onlinelibrary.wiley.com >>> >>> >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> *From:* Hartmut Haberland >>> >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM >>> *To:* Nigel Vincent >>> ; Wiemer, Bjoern >>> ; >>> Gilles Authier >>> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> >>> >>> *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit >>> souvent se référer à la tradition grammaticale grecque >>> (Tzartzanos) ou française (Roussel, Mirambel). >>> Restricting oneself to discourses in /one/ language is >>> myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than >>> just two or three languages to keep up with the relevant >>> literature, but how many do? >>> >>> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, >>> “More people can make out what it is about in French >>> than actually read it”.) >>> >>> To take a concrete example: /Acta Linguistica >>> Hafniensia/ was founded in 1939 and its first issue >>> contained papers in German, French and English. Today, >>> it still calls itself an ‘international journal’, but >>> now practically all papers are in English, with very few >>> exceptions. However, if you take a random issue (51(1), >>> May 2019), apart from one paper specifically dealing >>> with English, there are references to literature in >>> German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So >>> linguists are at least not passively monolingual. >>> >>> Hartmut Haberland >>> >>> *Fra:* Lingtyp >>> >>> *På >>> vegne af* Nigel Vincent >>> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 >>> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern >>> ; Gilles Authier >>> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les >>> références jugées indispensables sont écrites en >>> allemand ou en danois … ? >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> >>> *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern >> > >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM >>> *To:* Gilles Authier >> >; Nigel Vincent >>> >> > >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> >> > >>> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> Je pense que oui… Actually, the same applies to articles >>> on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., >>> Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)… >>> >>> BW >>> >>> *Von:* Lingtyp >>> [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *Im >>> Auftrag von* Gilles Authier >>> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 >>> *An:* Nigel Vincent >> > >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les >>> références jugées indispensables sont écrites dans une >>> langue romane, il me semblerait devoir être rejeté, oui. >>> >>> GA >>> >>> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent >>> >> > wrote: >>> >>> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes >>> thought about concerns the languages a researcher >>> should be able to read in order to access relevant >>> scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be >>> rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing >>> in English on a general linguistic topic has not >>> cited relevant work written in a language other than >>> English? >>> >>> Nigel >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> -- >> Ilja A. Seržant, postdoc >> Project "Grammatical Universals" >> Universität Leipzig (IPF 141199) >> Nikolaistraße 6-10 >> 04109 Leipzig >> >> URL:http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ >> >> Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 >> Room 5.22 >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> >> -- >> Prof Peter K. Austin >> Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS >> Visiting Researcher, Oxford University >> Foundation Editor, EL Publishing >> Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society >> >> Department of Linguistics, SOAS >> Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square >> London WC1H 0XG >> United Kingdom >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > Prof Peter K. Austin > Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS > Visiting Researcher, Oxford University > Foundation Editor, EL Publishing > Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society > > Department of Linguistics, SOAS > Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square > London WC1H 0XG > United Kingdom > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Jeremy Bradley, Ph.D. University of Vienna http://www.mari-language.com jeremy.moss.bradley at univie.ac.at Office address: Institut EVSL Abteilung Finno-Ugristik Universität Wien Campus AAKH, Hof 7-2 Spitalgasse 2-4 1090 Wien AUSTRIA Mobile: +43-664-99-31-788 Skype: jeremy.moss.bradley -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From uchihara at buffalo.edu Fri Jun 26 10:00:59 2020 From: uchihara at buffalo.edu (Hiroto Uchihara) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 09:00:59 -0500 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <49f63694-ca8d-0d90-bd17-89928e5ea179@lingpy.org> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> <49f63694-ca8d-0d90-bd17-89928e5ea179@lingpy.org> Message-ID: Dear all, In my case my native language (Japanese) and the medium language (Spanish) spoken in the region where the languages I study are different from English, and I've had a dilemma. I feel the most comfortable writing in Japanese, but if I write something on Cherokee, Zapotec, Mixtec or Tlapanec in Japanese, some may get upset for the reasons that have been raised already, or because the community members would not be able to access these papers. Thus I mostly write in English but I have often been criticized for my grammar by native speakers of English, which has been quite discouraging (this has happened even after having them proofread). Some scholars in Japan do not write in English for this reason. If the accessibility for the community members is the priority, probably I should be writing more in Spanish on Zapotec, Mixtec or Tlapanec. Best, Hiroto 2020年6月26日(金) 7:36 Johann-Mattis List : > I know that there is not much to gain scientifically for me in writing a > German article nowadays. But as a scientist, one is also obliged to > explain the results of one's research to a broader public, which is why > I publish regular blog posts in German. Furthermore, I profited a lot > from introductory text books and many other German articles on > linguistics which I read when reading English was still difficult for > me. I think even if we don't use non-English languages for high-end > studies in many scientific fields, one can acknowledge the importance of > translating work into many languages, or having original work on science > written by the scientists in their native tongues, in order to help > specifically the younger generations in their education. > > Best, > > Mattis > > On 6/26/20 2:24 PM, Peter Austin wrote: > > Piraha may be a stretch, but recently there have been PhD dissertations > > written and defended in Maori, Hawaiian and Inari Sami, among others. > > The issue at hand is supporting our colleagues to be able to publish (in > > books and journals) scholarship in these and other languages, it appears. > > > > Peter > > > > > > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 13:20, > > > wrote: > > > > There’s nothing wrong with writing in English or other popular > > languages to reach a broader audience. However I think that an > > author should have the full choice to write in whatever language > > they want. If they choose to write their thesis in Piraha, then so > > be it, it is their thesis and their choice. > > > > Regards, > > Ian > > On 26. Jun 2020, 21:09 +0900, Aleksandrs Berdicevskis > > >, wrote: > >> > >> There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics > >> and related fields published annually in languages like > >> Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which never pierces the > >> consciousness of English-only researchers because of attitudes > >> like having language hierarchies composed entirely of > >> European languages. Sheesh. > >> > >> > >> But is it really because of attitudes? Or rather because very few > >> people are able to master dozens of languages to the level where > >> they can fluently read scholarly work (and keep track of > >> everything published)? And dozens is actually an understatement, > >> if we truly abandon the idea of having the lingua franca of > >> science, it should rather be thousands. It would be great to live > >> in a world like that, but that's hardly possible (excellent work > >> will inevitably remain invisible), and I think the drawbacks of > >> the compartmentalization of science outweigh the benefits of > >> linguistic diversity and multicentric perspectives in this case. > >> > >> Ulrich Ammon put forward a "somewhat utopian" idea of > >> "International English" -- a set of varieties of English where not > >> only Anglophone countries define the norms. I think that's very > >> close to what Martin and Ilja are proposing, and that something > >> like that is actually the best practically possible solution. > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Seržant > >> >> > wrote: > >> > >> Dear all, > >> > >> > >> if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive > >> knowledge of other languages is, of course, important and > >> if a paper does not cite an important paper on the topic > >> written in a language other than English that is, of > >> course, a good reason for sending the paper back for > revision. > >> > >> > >> However, a very different topic is publishing new papers > >> in languages other than English. I personally have strong > >> reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated > >> matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand > >> others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual > >> understanding even larger by publishing in languages other > >> than English (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even > >> more, perhaps, research English itself should also be > >> different from the native English in that one should try > >> to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, > >> write in short sentences, etc. > >> > >> > >> If you publish in languages other than English then you > >> need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are considered > >> publishable (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and > >> which are not. I think this issue is difficult to resolve > >> in a fair way. > >> > >> > >> Best, > >> > >> Ilja > >> > >> > >> Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: > >>> I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special > >>> issue of 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on > >>> suppletion last year - > >>> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - > >>> we were able to persuade the publishers to allow one of > >>> the articles to be published in French. > >>> > >>> > >>> The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the > >>> Philological Society: Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online > >>> Library > >>> > >>> If the address matches an existing account you will > >>> receive an email with instructions to retrieve your > username > >>> onlinelibrary.wiley.com > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > >>> The University of Manchester > >>> > >>> Linguistics & English Language > >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > >>> The University of Manchester > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > >>> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >>> *From:* Hartmut Haberland > >>> > >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM > >>> *To:* Nigel Vincent > >>> ; Wiemer, Bjoern > >>> ; > >>> Gilles Authier > >>> > >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > >>> > >>> > >>> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit > >>> souvent se référer à la tradition grammaticale grecque > >>> (Tzartzanos) ou française (Roussel, Mirambel). > >>> Restricting oneself to discourses in /one/ language is > >>> myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just > >>> two or three languages to keep up with the relevant > >>> literature, but how many do? > >>> > >>> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, > >>> “More people can make out what it is about in French than > >>> actually read it”.) > >>> > >>> To take a concrete example: /Acta Linguistica Hafniensia/ > >>> was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers > >>> in German, French and English. Today, it still calls > >>> itself an ‘international journal’, but now practically > >>> all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. > >>> However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), > >>> apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, > >>> there are references to literature in German, French, > >>> Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least > >>> not passively monolingual. > >>> > >>> Hartmut Haberland > >>> > >>> *Fra:* Lingtyp > >>> > >>> *På > >>> vegne af* Nigel Vincent > >>> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 > >>> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern > >>> ; Gilles Authier > >>> gilles.authier at gmail.com> > >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >>> > >>> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les > >>> références jugées indispensables sont écrites en allemand > >>> ou en danois … ? > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > >>> The University of Manchester > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> Linguistics & English Language > >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > >>> > >>> The University of Manchester > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > >>> > >>> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >>> > >>> *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern >>> > > >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM > >>> *To:* Gilles Authier >>> >; Nigel Vincent > >>> >>> > > >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >>> > >>> >>> > > >>> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> Je pense que oui… Actually, the same applies to articles > >>> on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) > >>> or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)… > >>> > >>> BW > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> *Von:* Lingtyp > >>> [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *Im > >>> Auftrag von* Gilles Authier > >>> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 > >>> *An:* Nigel Vincent >>> > > >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >>> > >>> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les > >>> références jugées indispensables sont écrites dans une > >>> langue romane, il me semblerait devoir être rejeté, oui. > >>> > >>> GA > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent > >>> >>> > wrote: > >>> > >>> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes > >>> thought about concerns the languages a researcher > >>> should be able to read in order to access relevant > >>> scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected > >>> or revisions asked for if someone writing in English > >>> on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant > >>> work written in a language other than English? > >>> > >>> Nigel > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > >>> The University of Manchester > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> Linguistics & English Language > >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > >>> > >>> The University of Manchester > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > >>> > >>> _______________________________________________ > >>> Lingtyp mailing list > >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >>> > >>> > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > >>> > >>> > >>> _______________________________________________ > >>> Lingtyp mailing list > >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> > >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > >> -- > >> Ilja A. Seržant, postdoc > >> Project "Grammatical Universals" > >> Universität Leipzig (IPF 141199) > >> Nikolaistraße 6-10 > >> 04109 Leipzig > >> > >> URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ > >> > >> Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 > >> Room 5.22 > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Lingtyp mailing list > >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >> > >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > >> > >> > >> > >> -- > >> Prof Peter K. Austin > >> Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS > >> Visiting Researcher, Oxford University > >> Foundation Editor, EL Publishing > >> Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society > >> > >> Department of Linguistics, SOAS > >> Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square > >> London WC1H 0XG > >> United Kingdom > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Lingtyp mailing list > >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >> > >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Lingtyp mailing list > >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >> > >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > _______________________________________________ > > Lingtyp mailing list > > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > > > > > -- > > Prof Peter K. Austin > > Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS > > Visiting Researcher, Oxford University > > Foundation Editor, EL Publishing > > Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society > > > > Department of Linguistics, SOAS > > Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square > > London WC1H 0XG > > United Kingdom > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Lingtyp mailing list > > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jrosesla at ualberta.ca Fri Jun 26 11:24:12 2020 From: jrosesla at ualberta.ca (=?UTF-8?Q?Jorge_Ros=C3=A9s_Labrada?=) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 09:24:12 -0600 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> <49f63694-ca8d-0d90-bd17-89928e5ea179@lingpy.org> Message-ID: Thank you everyone for a lively discussion of something that I personally think is really important for us as a field to think about. I write here mostly based on my own experience as a native Spanish speaker operating primarily in an English world (I did my schooling in Canada and now live and work here) but whose fieldwork is in Latin American countries. Most of my scholar output (thesis, articles, book chapters, etc.) has been in English and I arguably feel more comfortable writing in English than in Spanish now because that's the language of most of the linguistics literature I've read and of terminology. However, I was in a French (medium) PhD program and I wrote class papers in French and read papers in French. I also published in Spanish during my PhD in a journal in the country where I was doing my research and have presented in Spanish at the local university to make my research known locally but also to build capacity in linguistics in the country. I'll give you one concrete example of the issues caused by the hegemony of English here and then share some suggestions of how we could perhaps address some of the issues. I'm working with a colleague in Latin America who doesn't read or speak English (older, educated at a different time, etc.). In trying to publish an article, my colleague has had to use Google Translate to engage with the relevant typological literature and to engage with one reviewer's comments which were in English. As you can imagine, Google Translate doesn't do the best job at conveying nuance and some things come out mangled (*gloss* came out as *brillo*!!). This has led to numerous hours spent on trying to understand the literature and in trying to engage with it as well as hours and hours trying to understand a review. You may ask, "why bother?" Well, my colleague's institution wants publications in "important" journals... As I see it, we have a responsibility to try to address these issues and here are a few possible avenues: 1. *engage with the literature written in languages other than English* (not only European languages but whatever the languages of the area where we work are) *for reasons of scientific rigor*—why would you neglect most of the literature in an area because you don't speak the language it was written in? If you limit yourself to what is written in English, your research won't be able to engage with foundational ideas or literature (e.g. much of the initial literature for the part of the Amazon I work in was written in German by German explorers; I did a bit of German in university but not nearly enough to be able to read the originals so I've paid for translations of particular articles, I have asked friends for help translating small sections of articles, and I've used Google Translate to understand relevant passages in certain pieces). 2. *promote work written in languages other than English*——If you're bilingual/multilingual and work in a specific area of the world and you are engaging the literature written by local linguists, I think we should take steps to cite and promote that work in our own work. This sometimes entails having to translate examples or quotes for use in our publications but this increases the citations and visibility of our colleagues. 3. *create opportunities for everyone to be able to present/publish in their native language if they so wish*. The international Journal of American Linguistics publishes articles in English and Spanish; the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA) accepts papers in Spanish, English and Portuguese (and last January we had a fantastic talk in Ch'ol [Mayan] by Morelia Vázquez Martínez and Carol-Rose Little). These are examples of how to increase equity and accessibility for our Latin American colleagues. There are ways to make these things accessible to everyone (for presentations, use slides in one language and present in another or add subtitles). 4. *avoid fetishizing standardized English in reviewing*—if one is reviewing something and notices issues of grammar/style that needs correcting, I personally prefer to suggest that the paper should be looked at by a copy-editor working for the journaal rather than suggesting that the authors have a native speaker of standardized English look it over. This last type of suggestion is still way too common—and sometimes it is even made for people with English as an L1. 5. *allow for glosses in the language of wider communication for the region where you work alongside English*—yes, that means your glosses will have an extra line but you're increasing the accessibility of the examples to linguists working in that area as well as to bilingual speakers from that area who are not speakers of English. 6. *provide summaries of articles in multiple languages*—most Latin American journals that publish linguistic (and other) work, require an abstract in English so English speakers can decide quickly whether they should try to read the article. Why not promote the use of multiple abstracts in English publications so our colleagues who don't speak English or are not as confident with it can decide whether it is worth engaging with the article? I'm sure there are many other ideas that we could pursue but I hope that we, as a field, can find concrete ways in promoting other languages in publication. If we're letting English push out other "majority" languages, what is the fate of minoritized languages? (this is a whole other issue but the two are not unrelated and I'm glad that there's been progress in recent times in this respect [as Peter pointed out, there's a number of theses in minority languages that have started to appear in recent years]). All the best, Jorge ------------- Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada Assistant Professor, Indigenous Language Sustainability 4-22 Assiniboia Hall Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta Tel: (+1) 780-492-5698 Email: jrosesla at ualberta.ca *The University of Alberta acknowledges that we are located on Treaty 6 territory, **and respects the history, languages, and cultures of the First Nations, Métis, Inuit, * *and all First Peoples of Canada, whose presence continues to enrich our institution.* On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 8:01 AM Hiroto Uchihara wrote: > Dear all, > > In my case my native language (Japanese) and the medium language (Spanish) > spoken in the region where the languages I study are different from > English, and I've had a dilemma. > > I feel the most comfortable writing in Japanese, but if I write something > on Cherokee, Zapotec, Mixtec or Tlapanec in Japanese, some may get upset > for the reasons that have been raised already, or because the community > members would not be able to access these papers. Thus I mostly write in > English but I have often been criticized for my grammar by native speakers > of English, which has been quite discouraging (this has happened even after > having them proofread). Some scholars in Japan do not write in English for > this reason. If the accessibility for the community members is the > priority, probably I should be writing more in Spanish on Zapotec, Mixtec > or Tlapanec. > > Best, > Hiroto > > 2020年6月26日(金) 7:36 Johann-Mattis List : > >> I know that there is not much to gain scientifically for me in writing a >> German article nowadays. But as a scientist, one is also obliged to >> explain the results of one's research to a broader public, which is why >> I publish regular blog posts in German. Furthermore, I profited a lot >> from introductory text books and many other German articles on >> linguistics which I read when reading English was still difficult for >> me. I think even if we don't use non-English languages for high-end >> studies in many scientific fields, one can acknowledge the importance of >> translating work into many languages, or having original work on science >> written by the scientists in their native tongues, in order to help >> specifically the younger generations in their education. >> >> Best, >> >> Mattis >> >> On 6/26/20 2:24 PM, Peter Austin wrote: >> > Piraha may be a stretch, but recently there have been PhD dissertations >> > written and defended in Maori, Hawaiian and Inari Sami, among others. >> > The issue at hand is supporting our colleagues to be able to publish (in >> > books and journals) scholarship in these and other languages, it >> appears. >> > >> > Peter >> > >> > >> > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 13:20, > >> > wrote: >> > >> > There’s nothing wrong with writing in English or other popular >> > languages to reach a broader audience. However I think that an >> > author should have the full choice to write in whatever language >> > they want. If they choose to write their thesis in Piraha, then so >> > be it, it is their thesis and their choice. >> > >> > Regards, >> > Ian >> > On 26. Jun 2020, 21:09 +0900, Aleksandrs Berdicevskis >> > >, wrote: >> >> >> >> There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics >> >> and related fields published annually in languages like >> >> Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which never pierces the >> >> consciousness of English-only researchers because of attitudes >> >> like having language hierarchies composed entirely of >> >> European languages. Sheesh. >> >> >> >> >> >> But is it really because of attitudes? Or rather because very few >> >> people are able to master dozens of languages to the level where >> >> they can fluently read scholarly work (and keep track of >> >> everything published)? And dozens is actually an understatement, >> >> if we truly abandon the idea of having the lingua franca of >> >> science, it should rather be thousands. It would be great to live >> >> in a world like that, but that's hardly possible (excellent work >> >> will inevitably remain invisible), and I think the drawbacks of >> >> the compartmentalization of science outweigh the benefits of >> >> linguistic diversity and multicentric perspectives in this case. >> >> >> >> Ulrich Ammon put forward a "somewhat utopian" idea of >> >> "International English" -- a set of varieties of English where not >> >> only Anglophone countries define the norms. I think that's very >> >> close to what Martin and Ilja are proposing, and that something >> >> like that is actually the best practically possible solution. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Seržant >> >> > >> > wrote: >> >> >> >> Dear all, >> >> >> >> >> >> if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive >> >> knowledge of other languages is, of course, important and >> >> if a paper does not cite an important paper on the topic >> >> written in a language other than English that is, of >> >> course, a good reason for sending the paper back for >> revision. >> >> >> >> >> >> However, a very different topic is publishing new papers >> >> in languages other than English. I personally have strong >> >> reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated >> >> matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand >> >> others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual >> >> understanding even larger by publishing in languages other >> >> than English (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even >> >> more, perhaps, research English itself should also be >> >> different from the native English in that one should try >> >> to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, >> >> write in short sentences, etc. >> >> >> >> >> >> If you publish in languages other than English then you >> >> need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are considered >> >> publishable (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and >> >> which are not. I think this issue is difficult to resolve >> >> in a fair way. >> >> >> >> >> >> Best, >> >> >> >> Ilja >> >> >> >> >> >> Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: >> >>> I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special >> >>> issue of 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on >> >>> suppletion last year - >> >>> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - >> >>> we were able to persuade the publishers to allow one of >> >>> the articles to be published in French. >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the >> >>> Philological Society: Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online >> >>> Library >> >>> >> >>> If the address matches an existing account you will >> >>> receive an email with instructions to retrieve your >> username >> >>> onlinelibrary.wiley.com >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> >>> The University of Manchester >> >>> >> >>> Linguistics & English Language >> >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> >>> The University of Manchester >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> >>> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> >>> *From:* Hartmut Haberland >> >>> >> >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM >> >>> *To:* Nigel Vincent >> >>> ; Wiemer, Bjoern >> >>> ; >> >>> Gilles Authier >> >>> >> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit >> >>> souvent se référer à la tradition grammaticale grecque >> >>> (Tzartzanos) ou française (Roussel, Mirambel). >> >>> Restricting oneself to discourses in /one/ language is >> >>> myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just >> >>> two or three languages to keep up with the relevant >> >>> literature, but how many do? >> >>> >> >>> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, >> >>> “More people can make out what it is about in French than >> >>> actually read it”.) >> >>> >> >>> To take a concrete example: /Acta Linguistica Hafniensia/ >> >>> was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers >> >>> in German, French and English. Today, it still calls >> >>> itself an ‘international journal’, but now practically >> >>> all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. >> >>> However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), >> >>> apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, >> >>> there are references to literature in German, French, >> >>> Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least >> >>> not passively monolingual. >> >>> >> >>> Hartmut Haberland >> >>> >> >>> *Fra:* Lingtyp >> >>> >> >>> *På >> >>> vegne af* Nigel Vincent >> >>> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 >> >>> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern >> >>> ; Gilles Authier >> >>> > gilles.authier at gmail.com> >> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >>> >> >>> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les >> >>> références jugées indispensables sont écrites en allemand >> >>> ou en danois … ? >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> >>> The University of Manchester >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> Linguistics & English Language >> >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> >>> >> >>> The University of Manchester >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> >>> >> >>> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> >>> >> >>> *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern > >>> > >> >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM >> >>> *To:* Gilles Authier > >>> >; Nigel Vincent >> >>> > >>> > >> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >>> >> >>> > >>> > >> >>> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> Je pense que oui… Actually, the same applies to articles >> >>> on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) >> >>> or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)… >> >>> >> >>> BW >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> *Von:* Lingtyp >> >>> [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *Im >> >>> Auftrag von* Gilles Authier >> >>> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 >> >>> *An:* Nigel Vincent > >>> > >> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >>> >> >>> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les >> >>> références jugées indispensables sont écrites dans une >> >>> langue romane, il me semblerait devoir être rejeté, oui. >> >>> >> >>> GA >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent >> >>> > >>> > wrote: >> >>> >> >>> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes >> >>> thought about concerns the languages a researcher >> >>> should be able to read in order to access relevant >> >>> scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected >> >>> or revisions asked for if someone writing in English >> >>> on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant >> >>> work written in a language other than English? >> >>> >> >>> Nigel >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> >>> The University of Manchester >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> Linguistics & English Language >> >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> >>> >> >>> The University of Manchester >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> >>> >> >>> _______________________________________________ >> >>> Lingtyp mailing list >> >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >>> >> >>> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> _______________________________________________ >> >>> Lingtyp mailing list >> >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> >> >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> -- >> >> Ilja A. Seržant, postdoc >> >> Project "Grammatical Universals" >> >> Universität Leipzig (IPF 141199) >> >> Nikolaistraße 6-10 >> >> 04109 Leipzig >> >> >> >> URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ >> >> >> >> Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 >> >> Room 5.22 >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> >> Lingtyp mailing list >> >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> >> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> -- >> >> Prof Peter K. Austin >> >> Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS >> >> Visiting Researcher, Oxford University >> >> Foundation Editor, EL Publishing >> >> Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society >> >> >> >> Department of Linguistics, SOAS >> >> Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square >> >> London WC1H 0XG >> >> United Kingdom >> >> _______________________________________________ >> >> Lingtyp mailing list >> >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> >> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> >> Lingtyp mailing list >> >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> >> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> > _______________________________________________ >> > Lingtyp mailing list >> > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> > >> > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> > >> > >> > >> > -- >> > Prof Peter K. Austin >> > Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS >> > Visiting Researcher, Oxford University >> > Foundation Editor, EL Publishing >> > Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society >> > >> > Department of Linguistics, SOAS >> > Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square >> > London WC1H 0XG >> > United Kingdom >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > Lingtyp mailing list >> > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> > >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From g.corbett at surrey.ac.uk Fri Jun 26 11:50:16 2020 From: g.corbett at surrey.ac.uk (Greville Corbett) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 15:50:16 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> <49f63694-ca8d-0d90-bd17-89928e5ea179@lingpy.org> Message-ID: <0DA6C90A-5AF6-4BD1-9D48-53C74524D754@surrey.ac.uk> There are some bright spots concerning the use of different languages. The International Congress of Slavists has as official languages all the Slavonic languages, plus English, French and German. In Belgrade in 2018, a session I chaired consisted of six papers, in six different languages, including Upper Sorbian. Very best, Grev On 26 Jun 2020, at 17:24, Jorge Rosés Labrada > wrote: Thank you everyone for a lively discussion of something that I personally think is really important for us as a field to think about. I write here mostly based on my own experience as a native Spanish speaker operating primarily in an English world (I did my schooling in Canada and now live and work here) but whose fieldwork is in Latin American countries. Most of my scholar output (thesis, articles, book chapters, etc.) has been in English and I arguably feel more comfortable writing in English than in Spanish now because that's the language of most of the linguistics literature I've read and of terminology. However, I was in a French (medium) PhD program and I wrote class papers in French and read papers in French. I also published in Spanish during my PhD in a journal in the country where I was doing my research and have presented in Spanish at the local university to make my research known locally but also to build capacity in linguistics in the country. I'll give you one concrete example of the issues caused by the hegemony of English here and then share some suggestions of how we could perhaps address some of the issues. I'm working with a colleague in Latin America who doesn't read or speak English (older, educated at a different time, etc.). In trying to publish an article, my colleague has had to use Google Translate to engage with the relevant typological literature and to engage with one reviewer's comments which were in English. As you can imagine, Google Translate doesn't do the best job at conveying nuance and some things come out mangled (gloss came out as brillo!!). This has led to numerous hours spent on trying to understand the literature and in trying to engage with it as well as hours and hours trying to understand a review. You may ask, "why bother?" Well, my colleague's institution wants publications in "important" journals... As I see it, we have a responsibility to try to address these issues and here are a few possible avenues: 1. engage with the literature written in languages other than English (not only European languages but whatever the languages of the area where we work are) for reasons of scientific rigor—why would you neglect most of the literature in an area because you don't speak the language it was written in? If you limit yourself to what is written in English, your research won't be able to engage with foundational ideas or literature (e.g. much of the initial literature for the part of the Amazon I work in was written in German by German explorers; I did a bit of German in university but not nearly enough to be able to read the originals so I've paid for translations of particular articles, I have asked friends for help translating small sections of articles, and I've used Google Translate to understand relevant passages in certain pieces). 2. promote work written in languages other than English——If you're bilingual/multilingual and work in a specific area of the world and you are engaging the literature written by local linguists, I think we should take steps to cite and promote that work in our own work. This sometimes entails having to translate examples or quotes for use in our publications but this increases the citations and visibility of our colleagues. 3. create opportunities for everyone to be able to present/publish in their native language if they so wish. The international Journal of American Linguistics publishes articles in English and Spanish; the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA) accepts papers in Spanish, English and Portuguese (and last January we had a fantastic talk in Ch'ol [Mayan] by Morelia Vázquez Martínez and Carol-Rose Little). These are examples of how to increase equity and accessibility for our Latin American colleagues. There are ways to make these things accessible to everyone (for presentations, use slides in one language and present in another or add subtitles). 4. avoid fetishizing standardized English in reviewing—if one is reviewing something and notices issues of grammar/style that needs correcting, I personally prefer to suggest that the paper should be looked at by a copy-editor working for the journaal rather than suggesting that the authors have a native speaker of standardized English look it over. This last type of suggestion is still way too common—and sometimes it is even made for people with English as an L1. 5. allow for glosses in the language of wider communication for the region where you work alongside English—yes, that means your glosses will have an extra line but you're increasing the accessibility of the examples to linguists working in that area as well as to bilingual speakers from that area who are not speakers of English. 6. provide summaries of articles in multiple languages—most Latin American journals that publish linguistic (and other) work, require an abstract in English so English speakers can decide quickly whether they should try to read the article. Why not promote the use of multiple abstracts in English publications so our colleagues who don't speak English or are not as confident with it can decide whether it is worth engaging with the article? I'm sure there are many other ideas that we could pursue but I hope that we, as a field, can find concrete ways in promoting other languages in publication. If we're letting English push out other "majority" languages, what is the fate of minoritized languages? (this is a whole other issue but the two are not unrelated and I'm glad that there's been progress in recent times in this respect [as Peter pointed out, there's a number of theses in minority languages that have started to appear in recent years]). All the best, Jorge ------------- Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada Assistant Professor, Indigenous Language Sustainability 4-22 Assiniboia Hall Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta Tel: (+1) 780-492-5698 Email: jrosesla at ualberta.ca The University of Alberta acknowledges that we are located on Treaty 6 territory, and respects the history, languages, and cultures of the First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and all First Peoples of Canada, whose presence continues to enrich our institution. On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 8:01 AM Hiroto Uchihara > wrote: Dear all, In my case my native language (Japanese) and the medium language (Spanish) spoken in the region where the languages I study are different from English, and I've had a dilemma. I feel the most comfortable writing in Japanese, but if I write something on Cherokee, Zapotec, Mixtec or Tlapanec in Japanese, some may get upset for the reasons that have been raised already, or because the community members would not be able to access these papers. Thus I mostly write in English but I have often been criticized for my grammar by native speakers of English, which has been quite discouraging (this has happened even after having them proofread). Some scholars in Japan do not write in English for this reason. If the accessibility for the community members is the priority, probably I should be writing more in Spanish on Zapotec, Mixtec or Tlapanec. Best, Hiroto 2020年6月26日(金) 7:36 Johann-Mattis List >: I know that there is not much to gain scientifically for me in writing a German article nowadays. But as a scientist, one is also obliged to explain the results of one's research to a broader public, which is why I publish regular blog posts in German. Furthermore, I profited a lot from introductory text books and many other German articles on linguistics which I read when reading English was still difficult for me. I think even if we don't use non-English languages for high-end studies in many scientific fields, one can acknowledge the importance of translating work into many languages, or having original work on science written by the scientists in their native tongues, in order to help specifically the younger generations in their education. Best, Mattis On 6/26/20 2:24 PM, Peter Austin wrote: > Piraha may be a stretch, but recently there have been PhD dissertations > written and defended in Maori, Hawaiian and Inari Sami, among others. > The issue at hand is supporting our colleagues to be able to publish (in > books and journals) scholarship in these and other languages, it appears. > > Peter > > > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 13:20, >> > wrote: > > There’s nothing wrong with writing in English or other popular > languages to reach a broader audience. However I think that an > author should have the full choice to write in whatever language > they want. If they choose to write their thesis in Piraha, then so > be it, it is their thesis and their choice. > > Regards, > Ian > On 26. Jun 2020, 21:09 +0900, Aleksandrs Berdicevskis > >>, wrote: >> >> There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics >> and related fields published annually in languages like >> Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which never pierces the >> consciousness of English-only researchers because of attitudes >> like having language hierarchies composed entirely of >> European languages. Sheesh. >> >> >> But is it really because of attitudes? Or rather because very few >> people are able to master dozens of languages to the level where >> they can fluently read scholarly work (and keep track of >> everything published)? And dozens is actually an understatement, >> if we truly abandon the idea of having the lingua franca of >> science, it should rather be thousands. It would be great to live >> in a world like that, but that's hardly possible (excellent work >> will inevitably remain invisible), and I think the drawbacks of >> the compartmentalization of science outweigh the benefits of >> linguistic diversity and multicentric perspectives in this case. >> >> Ulrich Ammon put forward a "somewhat utopian" idea of >> "International English" -- a set of varieties of English where not >> only Anglophone countries define the norms. I think that's very >> close to what Martin and Ilja are proposing, and that something >> like that is actually the best practically possible solution. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Seržant >> >> >> wrote: >> >> Dear all, >> >> >> if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive >> knowledge of other languages is, of course, important and >> if a paper does not cite an important paper on the topic >> written in a language other than English that is, of >> course, a good reason for sending the paper back for revision. >> >> >> However, a very different topic is publishing new papers >> in languages other than English. I personally have strong >> reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated >> matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand >> others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual >> understanding even larger by publishing in languages other >> than English (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even >> more, perhaps, research English itself should also be >> different from the native English in that one should try >> to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, >> write in short sentences, etc. >> >> >> If you publish in languages other than English then you >> need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are considered >> publishable (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and >> which are not. I think this issue is difficult to resolve >> in a fair way. >> >> >> Best, >> >> Ilja >> >> >> Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: >>> I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special >>> issue of 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on >>> suppletion last year - >>> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - >>> we were able to persuade the publishers to allow one of >>> the articles to be published in French. >>> > >>> >>> The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the >>> Philological Society: Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online >>> Library >>> > >>> If the address matches an existing account you will >>> receive an email with instructions to retrieve your username >>> onlinelibrary.wiley.com > >>> >>> >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> *From:* Hartmut Haberland > >>> > >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM >>> *To:* Nigel Vincent > >>> >; Wiemer, Bjoern >>> > >; >>> Gilles Authier > >>> > >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit >>> souvent se référer à la tradition grammaticale grecque >>> (Tzartzanos) ou française (Roussel, Mirambel). >>> Restricting oneself to discourses in /one/ language is >>> myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just >>> two or three languages to keep up with the relevant >>> literature, but how many do? >>> >>> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, >>> “More people can make out what it is about in French than >>> actually read it”.) >>> >>> To take a concrete example: /Acta Linguistica Hafniensia/ >>> was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers >>> in German, French and English. Today, it still calls >>> itself an ‘international journal’, but now practically >>> all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. >>> However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), >>> apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, >>> there are references to literature in German, French, >>> Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least >>> not passively monolingual. >>> >>> Hartmut Haberland >>> >>> *Fra:* Lingtyp >>> > >>> > *På >>> vegne af* Nigel Vincent >>> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 >>> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern > >>> >; Gilles Authier >>> > > >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> > >>> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> >>> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les >>> références jugées indispensables sont écrites en allemand >>> ou en danois … ? >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> >>> *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern >>> >> >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM >>> *To:* Gilles Authier >>> >>; Nigel Vincent >>> >>> >> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> > >>> >>> >> >>> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> >>> Je pense que oui… Actually, the same applies to articles >>> on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) >>> or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)… >>> >>> BW >>> >>> >>> >>> *Von:* Lingtyp >>> [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *Im >>> Auftrag von* Gilles Authier >>> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 >>> *An:* Nigel Vincent >>> >> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> > >>> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> >>> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les >>> références jugées indispensables sont écrites dans une >>> langue romane, il me semblerait devoir être rejeté, oui. >>> >>> GA >>> >>> >>> >>> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent >>> >>> >> wrote: >>> >>> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes >>> thought about concerns the languages a researcher >>> should be able to read in order to access relevant >>> scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected >>> or revisions asked for if someone writing in English >>> on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant >>> work written in a language other than English? >>> >>> Nigel >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> > >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> -- >> Ilja A. Seržant, postdoc >> Project "Grammatical Universals" >> Universität Leipzig (IPF 141199) >> Nikolaistraße 6-10 >> 04109 Leipzig >> >> URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ >> >> Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 >> Room 5.22 >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> > >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> >> -- >> Prof Peter K. Austin >> Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS >> Visiting Researcher, Oxford University >> Foundation Editor, EL Publishing >> Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society >> >> Department of Linguistics, SOAS >> Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square >> London WC1H 0XG >> United Kingdom >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> > >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> > >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > Prof Peter K. Austin > Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS > Visiting Researcher, Oxford University > Foundation Editor, EL Publishing > Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society > > Department of Linguistics, SOAS > Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square > London WC1H 0XG > United Kingdom > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flistserv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7Cg.corbett%40surrey.ac.uk%7Cc5288b97d28e474296ca08d819e535ef%7C6b902693107440aa9e21d89446a2ebb5%7C0%7C0%7C637287819541996004&sdata=ujAJWUCP%2B4%2FBdjGU6EaPPYoLZYp0VZnBe0wtY9TGT98%3D&reserved=0 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From volker.gast at uni-jena.de Fri Jun 26 13:33:17 2020 From: volker.gast at uni-jena.de (Volker Gast) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 19:33:17 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> <49f63694-ca8d-0d90-bd17-89928e5ea179@lingpy.org> Message-ID: <20200626193317.Horde.4mzjBz4YcTSCXqfWjlCJl_X@webmail.uni-jena.de> Hi everybody, I've been working on a project that I call "Academic Content Modeling". The idea is to use NLP resources to improve access to academic (linguistic) texts (e.g. topic models as semantic representations of articles). I've also been working on automatic translation (of parliamentary corpora), and we will shortly be advertizing two jobs related to this in Jena. When I read Jorge's comment on 'gloss' being translated as 'brillo' by Google Translate, I thought -- why not (re)train translation models specifically for linguistic texts? There are excellent models around (trained with deep learning), and they can be adapted to specific genres (which is what we will be doing for parliamentary corpora anyway). So I wonder if it would make sense to set up a service -- e.g. a website -- specifically for the translation of linguistic texts, a specialized version of Google Translate or DeepL as it were. This could be a community effort, as the retraining of models would certainly imply some manual work and academic expertise. Please let me know (off list) if you are interested in this (or if you're working on something like this already). Perhaps we can join forces. One of the more ambitious ideas in the "Academic Content Modeling" project is to train language independent topic models. We will do this with parliamentary corpora first (as we want to compare parliamentary discourse crosslinguistically). This implies a mapping from texts to language-independent concepts. If we map linguistic texts to topic models based on language-independent concepts, we could search databases of academic texts not for terms, but for concepts (or topics defined in terms of concepts), ideally getting hits from various languages. Together with a linguistic translation service, this could be a way of partially overcoming the language barrier, at least for some languages. Best, Volker Zitat von Jorge Rosés Labrada : > Thank you everyone for a lively discussion of something that I personally > think is really important for us as a field to think about. I write here > mostly based on my own experience as a native Spanish speaker operating > primarily in an English world (I did my schooling in Canada and now live > and work here) but whose fieldwork is in Latin American countries. > > Most of my scholar output (thesis, articles, book chapters, etc.) has been > in English and I arguably feel more comfortable writing in English than in > Spanish now because that's the language of most of the linguistics > literature I've read and of terminology. However, I was in a French > (medium) PhD program and I wrote class papers in French and read papers in > French. I also published in Spanish during my PhD in a journal in the > country where I was doing my research and have presented in Spanish at the > local university to make my research known locally but also to build > capacity in linguistics in the country. > > I'll give you one concrete example of the issues caused by the hegemony of > English here and then share some suggestions of how we could perhaps > address some of the issues. > > I'm working with a colleague in Latin America who doesn't read or speak > English (older, educated at a different time, etc.). In trying to publish > an article, my colleague has had to use Google Translate to engage with the > relevant typological literature and to engage with one reviewer's comments > which were in English. As you can imagine, Google Translate doesn't do the > best job at conveying nuance and some things come out mangled (*gloss* came > out as *brillo*!!). This has led to numerous hours spent on trying to > understand the literature and in trying to engage with it as well as hours > and hours trying to understand a review. You may ask, "why bother?" Well, > my colleague's institution wants publications in "important" journals... > > As I see it, we have a responsibility to try to address these issues and > here are a few possible avenues: > > 1. *engage with the literature written in languages other than English* > (not only European languages but whatever the languages of the area where > we work are) *for reasons of scientific rigor*—why would you neglect > most of the literature in an area because you don't speak the language it > was written in? If you limit yourself to what is written in English, your > research won't be able to engage with foundational ideas or literature > (e.g. much of the initial literature for the part of the Amazon I work in > was written in German by German explorers; I did a bit of German in > university but not nearly enough to be able to read the originals so I've > paid for translations of particular articles, I have asked > friends for help > translating small sections of articles, and I've used Google Translate to > understand relevant passages in certain pieces). > 2. *promote work written in languages other than English*——If you're > bilingual/multilingual and work in a specific area of the world > and you are > engaging the literature written by local linguists, I think we should take > steps to cite and promote that work in our own work. This sometimes > entails having to translate examples or quotes for use in our publications > but this increases the citations and visibility of our colleagues. > 3. *create opportunities for everyone to be able to present/publish in > their native language if they so wish*. The international Journal of > American Linguistics publishes articles in English and Spanish; > the Society > for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA) accepts > papers in Spanish, English and Portuguese (and last January we had a > fantastic talk in Ch'ol [Mayan] by Morelia Vázquez Martínez and > Carol-Rose > Little). These are examples of how to increase equity and > accessibility for > our Latin American colleagues. There are ways to make these things > accessible to everyone (for presentations, use slides in one language and > present in another or add subtitles). > 4. *avoid fetishizing standardized English in reviewing*—if one is > reviewing something and notices issues of grammar/style that needs > correcting, I personally prefer to suggest that the paper should be looked > at by a copy-editor working for the journaal rather than suggesting that > the authors have a native speaker of standardized English look it over. > This last type of suggestion is still way too common—and sometimes it is > even made for people with English as an L1. > 5. *allow for glosses in the language of wider communication for the > region where you work alongside English*—yes, that means your glosses > will have an extra line but you're increasing the accessibility of the > examples to linguists working in that area as well as to > bilingual speakers > from that area who are not speakers of English. > 6. *provide summaries of articles in multiple languages*—most Latin > American journals that publish linguistic (and other) work, require an > abstract in English so English speakers can decide quickly whether they > should try to read the article. Why not promote the use of multiple > abstracts in English publications so our colleagues who don't > speak English > or are not as confident with it can decide whether it is worth engaging > with the article? > > I'm sure there are many other ideas that we could pursue but I hope that > we, as a field, can find concrete ways in promoting other languages in > publication. If we're letting English push out other "majority" languages, > what is the fate of minoritized languages? (this is a whole other issue but > the two are not unrelated and I'm glad that there's been progress in recent > times in this respect [as Peter pointed out, there's a number of theses in > minority languages that have started to appear in recent years]). > > All the best, > Jorge > ------------- > Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada > Assistant Professor, Indigenous Language Sustainability > > 4-22 Assiniboia Hall > Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta > Tel: (+1) 780-492-5698 > Email: jrosesla at ualberta.ca > > *The University of Alberta acknowledges that we are located on Treaty 6 > territory, **and respects the history, languages, and cultures of the First > Nations, Métis, Inuit, * > *and all First Peoples of Canada, whose presence continues to enrich our > institution.* > > > On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 8:01 AM Hiroto Uchihara > wrote: > >> Dear all, >> >> In my case my native language (Japanese) and the medium language (Spanish) >> spoken in the region where the languages I study are different from >> English, and I've had a dilemma. >> >> I feel the most comfortable writing in Japanese, but if I write something >> on Cherokee, Zapotec, Mixtec or Tlapanec in Japanese, some may get upset >> for the reasons that have been raised already, or because the community >> members would not be able to access these papers. Thus I mostly write in >> English but I have often been criticized for my grammar by native speakers >> of English, which has been quite discouraging (this has happened even after >> having them proofread). Some scholars in Japan do not write in English for >> this reason. If the accessibility for the community members is the >> priority, probably I should be writing more in Spanish on Zapotec, Mixtec >> or Tlapanec. >> >> Best, >> Hiroto >> >> 2020年6月26日(金) 7:36 Johann-Mattis List : >> >>> I know that there is not much to gain scientifically for me in writing a >>> German article nowadays. But as a scientist, one is also obliged to >>> explain the results of one's research to a broader public, which is why >>> I publish regular blog posts in German. Furthermore, I profited a lot >>> from introductory text books and many other German articles on >>> linguistics which I read when reading English was still difficult for >>> me. I think even if we don't use non-English languages for high-end >>> studies in many scientific fields, one can acknowledge the importance of >>> translating work into many languages, or having original work on science >>> written by the scientists in their native tongues, in order to help >>> specifically the younger generations in their education. >>> >>> Best, >>> >>> Mattis >>> >>> On 6/26/20 2:24 PM, Peter Austin wrote: >>> > Piraha may be a stretch, but recently there have been PhD dissertations >>> > written and defended in Maori, Hawaiian and Inari Sami, among others. >>> > The issue at hand is supporting our colleagues to be able to publish (in >>> > books and journals) scholarship in these and other languages, it >>> appears. >>> > >>> > Peter >>> > >>> > >>> > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 13:20, > >>> > wrote: >>> > >>> > There’s nothing wrong with writing in English or other popular >>> > languages to reach a broader audience. However I think that an >>> > author should have the full choice to write in whatever language >>> > they want. If they choose to write their thesis in Piraha, then so >>> > be it, it is their thesis and their choice. >>> > >>> > Regards, >>> > Ian >>> > On 26. Jun 2020, 21:09 +0900, Aleksandrs Berdicevskis >>> > >, wrote: >>> >> >>> >> There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics >>> >> and related fields published annually in languages like >>> >> Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which never pierces the >>> >> consciousness of English-only researchers because of attitudes >>> >> like having language hierarchies composed entirely of >>> >> European languages. Sheesh. >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> But is it really because of attitudes? Or rather because very few >>> >> people are able to master dozens of languages to the level where >>> >> they can fluently read scholarly work (and keep track of >>> >> everything published)? And dozens is actually an understatement, >>> >> if we truly abandon the idea of having the lingua franca of >>> >> science, it should rather be thousands. It would be great to live >>> >> in a world like that, but that's hardly possible (excellent work >>> >> will inevitably remain invisible), and I think the drawbacks of >>> >> the compartmentalization of science outweigh the benefits of >>> >> linguistic diversity and multicentric perspectives in this case. >>> >> >>> >> Ulrich Ammon put forward a "somewhat utopian" idea of >>> >> "International English" -- a set of varieties of English where not >>> >> only Anglophone countries define the norms. I think that's very >>> >> close to what Martin and Ilja are proposing, and that something >>> >> like that is actually the best practically possible solution. >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Seržant >>> >> >> >> > wrote: >>> >> >>> >> Dear all, >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive >>> >> knowledge of other languages is, of course, important and >>> >> if a paper does not cite an important paper on the topic >>> >> written in a language other than English that is, of >>> >> course, a good reason for sending the paper back for >>> revision. >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> However, a very different topic is publishing new papers >>> >> in languages other than English. I personally have strong >>> >> reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated >>> >> matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand >>> >> others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual >>> >> understanding even larger by publishing in languages other >>> >> than English (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even >>> >> more, perhaps, research English itself should also be >>> >> different from the native English in that one should try >>> >> to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, >>> >> write in short sentences, etc. >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> If you publish in languages other than English then you >>> >> need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are considered >>> >> publishable (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and >>> >> which are not. I think this issue is difficult to resolve >>> >> in a fair way. >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> Best, >>> >> >>> >> Ilja >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: >>> >>> I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special >>> >>> issue of 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on >>> >>> suppletion last year - >>> >>> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - >>> >>> we were able to persuade the publishers to allow one of >>> >>> the articles to be published in French. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the >>> >>> Philological Society: Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online >>> >>> Library >>> >>> >>> >>> If the address matches an existing account you will >>> >>> receive an email with instructions to retrieve your >>> username >>> >>> onlinelibrary.wiley.com >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> >>> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> >>> *From:* Hartmut Haberland >>> >>> >>> >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM >>> >>> *To:* Nigel Vincent >>> >>> ; Wiemer, Bjoern >>> >>> ; >>> >>> Gilles Authier >>> >>> >>> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit >>> >>> souvent se référer à la tradition grammaticale grecque >>> >>> (Tzartzanos) ou française (Roussel, Mirambel). >>> >>> Restricting oneself to discourses in /one/ language is >>> >>> myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just >>> >>> two or three languages to keep up with the relevant >>> >>> literature, but how many do? >>> >>> >>> >>> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, >>> >>> “More people can make out what it is about in French than >>> >>> actually read it”.) >>> >>> >>> >>> To take a concrete example: /Acta Linguistica Hafniensia/ >>> >>> was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers >>> >>> in German, French and English. Today, it still calls >>> >>> itself an ‘international journal’, but now practically >>> >>> all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. >>> >>> However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), >>> >>> apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, >>> >>> there are references to literature in German, French, >>> >>> Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least >>> >>> not passively monolingual. >>> >>> >>> >>> Hartmut Haberland >>> >>> >>> >>> *Fra:* Lingtyp >>> >>> >>> >>> *På >>> >>> vegne af* Nigel Vincent >>> >>> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 >>> >>> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern >>> >>> ; Gilles Authier >>> >>> >> gilles.authier at gmail.com> >>> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> >>> >>> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les >>> >>> références jugées indispensables sont écrites en allemand >>> >>> ou en danois … ? >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> >>> >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> >>> >>> >>> *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern >> >>> > >>> >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM >>> >>> *To:* Gilles Authier >> >>> >; Nigel Vincent >>> >>> >> >>> > >>> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> >>> >>> >> >>> > >>> >>> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Je pense que oui… Actually, the same applies to articles >>> >>> on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) >>> >>> or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)… >>> >>> >>> >>> BW >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> *Von:* Lingtyp >>> >>> [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *Im >>> >>> Auftrag von* Gilles Authier >>> >>> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 >>> >>> *An:* Nigel Vincent >> >>> > >>> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> >>> >>> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les >>> >>> références jugées indispensables sont écrites dans une >>> >>> langue romane, il me semblerait devoir être rejeté, oui. >>> >>> >>> >>> GA >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent >>> >>> >> >>> > wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes >>> >>> thought about concerns the languages a researcher >>> >>> should be able to read in order to access relevant >>> >>> scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected >>> >>> or revisions asked for if someone writing in English >>> >>> on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant >>> >>> work written in a language other than English? >>> >>> >>> >>> Nigel >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> >>> >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> >>> >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >> -- >>> >> Ilja A. Seržant, postdoc >>> >> Project "Grammatical Universals" >>> >> Universität Leipzig (IPF 141199) >>> >> Nikolaistraße 6-10 >>> >> 04109 Leipzig >>> >> >>> >> URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ >>> >> >>> >> Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 >>> >> Room 5.22 >>> >> >>> >> _______________________________________________ >>> >> Lingtyp mailing list >>> >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >> >>> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> -- >>> >> Prof Peter K. Austin >>> >> Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS >>> >> Visiting Researcher, Oxford University >>> >> Foundation Editor, EL Publishing >>> >> Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society >>> >> >>> >> Department of Linguistics, SOAS >>> >> Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square >>> >> London WC1H 0XG >>> >> United Kingdom >>> >> _______________________________________________ >>> >> Lingtyp mailing list >>> >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >> >>> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >> >>> >> _______________________________________________ >>> >> Lingtyp mailing list >>> >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >> >>> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> > _______________________________________________ >>> > Lingtyp mailing list >>> > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> > >>> > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > -- >>> > Prof Peter K. Austin >>> > Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS >>> > Visiting Researcher, Oxford University >>> > Foundation Editor, EL Publishing >>> > Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society >>> > >>> > Department of Linguistics, SOAS >>> > Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square >>> > London WC1H 0XG >>> > United Kingdom >>> > >>> > _______________________________________________ >>> > Lingtyp mailing list >>> > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> > >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> From haspelmath at shh.mpg.de Fri Jun 26 14:57:51 2020 From: haspelmath at shh.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 20:57:51 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <20200626193317.Horde.4mzjBz4YcTSCXqfWjlCJl_X@webmail.uni-jena.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> <49f63694-ca8d-0d90-bd17-89928e5ea179@lingpy.org> <20200626193317.Horde.4mzjBz4YcTSCXqfWjlCJl_X@webmail.uni-jena.de> Message-ID: <52b9ded8-5d8d-5eba-cbd9-45cbe9e68304@shh.mpg.de> It seems that there are two groups of people: the "defeatists" who realize that English/Globish has won, and the "romantics" who cherish linguistic diversity also when it comes to linguistics writings. I belong to the defeatists, also because I know that I owe my own career to my early switch to English (my 1993 dissertation on indefinite pronouns was the first linguistics dissertation written in English in Germany, and it helped me get a good job; nowadays few people write in German about general linguistics). So, sad as it is: Just as speakers of Sáliba or Japhug do not get good jobs without knowing another big language as well, linguists will hardly get good jobs unless they write in a big language. It's wonderful to hear about linguistics dissertations written in Quechua (http://www.openculture.com/2019/10/peruvian-scholar-writes-defends-the-first-thesis-written-in-quechua.html), but can this be much more than a symbolic act? Instead of talking about the languages we write in, we should perhaps talk about the way academia is organized. Why is it the case that people who write in small languages have fewer chances to get good jobs? What is it that discourages ambitious Latvian linguists from writing in Latvian? Why do I read in reviews that "X has published in excellent journals", and why is it that journals highlight their "impact factors"? Since this is a typology list: Why doesn't ALT object to De Gruyter's listing LT's impact factor (https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/lity/lity-overview.xml), even though impact factors are widely thought to be damaging to science? So if we are serious about our wish to support small languages, even in linguistics writings, we should perhaps think about moving away from De Gruyter and setting up a linguistics journal that is open to many other languages. Maybe with our prestige as ALT, we can make a real difference. (It seems unlikely, but it may be worth trying.) Best, Martin -- Martin Haspelmath (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 From clairebowern at gmail.com Fri Jun 26 15:44:51 2020 From: clairebowern at gmail.com (Claire Bowern) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 15:44:51 -0400 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <52b9ded8-5d8d-5eba-cbd9-45cbe9e68304@shh.mpg.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> <49f63694-ca8d-0d90-bd17-89928e5ea179@lingpy.org> <20200626193317.Horde.4mzjBz4YcTSCXqfWjlCJl_X@webmail.uni-jena.de> <52b9ded8-5d8d-5eba-cbd9-45cbe9e68304@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: For what it's worth, *Diachronica* allows submissions in French, German, or Spanish (as well as English) and we publish summaries of each article in French and German. We are currently looking into adding Mandarin and Spanish to the summaries (working out some logistical details). Of course, that does not really help with the Eurocentrism issue, since (apart from Mandarin) these are all European and colonial languages. The vast majority of our submissions are in English, the German submissions are all from Germany, the Spanish submissions are almost all from Central and South America, and the French submissions are mostly from Francophone Africa. Claire On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 3:00 PM Martin Haspelmath wrote: > It seems that there are two groups of people: the "defeatists" who > realize that English/Globish has won, and the "romantics" who cherish > linguistic diversity also when it comes to linguistics writings. > > I belong to the defeatists, also because I know that I owe my own career > to my early switch to English (my 1993 dissertation on indefinite > pronouns was the first linguistics dissertation written in English in > Germany, and it helped me get a good job; nowadays few people write in > German about general linguistics). > > So, sad as it is: Just as speakers of Sáliba or Japhug do not get good > jobs without knowing another big language as well, linguists will hardly > get good jobs unless they write in a big language. It's wonderful to > hear about linguistics dissertations written in Quechua > ( > http://www.openculture.com/2019/10/peruvian-scholar-writes-defends-the-first-thesis-written-in-quechua.html), > > but can this be much more than a symbolic act? > > Instead of talking about the languages we write in, we should perhaps > talk about the way academia is organized. Why is it the case that people > who write in small languages have fewer chances to get good jobs? What > is it that discourages ambitious Latvian linguists from writing in Latvian? > > Why do I read in reviews that "X has published in excellent journals", > and why is it that journals highlight their "impact factors"? Since this > is a typology list: Why doesn't ALT object to De Gruyter's listing LT's > impact factor > (https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/lity/lity-overview.xml), even > though impact factors are widely thought to be damaging to science? > > So if we are serious about our wish to support small languages, even in > linguistics writings, we should perhaps think about moving away from De > Gruyter and setting up a linguistics journal that is open to many other > languages. Maybe with our prestige as ALT, we can make a real > difference. (It seems unlikely, but it may be worth trying.) > > Best, > Martin > > -- > Martin Haspelmath (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 > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil at shh.mpg.de Fri Jun 26 16:11:39 2020 From: gil at shh.mpg.de (David Gil) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 23:11:39 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <52b9ded8-5d8d-5eba-cbd9-45cbe9e68304@shh.mpg.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> <49f63694-ca8d-0d90-bd17-89928e5ea179@lingpy.org> <20200626193317.Horde.4mzjBz4YcTSCXqfWjlCJl_X@webmail.uni-jena.de> <52b9ded8-5d8d-5eba-cbd9-45cbe9e68304@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: <639bf9c9-9a6b-c8ef-bd2d-25999ab8636a@shh.mpg.de> Dear all, Like Martin I am a "defeatist", except that I don't really think it's that bad a state of affairs. Looking at things from a somewhat broader perspective, we are clearly in a transition to a Global era where more and more things are being done on a global scale. Kids in Indonesia play online interactive electronic games with kids from America and Africa, and of course they interact in rudimentary Globish.  Ditto training sessions in top football clubs employing star players from all over the world, ditto the international space station, ditto Max Planck Institutes, so why not also scientific publications?  All of these and many others constitute collective endeavors which require a common language — and English is the inevitable (albeit historically accidental) choice. If an earlier era witnessed the rise of national languages alongside regional ones, we are now in an era where the world village needs its own language, and the obvious choice is English (whether or not we decide to call it Globish — I quite like the idea myself). And just as national languages call for bilingualism, and often offer an unfair advantage to native speakers of the national language, so the rise of global English points towards a new norm of trilingualism, with, again, an unfair advantage to persons whose native language happens to be English.  Yes, we need to find ways to help our friends whose native language is not English, just as, for some time now, we have needed to help those whose native language is not their national one.  But I really don't see any alternative to English as the global language. David On 26/06/2020 21:57, Martin Haspelmath wrote: > It seems that there are two groups of people: the "defeatists" who > realize that English/Globish has won, and the "romantics" who cherish > linguistic diversity also when it comes to linguistics writings. > > I belong to the defeatists, also because I know that I owe my own > career to my early switch to English (my 1993 dissertation on > indefinite pronouns was the first linguistics dissertation written in > English in Germany, and it helped me get a good job; nowadays few > people write in German about general linguistics). > > So, sad as it is: Just as speakers of Sáliba or Japhug do not get good > jobs without knowing another big language as well, linguists will > hardly get good jobs unless they write in a big language. It's > wonderful to hear about linguistics dissertations written in Quechua > (http://www.openculture.com/2019/10/peruvian-scholar-writes-defends-the-first-thesis-written-in-quechua.html), > but can this be much more than a symbolic act? > > Instead of talking about the languages we write in, we should perhaps > talk about the way academia is organized. Why is it the case that > people who write in small languages have fewer chances to get good > jobs? What is it that discourages ambitious Latvian linguists from > writing in Latvian? > > Why do I read in reviews that "X has published in excellent journals", > and why is it that journals highlight their "impact factors"? Since > this is a typology list: Why doesn't ALT object to De Gruyter's > listing LT's impact factor > (https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/lity/lity-overview.xml), even > though impact factors are widely thought to be damaging to science? > > So if we are serious about our wish to support small languages, even > in linguistics writings, we should perhaps think about moving away > from De Gruyter and setting up a linguistics journal that is open to > many other languages. Maybe with our prestige as ALT, we can make a > real difference. (It seems unlikely, but it may be worth trying.) > > Best, > Martin > -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 From jrosesla at ualberta.ca Fri Jun 26 16:11:59 2020 From: jrosesla at ualberta.ca (=?UTF-8?Q?Jorge_Ros=C3=A9s_Labrada?=) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 14:11:59 -0600 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <52b9ded8-5d8d-5eba-cbd9-45cbe9e68304@shh.mpg.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> <49f63694-ca8d-0d90-bd17-89928e5ea179@lingpy.org> <20200626193317.Horde.4mzjBz4YcTSCXqfWjlCJl_X@webmail.uni-jena.de> <52b9ded8-5d8d-5eba-cbd9-45cbe9e68304@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: Martin invites us to think "about the way academia is organized" and "[w]hy is it the case that people who write in small languages have fewer chances to get good jobs?" while pointing out that "linguists will hardly get good jobs unless they write in a big language." I agree that we do need to be thinking about the way academia operates and especially the changes and attacks it is currently undergoing (casualization of labour, budget cuts, increased fees for the arts and humanities, predatory publishing companies, and many more) but I want to point out that we all (and especially the senior academics on this list) have some agency in hiring, funding, and publication decisions so when we serve on hiring or funding committees or serve as reviewers for a funding agency or a tenure case or sit on editorial boards, we should all be thinking about what work gets accepted/rewarded/promoted and what barriers prevent wider inclusion/representation and, importantly, how we can dismantle those barriers. Best, Jorge ------------- Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada Assistant Professor, Indigenous Language Sustainability 4-22 Assiniboia Hall Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta Tel: (+1) 780-492-5698 Email: jrosesla at ualberta.ca *The University of Alberta acknowledges that we are located on Treaty 6 territory, **and respects the history, languages, and cultures of the First Nations, Métis, Inuit, * *and all First Peoples of Canada, whose presence continues to enrich our institution.* On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 12:59 PM Martin Haspelmath wrote: > It seems that there are two groups of people: the "defeatists" who > realize that English/Globish has won, and the "romantics" who cherish > linguistic diversity also when it comes to linguistics writings. > > I belong to the defeatists, also because I know that I owe my own career > to my early switch to English (my 1993 dissertation on indefinite > pronouns was the first linguistics dissertation written in English in > Germany, and it helped me get a good job; nowadays few people write in > German about general linguistics). > > So, sad as it is: Just as speakers of Sáliba or Japhug do not get good > jobs without knowing another big language as well, linguists will hardly > get good jobs unless they write in a big language. It's wonderful to > hear about linguistics dissertations written in Quechua > ( > http://www.openculture.com/2019/10/peruvian-scholar-writes-defends-the-first-thesis-written-in-quechua.html), > > but can this be much more than a symbolic act? > > Instead of talking about the languages we write in, we should perhaps > talk about the way academia is organized. Why is it the case that people > who write in small languages have fewer chances to get good jobs? What > is it that discourages ambitious Latvian linguists from writing in Latvian? > > Why do I read in reviews that "X has published in excellent journals", > and why is it that journals highlight their "impact factors"? Since this > is a typology list: Why doesn't ALT object to De Gruyter's listing LT's > impact factor > (https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/lity/lity-overview.xml), even > though impact factors are widely thought to be damaging to science? > > So if we are serious about our wish to support small languages, even in > linguistics writings, we should perhaps think about moving away from De > Gruyter and setting up a linguistics journal that is open to many other > languages. Maybe with our prestige as ALT, we can make a real > difference. (It seems unlikely, but it may be worth trying.) > > Best, > Martin > > -- > Martin Haspelmath (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 > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hartmut at ruc.dk Fri Jun 26 16:43:58 2020 From: hartmut at ruc.dk (Hartmut Haberland) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 20:43:58 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <52b9ded8-5d8d-5eba-cbd9-45cbe9e68304@shh.mpg.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> <49f63694-ca8d-0d90-bd17-89928e5ea179@lingpy.org> <20200626193317.Horde.4mzjBz4YcTSCXqfWjlCJl_X@webmail.uni-jena.de> <52b9ded8-5d8d-5eba-cbd9-45cbe9e68304@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813CB910@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> May I refer to a book by Linus Salö, 2017. The Sociolinguistics of Academic Publishing. Language and the Practices of Homo Academicus. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. I haven’t checked the book again, and maybe I am oversimplifying, but what I remember is Linus’ point that publications in English have less to do with real internationalization but with competition within a country about which universities are ‘most international’. Hartmut -----Oprindelig meddelelse----- Fra: Lingtyp På vegne af Martin Haspelmath Sendt: 26. juni 2020 20:58 Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship It seems that there are two groups of people: the "defeatists" who realize that English/Globish has won, and the "romantics" who cherish linguistic diversity also when it comes to linguistics writings. I belong to the defeatists, also because I know that I owe my own career to my early switch to English (my 1993 dissertation on indefinite pronouns was the first linguistics dissertation written in English in Germany, and it helped me get a good job; nowadays few people write in German about general linguistics). So, sad as it is: Just as speakers of Sáliba or Japhug do not get good jobs without knowing another big language as well, linguists will hardly get good jobs unless they write in a big language. It's wonderful to hear about linguistics dissertations written in Quechua (http://www.openculture.com/2019/10/peruvian-scholar-writes-defends-the-first-thesis-written-in-quechua.html), but can this be much more than a symbolic act? Instead of talking about the languages we write in, we should perhaps talk about the way academia is organized. Why is it the case that people who write in small languages have fewer chances to get good jobs? What is it that discourages ambitious Latvian linguists from writing in Latvian? Why do I read in reviews that "X has published in excellent journals", and why is it that journals highlight their "impact factors"? Since this is a typology list: Why doesn't ALT object to De Gruyter's listing LT's impact factor (https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/lity/lity-overview.xml), even though impact factors are widely thought to be damaging to science? So if we are serious about our wish to support small languages, even in linguistics writings, we should perhaps think about moving away from De Gruyter and setting up a linguistics journal that is open to many other languages. Maybe with our prestige as ALT, we can make a real difference. (It seems unlikely, but it may be worth trying.) Best, Martin -- Martin Haspelmath (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 _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paoram at unipv.it Sun Jun 28 10:50:26 2020 From: paoram at unipv.it (Paolo Ramat) Date: Sun, 28 Jun 2020 16:50:26 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Message-ID: <000801d64d5b$7659fd20$630df760$@unipv.it> Dear all, I have followed with great interest the discussion about ‘Globish’ and languages of scholarship. Having been since 1996 the (now outgoing) editor of the oldest Italian linguistic journal founded by G.I. Ascoli (1873: “Archivio Glottologico Italiano”, AGI), I was faced many times with the language choice problem. I would like to make some comments. I think that between “defeatists” and “romantics” (Martin’s dichotomy) there is a third way. Linguists should care not only for the international readers’ community but also for the ‘local’ readers who might not be interested in general, theoretical problems, but are strongly concerned for their own language and eager to know more about its history and perhaps also about its future. There exist journals which are dedicated to specific areas. Take for instance the Dutch journal “Taal en Tongval” : we read on the cover sheet: <>. Similarly, it would make little sense to ask perspective contributors to the “Rivista di Dialettologia Italiana” to use English (unless an article would deal with general problems concerning what’s a dialect and what does it mean for a dialectologist to write a grammar of a dialect). Admittedly, this is pure Eurocentrism (as Claire Bowern underlines); but we are the heirs of a long standing tradition which deserves to be kept. Why to re-baptize the glorious Norsk tidsskrift for sprogvidenskap as “Norwegian Journal of Linguistics”? Even keeping the traditional “NTS” name would it be possible to accept English written papers --perhaps the majority of them, if the Authors prefer to write in English or ‘Globish’. Peter Austin is absolutely right when he writes that there are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics and related fields published annually in languages like Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which never pierces the consciousness of English-only researchers because of attitudes like having language hierarchies composed entirely of European languages (see also B.Hurch’s mail). Moreover. I agree with Martin when he writes that along with the traditional Eurocentrism it’s also ethnocentric to only cite work by American linguists and somehow assume that there is nothing else of relevance. On the other hand it is true, as Guillaume says, that young linguists are not competitive if they don’t publish in ‘Globish’. Remember the amusing anecdote told by Nigel who, on the occasion of an international conference on Italian linguistics, was asked to held his plenary lecture in Italian since most of the native speakers had chosen to give their papers in English! (It’s amusing, but not so fun!...). The solution is to leave the choice to the Author of the article submitted to the journal, as, e.g., Diachronica does. This is the liberal policy we have adopted for AGI. But this is not the policy of the big publishing houses. I remember the long discussion we had with the publisher in order to have one volume of the EUROTYP-series published in French: Actance et Valence dans les langues de l’Europe (in a similar vein Nigel tells us of a special issue of 'Transactions of the Philological Society': he and Frans Plank have been able to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be published in French !). Whether you like it or not, this is the situation you have to live with. My conclusion: one has to have ’mixed (and at the same time liberal) feelings’ : 1. ’Defeatism’: Globish (i.e. an English variety avoiding dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, using short sentences, etc.: see Ilja Seržant) is the international unavoidable language linguists and other scientists have to use when dealing with general problems which may be relevant for a large international audience. (Obviously, this does not impinge upon the possibility of having valuable English written contributions on Mòcheno, a Bavarian dialect spoken in Trentino -- Fersentalerisch ! Once more: the language choice is a matter of the Author, who shouldn’t be compelled to use Globish) 2. On the other hand, just as Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese linguists have their own journals dedicated to the many languages spoken in their own areas, we –I mean the European linguists—have to keep alive a tradition of studies using our mother tongues : a ’romantic’ position, in Martin’s terms. Best, Paolo Università di Pavia (retired) IUSS Pavia (retired) Editor-in-Chief of “Archivio Glottologico Italiano” Accademia dei Lincei, Socio corrispondente Academia Europaea Societas Linguistica Europaea, Honorary Member Home address: Piazzetta Arduino 11 I-27100 PAVIA ##39 0382 27027 ##39 347 044 9844 -- Questa e-mail è stata controllata per individuare virus con Avast antivirus. https://www.avast.com/antivirus -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dubois at ucsb.edu Sun Jun 28 14:39:59 2020 From: dubois at ucsb.edu (John Du Bois) Date: Sun, 28 Jun 2020 11:39:59 -0700 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <000801d64d5b$7659fd20$630df760$@unipv.it> References: <000801d64d5b$7659fd20$630df760$@unipv.it> Message-ID: Paolo, This is a wonderful statement of all the complexities of language choice that arise in the domain of scholarly linguistic publication, complete with a cogent proposal for how to balance the conflicting values that inevitably come into play. Jack ============================== John W. Du Bois Professor of Linguistics University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, California 93106 USA dubois at ucsb.edu On Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 7:50 AM Paolo Ramat wrote: > Dear all, > > I have followed with great interest the discussion about ‘Globish’ and > languages of scholarship. Having been since 1996 the (now outgoing) editor > of the oldest Italian linguistic journal founded by G.I. Ascoli (1873: > “Archivio Glottologico Italiano”, *AGI*), I was faced many times with the > language choice problem. I would like to make some comments. > > I think that between “defeatists” and “romantics” (Martin’s dichotomy) > there is a third way. Linguists should care not only for the international > readers’ community but also for the ‘local’ readers who might not be > interested in general, theoretical problems, but are strongly concerned for > their own language and eager to know more about its history and perhaps > also about its future. There exist journals which are dedicated to > specific areas. Take for instance the Dutch journal “Taal en Tongval” : we > read on the cover sheet: < devoted to the scientific study of language variation in the Netherlands > and Flanders, in neighbouring areas and in languages related to Dutch. The > journal welcomes contributions in Dutch, English and German. In certain > cases we also consider articles in other languages, including Frisian, > Afrikaans and French.>>. Similarly, it would make little sense to ask > perspective contributors to the “Rivista di Dialettologia Italiana” to use > English (unless an article would deal with general problems concerning > what’s a dialect and what does it mean for a dialectologist to write a > grammar of a dialect). Admittedly, this is pure *Eurocentrism* (as > Claire Bowern underlines); but we are the heirs of a long standing > tradition which deserves to be kept. Why to re-baptize the glorious Norsk > tidsskrift for sprogvidenskap as “Norwegian Journal of Linguistics”? Even > keeping the traditional “*NTS*” name would it be possible to accept > English written papers --perhaps the majority of them, if the Authors > prefer to write in English or ‘Globish’. > > > > Peter Austin is absolutely right when he writes that there are hundreds > of excellent research papers in linguistics and related fields published > annually in languages like Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which > never pierces the consciousness of English-only researchers because of > attitudes like having language hierarchies composed entirely of European > languages (see also B.Hurch’s mail). Moreover. I agree with Martin when > he writes that along with the traditional Eurocentrism it’s also > ethnocentric to only cite work by American linguists and somehow assume > that there is nothing else of relevance. > > > > On the other hand it is true, as Guillaume says, that young linguists are > not competitive if they don’t publish in ‘Globish’. Remember the amusing > anecdote told by Nigel who, on the occasion of an international conference > on Italian linguistics, was asked to held his plenary lecture in Italian > since most of the native speakers had chosen to give their papers in > English! (It’s amusing, but not so fun!...). > > > > The solution is to *leave the choice to the Author* of the article > submitted to the journal, as, e.g., *Diachronica* does. This is the > liberal policy we have adopted for *AGI. * > > But this is not the policy of the big publishing houses. I remember the > long discussion we had with the publisher in order to have one volume of > the EUROTYP-series published in French: *Actance et Valence dans les > langues de l’Europe *(in a similar vein Nigel tells us of a special issue > of 'Transactions of the Philological Society': he and Frans Plank have > been able to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be > published in French !). Whether you like it or not, this is the situation > you have to live with. > > My conclusion: one has to have ’mixed (and at the same time liberal) > feelings’ : > > 1. ’Defeatism’: Globish (i.e. an English variety avoiding dialectal, > non-transparent idiomatic expressions, using short sentences, etc.: see Ilja > Seržant) is the international unavoidable language linguists and other > scientists have to use when dealing with general problems which may be > relevant for a large international audience. (Obviously, this does not > impinge upon the possibility of having valuable English written > contributions on Mòcheno, a Bavarian dialect spoken in Trentino -- > Fersentalerisch ! Once more: the language choice is a matter of the Author, > who shouldn’t be compelled to use Globish) > > 2. On the other hand, just as Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese > linguists have their own journals dedicated to the many languages spoken in > their own areas, we –I mean the European linguists—have to keep alive a > tradition of studies using our mother tongues : a ’romantic’ position, in > Martin’s terms. > > Best, > > Paolo > > > > > > Università di Pavia (retired) > > IUSS Pavia (retired) > > Editor-in-Chief of “Archivio Glottologico Italiano” > > Accademia dei Lincei, Socio corrispondente > > Academia Europaea > > Societas Linguistica Europaea, Honorary Member > > > > Home address: > > Piazzetta Arduino 11 > > I-27100 PAVIA > > ##39 0382 27027 ##39 347 044 9844 > > > > > ------------------------------ > [image: Avast logo] > > Questa e-mail è stata controllata per individuare virus con Avast > antivirus. > www.avast.com > > <#m_-2072160162676558545_DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2> > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stela.manova at univie.ac.at Mon Jun 29 03:15:11 2020 From: stela.manova at univie.ac.at (Stela Manova) Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2020 09:15:11 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] CFP: Dissecting morphological theory: Diminutivization in root-, stem- and word-based morphology Message-ID: <743CFC18-D83A-47AC-820C-7B73E1F526DA@univie.ac.at> Dissecting morphological theory: Diminutivization in root-, stem- and word-based morphology Proposal for a workshop to be held during the 46. Austrian Linguistics Conference , Vienna, 4-6 December 2020 Workshop website: https://sites.google.com/view/morphologytheories-diminutives Organizers: Stela Manova , Boban Arsenijević , Laura Grestenberger , Katharina Korecky-Kröll Call for papers This workshop scrutinizes and compares theoretical assumptions in morphology. Diminutivization serves as a testing ground. The goal is to bring together scholars working within different theoretical frameworks as well as computational and experimental morphologists. Invited speaker: Professor Emeritus Wolfgang U. Dressler (University of Vienna), unconfirmed. Diminutive morphology presents a number of theoretical challenges. Just a few issues illustrated primarily with organizers’ research: Diminutive affixes if attached to nouns denoting persons do not derive diminutives (proper), e.g. Russian mamočka ‘mother-DIM, mommy’ does not mean ‘small mother’; thus, some diminutive forms appear closely related to hypocoristics (Dressler & Merlini Barbaresi 1994; Korecky-Kröll & Dressler 2007; Simonović & Arsenijević 2015; Manova et al. 2017). Diminutive affixes can change fundamental properties of nouns such as gender and countability (Manova & Winternitz 2011; Arsenijević 2016); in the verbal domain, diminutive affixes can change the conjugation class and/or valency of the base (Oltra-Massuet & Castroviejo 2014). Unlike diminutive nouns, not all diminutive verbs are derived from verbs (Grestenberger & Kallulli 2019); and “small is many in the event domain” (Tovena 2011). Diminutive affixes can be repeated; all diminutivizers express the same semantics but they do not combine with each other freely (Manova & Winternitz 2011; Merlini Barbaresi 2012). To make theoretical assumptions comparable, we differentiate between composition and decomposition and recognize three types of composition exemplified with the organizations of three theories of morphology: Distributed Morphology (DM), Paradigm Function Morphology (PFM) and Natural Morphology (NM) : Root-based: composition in DM (Halle & Marantz 1998, Bobaljik 2017) is of this type, i.e. in a syntax-oriented model such as DM, a derivation takes place step-by-step starting from the root, e.g. from √read. In DM, roots have a special status and are categoriless; the affix attached to the root provides the syntactic category, i.e. affixes are heads. However, recent DM studies (De Belder 2011; Lowenstamm 2015; Creemers et al. 2018) have claimed that some affixes are roots, i.e. categoriless too (on the categorization of diminutive suffixes, Grestenberger & Kallulli 2019). Stem-based: PFM (Stump 2001) links words in slots of inflectional paradigms but derives those words stem-based. Stump (2016) speaks of content paradigm, form paradigm and realized paradigm; the composition of a word form takes place in the form paradigm and starts from a stem (e.g. read; Latin hortā-, from hortor ‘encourage’) to which then pieces of word structure without semantics (PFM is a-morphous) are attached by rules of exponence. The prototypical stem has the shape of [root + morpheme]. Similar to roots, stems may be categoriless, i.e. morphomes (Aronoff 1994). Morphomes are not associated with specific semantics, cannot be derived syntactically and are evidence for the existence of morphology by itself, i.e. against DM where morphology is distributed between syntax and phonology. Nevertheless, recent DM studies seem to use morphomes: combinations of categoriless roots and categoriless affixes (mentioned in 1) are morphomic stems in a stem-based analysis. Word-based: NM (Dressler et al. 1987) is morphology by itself, functionalist and cognitively oriented, and allows for root-, stem- and word-based composition. Since words have a primary role in discourse, word-based morphology is seen as the most natural, root-based morphology being the least natural, i.e. if a root or a stem coincides with a word (e.g. read), the base is classified as a word. With respect to decomposition, all three theories agree that people communicate with words and that the latter have internal structure, i.e. decomposition seems exclusively word-based. Recent DM-related neurolinguistic research has provided experimental evidence for this assumption: speakers decompose the (visual) stimulus (e.g. teacher) into morphemes, look these up in the mental lexicon, and recombine them (Fruchter et al. 2013; Fruchter & Marantz 2015). It has to be mentioned herein that PFM and NM have not explicitly addressed decomposition. Additionally, in PFM composition is exclusively related to form (a-morphous production of forms); in NM composition involves meaning and form (NM morphemes relate meaning and form); and in DM composition refers to meaning (DM morphemes are abstract and correspond to syntactic terminal nodes), while decomposition involves form and meaning (visual stimuli such as teacher are well-formed words and thus have meaning). On the relation of meaning and form in morphology, see Manova et al. (2020). Finally, regarding the organization of morphology, i.e. the derivation-inflection divide: in DM, there is no principal difference between derivational and inflectional affixes, i.e. both types of affixes can serve as heads; note, however, that the recent claim that some affixes are roots (references in 1) holds only for derivational affixes; PFM has been explicitly defined as a theory of inflectional morphology (Stump 2001) but paradigms have been postulated for derivational morphology as well (Bonami & Strnadová 2019 and references therein); in NM derivation and inflection are the two poles of a continuum and there are thus prototypical and non-prototypical derivation and inflection (Dressler 1989), diminutivization of nouns being an example of non-prototypical derivation, i.e. between derivation and inflection but on the derivational side (Dressler & Korecky-Kröll 2015). We invite papers that, based on diminutives, discuss the (dis)advantages of a single theoretical framework or different theories comparatively. Papers that profit from a mix of theories are also welcome. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: Diminutivization of major word classes Diminutivization and non-major word classes Diminutivization and the derivation-inflection divide Gender, animacy, countability and diminutivization of nouns Aspect, pluractionality and diminutivization of verbs Diminutives versus hypocoristics Diminutivization of diminutives Acquisition of diminutive morphology Diachrony of diminutive morphology Diminutive morphology in language contact Sociolinguistic variation of diminutive morphology Experimental and computational evidence versus theoretical assumptions We plan a publication of a selection of the workshop papers. Important dates Deadline for abstract registration: 27 July 2020 (this is for organizational purposes, required are the title of the abstract and a few keywords) Deadline for abstract submission: 15 September 2020 Acceptance notifications: 1 October 2020 Workshop: 4-6 December 2020 (please note that the workshop may be moved to an online format) Abstract registration / submission Please use the following link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=dmtd2020 . Abstract format: anonymous PDF, max. 500 words (examples and references do not count), single spaced, justified alignment. Selected references Aronoff, Mark (1994). Morphology by Itself. Cambridge, Ma: MIT Press. Arsenijević, Boban (2016). Gender, like classifiers, marks uniform atomicity: Evidence from Serbo-Croatian. CLS (Chicago Linguistic Society) 52, University of Chicago, 21-23. 4. 2016. Belder, Marijke De (2011). Roots and affixes, eliminating lexical categories from syntax. PhD diss., Utrecht University. Bobaljik, Jonathan (2017). Distributed Morphology. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Retrieved 17 Jun. 2020, from https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-131 . Bonami, Olivier & Jana Strnadová (2019). Paradigm structure and predictability in derivational morphology. Morphology 29(2): 167–197. Creemers, Ava., Jan Don & Paula Fenger (2018). Some affixes are roots, others are heads. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 36: 45–84. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-017-9372-1 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1989). Prototypical differences between inflection and derivation. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 42: 3-10. Dressler,Wolfgang U., Willi Mayerthaler, Oswald Panagl & Wolfgang U. Wurzel (1987). Leitmotifs in Natural Morphology. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Lavinia Merlini Barbaresi (1994). Morphopragmatics: diminutives and intensifiers in Italian, German, and other languages. Berlin: de Gruyter. Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Katharina Korecky-Kröll (2015). Evaluative morphology and language acquisition. In Nicola Grandi & Livia Körtvélyessy (eds.). Edinburgh Handbook of Evaluative Morphology, 134-141. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Fruchter, Joseph & Alec Marantz (2015). Decomposition, lookup, and recombination: MEG evidence for the Full Decomposition model of complex visual word recognition. Brain and Language 143: 81–96. Fruchter, Joseph, Linnaea Stockall & Alec Marantz (2013). MEG masked priming evidence for form-based decomposition of irregular verbs. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7: 1–16. Grestenberger, Laura & Dalina Kallulli (2019). The largesse of diminutives: suppressing the projection of roots. In M. Baird & J. Pesetsky (eds.), Proceedings of NELS 49, Cornell University, Oct. 5-7, 2018, vol. 2, 61–74. Amherst: GLSA. Available at: https://lauragrestenberger.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/grestenberger_kallulli_diminutives.pdf Halle, Morris & Alec Marantz (1993). Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection. In Kenneth Hale & Samuel Jay Keyser (eds.), The view from building 20, 111–176. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Korecky-Kröll, Katharina & Wolfgang U. Dressler (2007). Diminutives and hypocoristics in Austrian German (AG). In Ineta Savickienė & Wolfgang U. Dressler. eds. The acquisition of diminutives. A cross-linguistic perspective, 207-230. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Lowenstamm, Jean (2015). Derivational affixes as roots: Phasal spell-out meets English stress shift. In Artemis Alexiadou, Hagit Borer & Florian Schäfer (eds.) The syntax of roots and the roots of syntax, 230–259. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Manova, Stela & Kimberley Winternitz (2011). Suffix order in double and multiple diminutives: with data from Polish and Bulgarian. Studies in Polish Linguistics 6: 115-138. URL: http://www.ejournals.eu/SPL/2011/SPL-vol-6-2011/art/1169/ Manova, Stela, Dušan Ptáček & Renáta Gregová (2017). Second-grade diminutives in Czech and Slovak: A contrastive study with data from corpora. In Luka Repanšek & Matej Šekli (eds.). 12. letno srečanje Združenja za slovansko jezikoslovje / 12th Slavic Linguistics Society Annual Meeting / XII ежегодная конференция Общества славянского языкознания. Ljubljana, Slovenia, Sept. 21-24. Založba ZRC, Inštitut za slovenski jezik Frana Ramovša, pp. 121-122. ISBN 978-961-05-0027-8. Manova, Stela, Harald Hammarström, Itamar Kastner & Yining Nie (2020). What is in a morpheme? Theoretical, experimental and computational approaches to the relation of meaning and form in morphology. Word Structure 13(1): 1-21. Merlini Barbaresi, Lavinia (2012). Combinatorial patterns among Italian evaluative affixes. SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics 9(1): 2-14. URL: http://www.skase.sk/Volumes/JTL20/pdf_doc/1.pdf Oltra-Massuet, Isabel & Elena Castroviejo (2014). A syntactic approach to the morpho-semantic variation of -ear. Lingua 151: 120-41. Simonović, Marko & Boban Arsenijević (2015). Just small or small and related: On two kinds of diminutives in Serbo-Croatian. Presented at TIN-dag, 7 February 2015, Utrecht: https://www.academia.edu/10675378/Just_small_or_small_and_related_On_two_kinds_of_diminutives_in_Serbo-Croatian Stump, Gregory T. (2001). Inflectional morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stump, Gregory T. (2016) Inflectional paradigms: content and form at the syntax-morphology interface. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tovena, Lucia M.. (2011). When Small Is Many in the Event Domain. Lexis [Online] 6: 41-58, URL : http://journals.openedition.org/lexis/414 ; DOI: 10.4000/lexis.414. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From diana.forker at uni-jena.de Mon Jun 29 03:23:24 2020 From: diana.forker at uni-jena.de (Diana Forker) Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2020 09:23:24 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Two doctoral fellowships in linguistics at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena Message-ID: <20200629092324.Horde.xXKpn1YsnnspGbMuZRGBXNN@webmail.uni-jena.de> Two doctoral fellowships in linguistics at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena 1. Fellowship The interdisciplinary research project "Global knowledge transfer and translocal paradoxes" at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena invites applications for a doctoral fellowship (3 years). The doctoral fellow is expected to make a significant contribution to the research programme of the centre as specified below, and to write a dissertation on a relevant topic. The linguistic subproject on "Transfer of linguistic technologies and resources" focuses on the transfer from high resource languages to low resource languages. This concerns the creation of linguistic corpora of smaller national languages using computer-aided methods (e.g. automated structural and semantic annotations, automatic translation), e.g. in the context of political discourse. In cooperation with other sub-projects, interdisciplinary, comparative corpus-based case studies on topics such as "digitalization", "freedom" or "pandemic management" will be carried out, for instance using topic modeling and sentiment analysis. Tasks and deliverables: * PhD dissertation * creation of annotated corpora of low resource languages * training of annotation and translation models for these languages * interdisciplinary case studies on topics that are of interest to the research centre * participation in the preparation of funding applications Requirements: * degree in general or computational linguistics, or the linguistics of a specific language * experience with work on multilingual corpora (annotation and analysis) * experience with word embeddings * experience with semantic text modeling (e.g. topic modeling, sentiment analysis) * solid knowledge of at least one programming language (e.g. Java, Python, R) * experience with version control systems * interest in research data management (e.g. reproducibility, FAIRness) Applications should include a CV, a sample of written work, an exposé for a PhD project and (optionally) letters of reference. Please send your applications by email to susanne.buechner at uni-jena.de. The deadline is July, 20, 2020. If you have any questions concerning the application, please get in touch with diana.forker at uni-jena.de or volker.gast at uni-jena.de Project summary: "Global knowledge transfer and translocal paradoxes" Globalisation is generally seen as both a cause and a consequence of increasing spatial mobility. This mobility involves various forms of transfer: the transfer of knowledge and norms in socio-cultural life as well as science and technology. The aim of the project is to analyse such global exchange processes. It will examine their conditions and consequences as well as the actors involved, in current and historical terms, from a conceptual and empirical perspective. The main focus is on the manifold tensions and paradoxes associated with cultural and regional differentiation on the one hand, and global connectedness on the other. Two types of paradoxes will figure centrally: (i) those that arise as a result of the (often asymmetrical) exchange processes between regional and cultural spaces; and (ii) those that arise within such spaces or societies as a result of said processes. * * * 2. Fellowship The interdisciplinary research project "Spheres of liberty and the protection of freedom in the European state" at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena invites applications for a doctoral fellowship (3 years). The doctoral fellow is expected to make a significant contribution to the research programme of the centre as specified below, and to write a dissertation on a relevant topic. The linguistic sub-project on "The blessings and curses of the digital era" investigates public discourse centering around attitudes towards digitalization and its relation to personal and political freedom. The studies will be corpus-based, e.g. using multilingual parliamentary corpora of European languages (https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/L4OAKN) and possibly additional newspaper and Twitter corpora. Tasks and deliverables: * PhD dissertation * creation of annotated parliamentary corpora * interdisciplinary case studies on the relationship between digitalization and freedom * participation in the preparation of funding applications Requirements: * degree in general linguistics, or the linguistics of a specific language * experience with work on multilingual corpora * solid knowledge of statistical methods of corpus analysis * interest in research data management Applications should include a CV, a sample of written work, an exposé for a PhD project and (optionally) letters of reference. Please send your applications by email to susanne.buechner at uni-jena.de. The deadline is July, 20, 2020. If you have any questions concerning the application, please get in touch with diana.forker at uni-jena.de or volker.gast at uni-jena.de Project summary: "Spheres of liberty and the protection of freedom in the European state" While the long-term consequences of the digital revolution are not yet fully understood, there is no doubt that modern societies face several political, economic and social challenges coming with technological progress in the domain of artificial intelligence. This concerns, among other things, the operation of the state under conditions of digitalization. On the one hand, the state is challenged by globally operating IT companies, resulting in significant enforcement deficits. On the other hand, the use of artificial intelligence enables the state to exercise control over citizens and companies. The project deals with these challenges from a legal, sociological and economic point of view, in several interconnected sub-projects from various fields. -- Prof. Dr. Diana Forker Professur für Kaukasusstudien Institut für Slawistik und Kaukasusstudien Jenergasse 8 (Acchouchierhaus) 07743 Jena Tel. +49-3641-944885 From skung at austin.utexas.edu Tue Jun 2 02:46:13 2020 From: skung at austin.utexas.edu (Kung, Susan S) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 02:46:13 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] DELAMAN Award: Nomination Deadline Extended to 15 July 2020 Message-ID: The deadline for nominations for the DELAMAN Award has been extended to 15 July 2020. The winner will be announced on 15 October 2020, and the award will be presented virtually at the 7th International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation (ICLDC 7) in March 2021. The call and nomination form for the DELAMAN Award are found at http://www.delaman.org/delaman-award/ The DELAMAN Award recognizes and honours early-career documenters who have done outstanding documentary work in creating a rich multimedia documentary collection of a particular language that is endangered or no longer spoken. ?Early-career? is defined as (a) university-based documenters with a PhD awarded 01 January 2015 or later; or (b) non-university-based documenters who have been employed by or affiliated with a language-community based project since no earlier than 01 January 2015. If an entire team of documenters is nominated, all nominees must meet this definition of ?early-career.? Self-nomination is permitted and encouraged. The award consists of a payment of $500 USD from DELAMAN, as well as an automatic slot for a 20-minute presentation at the 7th International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation and a $500 USD honorarium (subject to US taxation) from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa upon completion of the presentation. To be eligible, the language documentation collection must be archived and made accessible in a DELAMAN archive (with no or only minimal access restrictions), and it must provide rich audio and video documentation, keywords, comprehensive metadata, and explanatory material or guides, as well as transcription, translation and annotation of a subset of the AV collection. Nominations should include the following: -Name and email address of the nominee (i.e., the collector); -Name and email address of the nominator (if different from the nominee); -Name of the DELAMAN archive where the collection is located; -Link to the collection (URL, DOI or other persistent identifier); -Language(s) documented in the collection (including ISO 639-3 codes); -A brief description (< 500 words) of the contents / coverage of the collection, including types of documentation; genres; size of collection (hours/minutes of audio video); amount (hours/minutes) and level of transcription, translation & annotation; -If the collection is part of a larger group project, clearly indicate which part of the collection was created by the nominee (< 250 words); -An explanation (< 500 words) of the significance of the collection, identifying what makes the collection an outstanding example of an archival endangered language collection; -CV of the nominee. If awarded, the Awardee commits to writing a guide to the collection, to be published in Language Documentation & Conservation, following examples such as Franjieh (2019), Caballero (2017), and Salffner (2015). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ajrtallman at utexas.edu Wed Jun 3 10:06:58 2020 From: ajrtallman at utexas.edu (Adam James Ross Tallman) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2020 12:06:58 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic structure Message-ID: Hello all, I've been doing a lit. review (again) in prosodic phonology. Advocates of the prosodic hierarchy claim that prosodic levels map from specific morphosyntactic constituents like 'words' or 'phrases' or X0 and XP etc. However, I have been unable to find a single example of a paper that relates its analysis to the prosodic hierarchy that actually provides evidence for or defines the morphosyntactic categories that the prosodic domains relate to in the language under study. Of course, the fact that no evidence or definitions for X0 / XP and the like are provided does not mean there is no evidence - but the "phonology evidence only please" character of the literature makes it very difficult to come up with global assessment of how the quest for mapping rules has faired (the discussion in Scheer 2010 suggests it has been a total failure) or to distill some sort of testable hypothesis from the literature. I'm wondering if anyone has any examples at hand where such categories are provided with explicit empirical definitions. Perhaps this is just an oversight on my part. best, Adam -- Adam J.R. Tallman PhD, University of Texas at Austin Investigador del Museo de Etnograf?a y Folklore, la Paz ELDP -- Postdoctorante CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From khaude at uni-koeln.de Mon Jun 8 10:11:20 2020 From: khaude at uni-koeln.de (khaude at uni-koeln.de) Date: Mon, 08 Jun 2020 12:11:20 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] FieldLing Paris, Sep 7-11, 2020: extended registration deadline (14 June) In-Reply-To: <20200409145142.Horde.qHro6zjm_-1CMvhyzNH8dwe@webmail.uni-koeln.de> References: <20200219084949.Horde.ukeAKOIF4voj0vMBe_BHSCl@webmail.uni-koeln.de> <20200409145142.Horde.qHro6zjm_-1CMvhyzNH8dwe@webmail.uni-koeln.de> Message-ID: <20200608121120.Horde.S9jXi0HtFdhR_RwCkiaL9ye@webmail.uni-koeln.de> Cher.e.s coll?gues, cher.e.s ?tudiant.e.s, La pand?mie ?tant en apparente r?gression en Europe, nous sommes optimistes qu'il sera possible de maintenir l'?cole d'?t? FieldLing en 2020 (voir ci-dessous pour l'annonce initiale). Nous prendros les pr?cautions sanitaires (r?gles de distance, masques) n?cessaires pour l??v?nement en fonction des circonstances et les niveaux de restriction ? ce moment-l?. La date limite pour les inscriptions a ?t? repouss?e une derni?rne fois au 14 juin 2020 (minuit MET). ================= La 12e ?dition de FieldLing (s?minaire d'initiation ? la linguistique de terrain), organis? par le LLACAN (UMR 8135), le SeDyL (UMR8202) et le LACITO (UMR 7107) aura lieu du 7 au 11 septembre 2020 sur le campus du CNRS de Villejuif. FieldLing est une introduction ? la recherche linguistique sur le terrain. Il s'adresse en priorit? aux ?tudiant(e)s M2 et aux doctorant(e)s en linguistique g?n?rale, mais il peut ?galement ?tre int?ressant pour les ?tudiant(e)s d'anthropologie envisageant du travail sur le terrain. Le cas ?ch?ant, des M1 en faisant la demande peuvent aussi ?tre accueillis en fonction des places disponibles. Le s?minaire est homologu? par l'INALCO et Paris 3. Au programme 2020, des sessions de formation pour la linguistique g?n?rale (e.g., morphosyntaxe, typologie), la pr?paration au terrain (e.g., stimuli, enregistrement), le terrain lui-m?me (travaux pratiques avec des locuteurs de langues diff?rentes) et la structuration des donn?es (e.g., comment ?crire un dictionnaire ou une grammaire). Pour plus d'informations, voir le site web de la formation au https://fieldling.sciencesconf.org/ (le site web sera compl?t? au fur et ? mesure pendant les mois qui viennent, connectez-vous r?guli?rement au site pour suivre les mises ? jour). Les langues employe?s durant la formation sont le fran?ais et l'anglais. Il est recommend? d'avoir des capacit?s linguistiques dans les deux langues. =============================== Cordialement, Le comit? d'organisation Katharina Haude - SEDYL Nicolas Quint - LLACAN Lameen Souag - LACITO Marc Tang - DDL *********************************************************** Dear colleagues, dear students, As the pandemic situation seems to be in regression in Europe, we are optimistic that FieldLing 2020 can take place in September (see the original announcement below). We will take care of the sanitary safety measures (distancing, masks) that are necessary and required at that date. The deadline for registration has been extended for the last time until June 14th, 2020 (midnight MET). ================== The 12th edition of FieldLing, jointly organized by the research labs LLACAN , SeDyL, and LACITO, will take place on September 7th-11th, 2020, on the CNRS campus at Villejuif, near Paris. FieldLing is an introduction to linguistic fieldwork. It aims primarily at Master and doctoral students in General Linguistics, but may also be interesting to students in anthropology and other social sciences planning to do fieldwork. Fieldling is included in the studies program of INALCO and Paris 3. As in previous years, the programme of 2020 will include training sessions on general linguistics (e.g., morphosyntax and typology), fieldwork preparation (e.g., stimuli and recording), fieldwork itself (practice sessions with native speakers of different languages), and data structuring (e.g., how to write a dictionary or a grammar). Please refer to our official website for additional information: https://fieldling.sciencesconf.org/. The website will be updated regularly, so please follow our latest news on it. The languages of the summer school are English and French. Knowledge of both languages is recommended. ============================== Kind regards The organizing committee Katharina Haude - SEDYL Nicolas Quint - LLACAN Lameen Souag - LACITO Marc Tang- DDL From viviana.masia at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 09:27:37 2020 From: viviana.masia at gmail.com (Viviana Masia) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 11:27:37 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Workshop on The Pragmatics of Evidentiality to be held in Venice - postponed dates Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, I would like to share the following conference call with anyone who might be interested in the topic: https://linguistlist.org/issues/31/31-1648.html Please, note that - for those who might have problems travelling to Italy due to the COVD-19 emergency - also virtual presentations are warmly welcome! Thank you very much and kind regards, *Viviana Masia* Research Fellow University of Roma Tre -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Martine.VANHOVE at cnrs.fr Wed Jun 10 06:52:02 2020 From: Martine.VANHOVE at cnrs.fr (VANHOVE Martine) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 06:52:02 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] TR : Query: modality, copulas and possessive pronouns In-Reply-To: <980C9982DFDA214C844467E99B8EBC7B682F4243@CNREXCMBX08P.core-res.rootcore.local> References: <980C9982DFDA214C844467E99B8EBC7B682F4243@CNREXCMBX08P.core-res.rootcore.local> Message-ID: <980C9982DFDA214C844467E99B8EBC7B682F4B7D@CNREXCMBX08P.core-res.rootcore.local> Dear all, I hope this message finds you all well. I am currently working on modality in Beja (Cushitic) which shows two intriguing (at least for me) morpho-syntactic features, and I am wondering whether they occur in other languages as well (so far I have not seen anything like this in the literature on modality, but I may have overlooked something). The first feature is the cliticization of nominative POSSESSIVE bound pronouns (NOT the usual OBJECT pronouns) to finite verb forms to either (i) mark the protatis of a conditional clause as in example (1) wit the Aorist paradigm: (1) w=ha?wa?d j?-i=ju?k maj?a rhatnija def.sg.m=night come-aor.3sg.m=poss.2sg.nom light see-ipfv.2sg.m ?If night falls upon you, you'll see a light.? (bej_mv_narr_05_eritrea_111-112) or (ii) a deontic modality of capacity as in example (2) with the negative Optative paradigm: (2) o?=k?ha?n i=ba=a-hass-aj=u?k def.sg.m.acc=flood rel.m=opt=1sg-pass-neg.opt=poss.2sg.nom i-sanni=ho?k-a 3sg.m-wait\ipfv=obj.2sg-adrf.m ?May you find the flooding river that can prevent you from crossing!? (lit. the flood that (says) ?I won?t let you pass? is waiting) (bej_mv_narr_12_witch_133-134) The second feature concerns the citicization of the nominal copula to finite or non-finite verb forms, not for the expression of focus as I first thought, but to express epistemic and deontic modalities as in (3) and (4) (with a simultaneity converb): (3) diw-i?ni winne?t sa?lhi tak si?le?l=i?b sleep-IPFV.3SG.M plenty noble_man man prayer=LOC.SG g?ada-am-i=b=u=it splash-MID-AOR.3SG.M=INDF.M.ACC=COP.3SG=CSL ?He slept, since he was a very noble man who would perform his ablutions before praying.? (BEJ_MV_NARR_17_shoemaker_094-096) (1) do?r han na?=t ba?=?u?m-e?=ji time also thing=INDF.F NEG.PROH=go_in-CVB.SMLT=COP.3SG ?without even anything being able to go in, this time (?)? (BEJ_MV_NARR_17_shoemaker_191) Thanks a lot in advance for your help! Best wishes and keep safe! Martine -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mcdonn at hawaii.edu Fri Jun 12 01:48:08 2020 From: mcdonn at hawaii.edu (Bradley McDonnell) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2020 15:48:08 -1000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Call for Proposals: 7th International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation (ICLDC 7) Message-ID: (Apologies for cross-posting) Recognizing RelationshipsThe 7th International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation (ICLDC)University of Hawai?i at M?noaMarch 4-7, 2021 COVID-19 Statement Due to COVID-19, ICLDC 2021 will be held virtually. The ICLDC 7 organizers are excited about this year?s theme, and the possibilities for broad international discussion that an online conference can offer. We are currently investigating what technologies we will use and how the conference will take shape and how we can accommodate time zone differences for presenters, as well as family and work obligations. We look forward to your participation. Please ?join? us! Conference Theme: Recognizing Relationships There are many critical challenges that endangered language documentation and conservation faces, some of which seem insurmountable, and despite linguists? best efforts, many of the proposed solutions fall short. These challenges have been apparent to many communities, language activists and academic linguists since (or even before) the earliest public warnings of the ?endangered language crisis? in the early 1990?s, and recognition of the great number of large-scale challenges has only become more apparent since. One reason that many of the current solutions have not reached the level of success to which they have aspired is that the need to identify and/or foster relationships is often minimized or even ignored completely. Identifying and fostering relationships by taking the time to build understanding between stakeholders, learning about needs and skills that can be offered, and developing shared goals and outcomes are central to sustainable solutions for language documentation and conservation. These relationships go beyond those between communities and linguists and extend to multi-party relationships among linguists, communities, other academic fields, governmental and non-governmental organizations, educational and funding agencies, and many other individuals invested in the future of the language. There are also important intra-group relationships within these stakeholding groups (e.g., between members of an Indigenous community, or language workers documenting signed languages and those documenting spoken languages) as well as inter-group relationships between different Indigenous communities. At ICLDC 2021 we propose to initiate a dialogue on how recognizing relationships can help overcome the many critical challenges in language documentation and language reclamation. We believe that this focus will lead to improved connections among academic linguists, various communities, researchers from other disciplines, educational practitioners, and many other stakeholders. We specifically aim to draw attention to the transformative power of recognizing relationships to overcome critical challenges. Submission Guidelines We have two calls for proposals with four different presentation formats. In the General Session, we have regular paper presentations and posters. We also have Workshop and Talk Story session proposals, which are due two months earlier than the General Session proposals. For more information on the requirements for each presentation type and their proposal submission form, please see the Call for Proposals section of our conference website . Timeline - June 2020: Call for Proposals announced - August 1, 2020: Proposals for Workshops and Talk Story Sessions deadline - September 1, 2020: Notification of acceptance to Workshops and Talk Story sessions - September 30, 2020: Proposal deadline for general papers and posters - November 1, 2020: Notification of acceptance for general papers and posters - November 1, 2020: Early registration opens - January 31, 2021: Early registration deadline; late registration opens February 1 - March 4 ? March 7, 2021: 7th ICLDC Executive Committee - Bradley McDonnell , University of Hawai?i at M?noa - Andrea Berez-Kroeker , University of Hawai?i at M?noa - Ha?alilio Williams-Solomon, University of Hawai?i at M?noa - Jim Yoshioka , National Foreign Language Resource Center ContactAll questions about submissions should be emailed to icldc at hawaii.edu -- Bradley McDonnell Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of Hawai'i at M?noa Book Review Editor, Language Documentation & Conservation Organizer, International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation 2021 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From john at mccr.ae Sat Jun 13 07:00:00 2020 From: john at mccr.ae (John P. McCrae) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2020 08:00:00 +0100 Subject: [Lingtyp] Call for Participation: LDL-2020 Online Workshop Message-ID: Apologies for cross-posting ------ Due to the global situation and cancellation of the LREC 2020 conference, our workshop, Linked Data in Linguistics will take place virtually on June 22nd and 23rd. The program and details about participation can be found here: http://ldl2020.linguistic-lod.org/program.html soon. Meanwhile, the proceedings are already published on the LREC website: https://lrec2020.lrec-conf.org/en/workshops-and-tutorials/2020-workshops/ In order to participate in the workshop, please register in advance, a link to a registration form can be found here: https://forms.gle/cK8TqpiqDBEWQRk7A Information about the workshop: Since its establishment in 2012, the Linked Data in Linguistics (LDL) workshop series has become the major forum for presenting, discussing and disseminating technologies, vocabularies, resources and experiences regarding the application of semantic technologies and the Linked Open Data (LOD) paradigm to language resources in order to facilitate their visibility, accessibility, interoperability, reusability, enrichment, combined evaluation and integration. The LDL workshop series is organized by the Open Linguistics Working Group of the Open Knowledge Foundation and has contributed greatly to the emergence and growth of the Linguistic Linked Open Data (LLOD) cloud. LDL workshops contribute to the discussion, dissemination and establishment of community standards that drive this development, most notably the OntoLex-lemon model for lexical resources, as well as standards for other types of language resources still under development. Past years have seen a growing interest in the application of knowledge graphs and Semantic Web technologies to language resources, and their publication as linked data on the Web. As of today, a large number of language resources were either converted or created natively as linked data on the basis of data models specifically designed for the representation of linguistic content. Examples are wordnets, dictionaries, corpora ? research papers describing the creation of these resources were presented at the previous editions of both LREC and LDL. At the same time, the growth of the LLOD cloud is far from over: new use-cases call for new data models and new resources to be created or converted. However, even though a critical mass of LLOD is already in place, there is still a pressing need for a robust ecosystem of tools that consume linguistic linked data. Recently started research networks and European projects, such as NexusLinguarum, ELEXIS, and Pr?t-?-LLOD are working in the direction of building sustainable infrastructures around LRs, with linked data as one of the core technologies. By collocating the 7th edition of the workshop series with LREC, we encourage this interdisciplinary community to participate in the dialogue on these issues, to present and to discuss use cases, experiences, best practices, recommendations and technologies among each other and in interaction with the language resource community. The LDL workshop series has a general focus on LOD-based resources, vocabularies, infrastructures and technologies as means for managing, improving and using language resources on the Web. As technology and resources increasingly converge towards a LOD-based ecosystem, we particularly encourage submissions on Linked-Data Aware Tools and Services and Linked Language Resources Infrastructure, i.e. managing, curating and applying LLOD technologies and resources in a reliable and reproducible way for the needs of linguistics, NLP and digital humanities. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jb77 at buffalo.edu Tue Jun 16 01:48:08 2020 From: jb77 at buffalo.edu (Bohnemeyer, Juergen) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 01:48:08 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Message-ID: Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) From christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de Tue Jun 16 10:41:08 2020 From: christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de (Christian Lehmann) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 12:41:08 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> Dear J?rgen, the development of the definite article in Ancient Greek, which you mention, is probably a case in point. The development of a conditional form in the conjugation of Romance languages may be another. Numeral classifiers are apparently an innovation of the Viceitic and Naso branches of Chibcha, although this is not historically documented. Most of the aspectual auxiliaries found in the Mayan languages are produced in post-Proto-Mayan times in one or another of the branches. There was certainly contact among them both with respect to the idea of an aspectual auxiliary and with respect to one or another of the specific aspect features coded. Nevertheless, the latter do not coincide among the Mayan languages. For instance, the Yucatec predictive future seems to be an independent innovation (although I may be mistaken about this). Just a short comment on your generalization: The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. A more general (and rather defeatist) version of your hypothesis would be: Grammatical formatives and constructions contribute to structuring the message, thus enhancing expectability in it. This supports communication in general (Talmy Giv?n has been preaching this for decades); and to this extent, it is of secondary importance just which semantic features are coded by grammatical formatives, or which grammatical categories a language possesses. Best, Christian -- Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann Rudolfstr. 4 99092 Erfurt Deutschland Tel.: +49/361/2113417 E-Post: christianw_lehmann at arcor.de Web: https://www.christianlehmann.eu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hartmut at ruc.dk Tue Jun 16 12:28:34 2020 From: hartmut at ruc.dk (Hartmut Haberland) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 12:28:34 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813B4FE5@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> Dear J?rgen I just sent you a review I co-authored, Rie Obe and Hartmut Haberland 2018. ?Review of Naomi Ogi, Involvement and Attitude in Japanese Discourse: Interactive Markers. Amsterdam: Benjamins." Nordic Journal of Linguistics 41 (1): 117?128. doi:10.1017/S0332586518000045. (I don?t know if it is advisable or even possible to send attachments to the List.) There we refer to a list of properties of modal particles in Russian (Arndt 1960), a list that reminds me much of the way you define functional categories, and even the last point ?are omissible, i.e. convey no element of the objective message (in its factual or cognitive function), but convey the subjective emotional or mental attitude of the speaker to his interlocutor, to the objective message content, or to another element of the linguistic situation (emotive function).? is echoed in your claim that functional categories are redundant. (Arndt rather meant that these particles do not contribute to the (truth-conditional) meaning of an utterance.) So maybe Germanic ?dialogical particles? and East Asian ?interactive markers? belong to the elements you are looking for? English lacks any of these elements (as we know since Schubiger 1965), in Icelandic they are still normatively ostracized but well documented for on-line for the last over 100 years, so they could be a contact phenomenon (from Danish, maybe via Faroese). All the other Germanic languages have them, so they are a areal phenomenon, but the data for a sub-group in Vladimir Panov 2020. ?The marking of uncontroversial information in Europe: presenting the Enimitive.? Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 52(1): 1-44 https://doi.org/10.1080/03740463.2020.1745618 do not make them likely to be a contact phenomenon (at least direct borrowing is in most cases excluded). (Panov will be on-line in a few days.) For East Asia, interactive markers are an areal phenomenon, but hardly contact-induced (note though that they are much more common in Cantonese than in Putonghua). Lewin 1959 has a lot about the history of the Japanese markers. Bruno Lewin 1959. Abri? der japanischen Grammatik. Wiesbaden: Harassowitz. Hartmut -----Oprindelig meddelelse----- Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af Bohnemeyer, Juergen Sendt: 16. juni 2020 03:48 Til: LINGTYP Emne: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jb77 at buffalo.edu Tue Jun 16 13:44:02 2020 From: jb77 at buffalo.edu (Bohnemeyer, Juergen) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 13:44:02 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> Message-ID: <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> Dear Christian ? Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I?d just like to try a clarification: > On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann wrote: > > > To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. I?m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much inferencing the hearer has to do. Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still facilitates processing by further boosting the predictability of the referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing the gender information is minimal (that?s where grammaticalization comes in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage. Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech communities that get by happily without them), so that can?t be the reason why we grammaticalize them (that?s my thinking, anyway). (As to Giv?n, yes, absolutely, I?m well aware that I?m merely trying to retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of functionalism :-)) Best ? Juergen -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) From oesten at ling.su.se Tue Jun 16 16:25:58 2020 From: oesten at ling.su.se (=?utf-8?B?w5ZzdGVuIERhaGw=?=) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 16:25:58 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> Message-ID: <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> This topic happened to come up in my recent conversation with Martin Haspelmath on his blog (https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361). There are also some references there to earlier literature. I would not bet on the definite article in Ancient Greek as an independent development. After all, definite articles were around in the neighbouring Semitic languages. If the Greeks got their alphabet from the Semitic-speaking peoples, they could also get the article from them, I think. - ?sten -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Fr?n: Lingtyp F?r Bohnemeyer, Juergen Skickat: den 16 juni 2020 15:44 Till: LINGTYP ?mne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Christian ? Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I?d just like to try a clarification: > On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann wrote: > > > To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. I?m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much inferencing the hearer has to do. Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still facilitates processing by further boosting the predictability of the referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing the gender information is minimal (that?s where grammaticalization comes in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage. Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech communities that get by happily without them), so that can?t be the reason why we grammaticalize them (that?s my thinking, anyway). (As to Giv?n, yes, absolutely, I?m well aware that I?m merely trying to retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of functionalism :-)) Best ? Juergen -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp From paolo.ramat at unipv.it Tue Jun 16 16:42:22 2020 From: paolo.ramat at unipv.it (paolo Ramat) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 18:42:22 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> Message-ID: A propos of Dahl's remarks on Greek defin. art. and the Semitic lgs. it might be interesting to have a look at Ignazio *Putzu *& Paolo *Ramat*, *Articles and quantifiers in the Mediterranean languages: a typological-diachronic analysis*, in Walter Bisang (ed.) "Aspects of Typology and Universals", Beihefte zu *STUF* 1, Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2001. prof. dr. Paolo Ramat Universit? di Pavia (retired) Istituto Universitario Studi Superiori (IUSS Pavia) (retired) Accademia dei Lincei, Socio corrispondente 'Academia Europaea' 'Societas Linguistica Europaea', Honorary Member piazzetta Arduino 11 - I 27100 Pavia ##39 0382 27027 347 044 98 44 Mail priva di virus. www.avast.com <#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2> Il giorno mar 16 giu 2020 alle ore 18:26 ?sten Dahl ha scritto: > This topic happened to come up in my recent conversation with Martin > Haspelmath on his blog (https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361). There are also > some references there to earlier literature. > > I would not bet on the definite article in Ancient Greek as an independent > development. After all, definite articles were around in the neighbouring > Semitic languages. If the Greeks got their alphabet from the > Semitic-speaking peoples, they could also get the article from them, I > think. > > - ?sten > > > -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- > Fr?n: Lingtyp F?r Bohnemeyer, > Juergen > Skickat: den 16 juni 2020 15:44 > Till: LINGTYP > ?mne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Christian ? Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much > more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I?d just like to try a > clarification: > > > On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann < > christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> wrote: > > > > > > To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the > sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective > information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there > would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. > > > I?m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely > inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much > inferencing the hearer has to do. > > Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement > morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed > for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still > facilitates processing by further boosting the predictability of the > referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing > the gender information is minimal (that?s where grammaticalization comes > in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage. > > Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense > markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech > communities that get by happily without them), so that can?t be the reason > why we grammaticalize them (that?s my thinking, anyway). > > (As to Giv?n, yes, absolutely, I?m well aware that I?m merely trying to > retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of > functionalism :-)) > > Best ? Juergen > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and > Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. > Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu > 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard > Cohen) > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > Mail priva di virus. www.avast.com <#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From piermarco.bertinetto at sns.it Tue Jun 16 16:46:42 2020 From: piermarco.bertinetto at sns.it (Pier Marco Bertinetto) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 18:46:42 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear J?rgen, in a paper of mine, in which I took as starting point Neele Mueller's dissertation on TAM markers in South American Indigenous Languages, I developed a similar reasoning with respect to the arousal of TAM features in those languages: *PMB* 2014. Tenselessness in Southamerican indigenous languages with focus on Ayoreo (Zamuco), *LIAMES* (*L**?nguas Ind?genas Americanas*) 14. 149-171 (e-ISSN2177-7160). http://revistas.iel.unicamp.br/index.php/liames/article/view/4269 There is evidence that these languages grammaticalized modal/evidential markers first, then aspect, finally markers of temporality. Apparently, with some grammatical categories language users have to decide what should and what shouldn't be explicitly marked. There seems to be a trade-off between how much speakers want to put the burden of inferencing on hearers, and how much they make the hearers' life easier by flagging such grammatical categories. Which indeed shows that their marking is not strictly needed. Best Pier Marco Il giorno mar 16 giu 2020 alle ore 03:48 Bohnemeyer, Juergen < jb77 at buffalo.edu> ha scritto: > Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional > categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? > of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I > propose a more technical definition below. > > Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in which > the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more > members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the > balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former > languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no > obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in > question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based > innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of > functional categories in the absence of contact models.) > > I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not > most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of > definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the > ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation > event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some > of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors > of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what > role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as > Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to > be unclear. > > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of > innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest > here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not > present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > > As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a > superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might > be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical > category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional > combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very > broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of > great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform > in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of > the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every > single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of > quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for > languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential > predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for > universal quantification). > > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly > interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, > and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two > thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My > hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the > communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, > number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in > which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative > intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. > The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently > serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining > feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t > translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively > advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as > negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in > turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in > question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, > and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a > sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies > Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science > University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. > Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu > 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In > (Leonard Cohen) > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -- ========================================================= |||| Pier Marco Bertinetto ------ professore emerito /////// Scuola Normale Superiore ------- p.za dei Cavalieri 7 /////// I-56126 PISA ------- phone: +39 050 509111 /////// ------- HOME /////// via Matteotti 197 ------- I-55049 Viareggio LU /////// phone: +39 0584 652417 ------- cell.: +39 368 3830251 ========================================================= editor of "Italian Journal of Linguistics" webpage "Laboratorio di Linguistica" ========================================================= -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From adamsingerman at uchicago.edu Tue Jun 16 17:22:44 2020 From: adamsingerman at uchicago.edu (Adam Singerman) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 12:22:44 -0500 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear Juergen, Tupar? has resultative and evidential morphology that lacks clear cognates in related languages within the Tup?an family; as far as I know, the closest relatives to Tupar? (Sakurabi?t/Mekens, Akunts?, Makurap, Wayor?) don't have anything comparable. It is probable that this resultative and evidential morphology developed due to multilingual contact but since the other languages from the Rio Branco region (southern Rond?nia, near the Brazil-Bolivia border) are generally quite underdocumented, we can't convincingly point to contact as the explanation. I have an article on this in the July 2019 issue of IJAL (can send you the PDF if you want). All the best, Adam From susanne.michaelis at uni-leipzig.de Tue Jun 16 18:24:43 2020 From: susanne.michaelis at uni-leipzig.de (Susanne Michaelis) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 20:24:43 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1b015106-b09e-5b96-f2b8-76d4389bd06f@uni-leipzig.de> Dear J?rgen, Many thanks for this interesting discussion. > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. Apparently your interpretation of the role of contact in creolization seems to be reduced to scenarios where we can clearly trace a functional category to either being adopted from the lexifer or imposed by the substrate. You seem to say that if some grammaticalized functional category in a creole is purely innovated such a process shouldn?t be linked to language contact. But I think that the role of language contact in creoles cannot be restricted in such a way because language contact and multilingualism is key throughout every creolization scenario and beyond: societies where creoles were created consisted at various times to various degrees of second/third language users. Therefore, *extra transparency* is a major driving communicative force in understanding the functional grammatical make-up of creole languages. It leads to multiple accelerated functionalization and grammaticalization processes irrespectively of whether they continue lexifier/substrate functional categories or show innovated functional categories (see Michaelis & Haspelmath 2021, I'm happy to send you the paper if you are interested).Therefore, creole cases of innovated functional categories that you are interested in will *always* reflect language contact and should therefore be excluded given your condition (iv). There is very little large-scale comparative *qualitative* work in creole studies (but see e.g. Gil 2014, Michaelis 2019, Daval-Markussen 2018), but from my knowledge of the data in WALS and APiCS, it is indeed the case that instances, such as the innovative indefinite article in Juba Arabic against both lexifier and substrate patterns lacking an indefinite article, seem to be rare (see Daval-Markussen 2018), as you suggest. But in my view, this whole discussion crucially depends on the finegrainedness of your definition of the functional category in question and on the criteria for measuring whether a functional category in a given language/variety is*the same* or *a different one* compared to its parent/sister languages' functional categories. What we often see in creoles, is that grammatical markers expressing functional categories are inspired by one or more of their parent languages, but are certainly always innovated to some degree in the creole itself. > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. Tense and aspect are both widely grammaticalized in creoles (largely inspired by substrates). I'm wondering what your prediction for creoles would be given your "hearer's inference load approach"? Because what is needed and what is not needed to express the speaker/signer's communicative intention crucially depends on the sociolinguistics of the communication setting. I think of language contact in a much more radical way (something along the line of Croft 2000): Every speaker/signer has their ideolect giving rise to multiple layers of variation in all speech/sign communities, and in this sense language contact is rampant even in so-called homogeneous speech communities. Your constraint (iv) says: " (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.)" I would say that there is no innovation of functional categories without language contact or contact models in the first place. Best wishes, Susanne > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen > -- Plant new trees while searching the internet: https://www.ecosia.org/ Susanne Maria Michaelis Universit?t Leipzig Institut f?r Anglistik (IPF 141199) 04081 Leipzig https://research.uni-leipzig.de/unicodas/susanne-maria-michaelis/ Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History Kahlaische Str. 10 07745 Jena http://www.shh.mpg.de/person/42386/25522 Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures: http://apics-online.info/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de Tue Jun 16 22:04:12 2020 From: frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de (Uni KN) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 00:04:12 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> Message-ID: Close, ?sten: they got it from Egyptian. Or so argues Carsten Peust, in G?ttinger Beitr?ge zur Sprachwissenschaft 2, 1999, S. 99-120 F?lle von strukturellem Einfluss des ?gyptischen auf europ?ische Sprachen (1) Die Herausbildung des definiten Artikels, (2) Die Entwicklung des grammatischen femininen Genus, (3) Die inklusive Z?hlweise von Zeitintervallen https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/2274/1/Peust_Faelle_von_strukturellen_Einfluessen_1999.pdf Similarly LEVIN, Saul 1992: Studies in comparative grammar: I. The definite article, an Egyptian/Semitic/Indo?European etymology, in General Linguistics 32:1?-15. FEHLING, Detlev 1980: The origins of European syntax, in Folia Linguistica Historica 1:353-387. Frans > On 16. Jun 2020, at 18:25, ?sten Dahl wrote: > > This topic happened to come up in my recent conversation with Martin Haspelmath on his blog (https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361). There are also some references there to earlier literature. > > I would not bet on the definite article in Ancient Greek as an independent development. After all, definite articles were around in the neighbouring Semitic languages. If the Greeks got their alphabet from the Semitic-speaking peoples, they could also get the article from them, I think. > > - ?sten > > > -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- > Fr?n: Lingtyp F?r Bohnemeyer, Juergen > Skickat: den 16 juni 2020 15:44 > Till: LINGTYP > ?mne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Christian ? Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I?d just like to try a clarification: > >> On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann wrote: >> >> >> To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. > > > I?m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much inferencing the hearer has to do. > > Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still facilitates processing by further boosting the predictability of the referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing the gender information is minimal (that?s where grammaticalization comes in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage. > > Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech communities that get by happily without them), so that can?t be the reason why we grammaticalize them (that?s my thinking, anyway). > > (As to Giv?n, yes, absolutely, I?m well aware that I?m merely trying to retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of functionalism :-)) > > Best ? Juergen > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johanna at berkeley.edu Wed Jun 17 01:02:46 2020 From: johanna at berkeley.edu (Johanna Nichols) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 18:02:46 -0700 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> Message-ID: I think also Kahane & Kahane, maybe in their Language 1979 or 1986 article. Johanna On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 3:04 PM Uni KN wrote: > > Close, ?sten: they got it from Egyptian. Or so argues Carsten Peust, in G?ttinger Beitr?ge zur Sprachwissenschaft 2, 1999, S. 99-120 > > F?lle von strukturellem Einfluss des ?gyptischen auf europ?ische Sprachen > (1) Die Herausbildung des definiten Artikels, (2) Die Entwicklung des grammatischen femininen Genus, (3) Die inklusive Z?hlweise von Zeitintervallen > > https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/2274/1/Peust_Faelle_von_strukturellen_Einfluessen_1999.pdf > > Similarly > LEVIN, Saul 1992: Studies in comparative grammar: I. The definite article, an Egyptian/Semitic/Indo?European etymology, in General Linguistics 32:1?-15. > FEHLING, Detlev 1980: The origins of European syntax, in Folia Linguistica Historica 1:353-387. > > Frans > > > On 16. Jun 2020, at 18:25, ?sten Dahl wrote: > > This topic happened to come up in my recent conversation with Martin Haspelmath on his blog (https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361). There are also some references there to earlier literature. > > I would not bet on the definite article in Ancient Greek as an independent development. After all, definite articles were around in the neighbouring Semitic languages. If the Greeks got their alphabet from the Semitic-speaking peoples, they could also get the article from them, I think. > > - ?sten > > > -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- > Fr?n: Lingtyp F?r Bohnemeyer, Juergen > Skickat: den 16 juni 2020 15:44 > Till: LINGTYP > ?mne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Christian ? Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I?d just like to try a clarification: > > On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann wrote: > > > To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. > > > > I?m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much inferencing the hearer has to do. > > Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still facilitates processing by further boosting the predictability of the referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing the gender information is minimal (that?s where grammaticalization comes in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage. > > Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech communities that get by happily without them), so that can?t be the reason why we grammaticalize them (that?s my thinking, anyway). > > (As to Giv?n, yes, absolutely, I?m well aware that I?m merely trying to retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of functionalism :-)) > > Best ? Juergen > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp From oesten at ling.su.se Wed Jun 17 06:25:09 2020 From: oesten at ling.su.se (=?utf-8?B?w5ZzdGVuIERhaGw=?=) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 06:25:09 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> Message-ID: <04f0ac16ca8d4776816aaca299524fdf@ling.su.se> Thanks, Frans, for the link to this paper, which I had not seen. (I did read Fehling?s paper, however, quite long ago.) For the record, though: although Peust claims (reasonably, it seems) that Egyptian is the ultimate source, he doesn?t say that Greek got it straight from there. Instead, he says that it is remarkable that the definite article shows up in Greek in the same time period as the Greeks took over the Phoenician script, thus suggesting Phoenician, a Semitic language, as the proximate source for the Greek definite article. In light of Peust?s claims, it is maybe Egyptian that is most relevant for J?rgen?s project. Although who knows if they didn?t get the article from somebody else? * ?sten Fr?n: Uni KN Skickat: den 17 juni 2020 00:04 Till: ?sten Dahl Kopia: LINGTYP ?mne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Close, ?sten: they got it from Egyptian. Or so argues Carsten Peust, in G?ttinger Beitr?ge zur Sprachwissenschaft 2, 1999, S. 99-120 F?lle von strukturellem Einfluss des ?gyptischen auf europ?ische Sprachen (1) Die Herausbildung des definiten Artikels, (2) Die Entwicklung des grammatischen femininen Genus, (3) Die inklusive Z?hlweise von Zeitintervallen https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/2274/1/Peust_Faelle_von_strukturellen_Einfluessen_1999.pdf Similarly LEVIN, Saul 1992: Studies in comparative grammar: I. The definite article, an Egyptian/Semitic/Indo?European etymology, in General Linguistics 32:1?-15. FEHLING, Detlev 1980: The origins of European syntax, in Folia Linguistica Historica 1:353-387. Frans On 16. Jun 2020, at 18:25, ?sten Dahl > wrote: This topic happened to come up in my recent conversation with Martin Haspelmath on his blog (https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361). There are also some references there to earlier literature. I would not bet on the definite article in Ancient Greek as an independent development. After all, definite articles were around in the neighbouring Semitic languages. If the Greeks got their alphabet from the Semitic-speaking peoples, they could also get the article from them, I think. - ?sten -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Fr?n: Lingtyp > F?r Bohnemeyer, Juergen Skickat: den 16 juni 2020 15:44 Till: LINGTYP > ?mne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Christian ? Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I?d just like to try a clarification: On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann > wrote: To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. I?m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much inferencing the hearer has to do. Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still facilitates processing by further boosting the predictability of the referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing the gender information is minimal (that?s where grammaticalization comes in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage. Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech communities that get by happily without them), so that can?t be the reason why we grammaticalize them (that?s my thinking, anyway). (As to Giv?n, yes, absolutely, I?m well aware that I?m merely trying to retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of functionalism :-)) Best ? Juergen -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eitan.grossman at mail.huji.ac.il Wed Jun 17 06:58:17 2020 From: eitan.grossman at mail.huji.ac.il (Eitan Grossman) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 09:58:17 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <04f0ac16ca8d4776816aaca299524fdf@ling.su.se> References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> <04f0ac16ca8d4776816aaca299524fdf@ling.su.se> Message-ID: Right, the idea is that it spreads from Egyptian to Canaanite and from there onwards. As for Ancient Egyptian, the development of the definite article (and later, the indefinite article) is documented extensively and has been written about quite a lot. It's pretty clear that the definite article emerges relatively late in the history of the language, first in more colloquial texts and then later in higher-register ones. Interestingly, there have also been claims that Egyptian got the definite article from Canaanites who lived in Egypt. Whether within Egyptian it comes from a substrate or adstrate or something else, it's virtually impossible to tell. It's not impossible but also not straightforward -- the contemporary languages, whatever they were, aren't really documented. On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 9:26 AM ?sten Dahl wrote: > Thanks, Frans, for the link to this paper, which I had not seen. (I did > read Fehling?s paper, however, quite long ago.) For the record, though: > although Peust claims (reasonably, it seems) that Egyptian is the ultimate > source, he doesn?t say that Greek got it straight from there. Instead, he > says that it is remarkable that the definite article shows up in Greek in > the same time period as the Greeks took over the Phoenician script, thus > suggesting Phoenician, a Semitic language, as the proximate source for the > Greek definite article. > > > > In light of Peust?s claims, it is maybe Egyptian that is most relevant for > J?rgen?s project. Although who knows if they didn?t get the article from > somebody else? > > > > - ?sten > > > > > > *Fr?n:* Uni KN > *Skickat:* den 17 juni 2020 00:04 > *Till:* ?sten Dahl > *Kopia:* LINGTYP > *?mne:* Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > > > Close, ?sten: they got it from Egyptian. Or so argues Carsten Peust, in G?ttinger > Beitr?ge zur Sprachwissenschaft 2, 1999, S. 99-120 > > > > F?lle von strukturellem Einfluss des ?gyptischen auf europ?ische Sprachen > > > (1) Die Herausbildung des definiten Artikels, (2) Die Entwicklung des grammatischen femininen Genus, (3) Die inklusive Z?hlweise von Zeitintervallen > > > > > https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/2274/1/Peust_Faelle_von_strukturellen_Einfluessen_1999.pdf > > > > Similarly > > > LEVIN, Saul 1992: Studies in comparative grammar: I. The definite article, an Egyptian/Semitic/Indo?European etymology, in General Linguistics 32:1?-15. > > > FEHLING, Detlev 1980: The origins of European syntax, in Folia Linguistica Historica 1:353-387. > > > > Frans > > > > > > On 16. Jun 2020, at 18:25, ?sten Dahl wrote: > > > > This topic happened to come up in my recent conversation with Martin > Haspelmath on his blog (https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361). There are also > some references there to earlier literature. > > I would not bet on the definite article in Ancient Greek as an independent > development. After all, definite articles were around in the neighbouring > Semitic languages. If the Greeks got their alphabet from the > Semitic-speaking peoples, they could also get the article from them, I > think. > > - ?sten > > > -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- > Fr?n: Lingtyp F?r Bohnemeyer, > Juergen > Skickat: den 16 juni 2020 15:44 > Till: LINGTYP > ?mne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Christian ? Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much > more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I?d just like to try a > clarification: > > > On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann < > christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> wrote: > > > To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the > sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective > information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there > would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. > > > > I?m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely > inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much > inferencing the hearer has to do. > > Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement > morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed > for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still > facilitates processing by further boosting the predictability of the > referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing > the gender information is minimal (that?s where grammaticalization comes > in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage. > > Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense > markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech > communities that get by happily without them), so that can?t be the reason > why we grammaticalize them (that?s my thinking, anyway). > > (As to Giv?n, yes, absolutely, I?m well aware that I?m merely trying to > retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of > functionalism :-)) > > Best ? Juergen > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and > Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email > me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 > and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard > Cohen) > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ajrtallman at utexas.edu Wed Jun 17 07:22:18 2020 From: ajrtallman at utexas.edu (Adam James Ross Tallman) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 09:22:18 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <04f0ac16ca8d4776816aaca299524fdf@ling.su.se> References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> <04f0ac16ca8d4776816aaca299524fdf@ling.su.se> Message-ID: Dear Juergen, Just a clarifying question (I'm interested because I've attempted to develop a method to quantify the degree to which some set of morphemes is morphologized and I have struggled with defining "functional" in a consistent fashion, and actually I have just given up) Wouldn't your definition imply that anything that was not an open lexical class would be "functional"? There's plenty of languages that have a closed class of adjectives - shouldn't these be "functional" in your sense? Maybe adjectives could be added to your class of morphemes that tend to become functional regardless of contact [?]... but just in case they are not a lexical class. But do adjectives express redundant information or not? I'm also skeptical that an easy decision can be made regarding the lexical vs. functional status of classifiers, but this is perhaps outside the scope of your research question. (I would take a close look at Krasnoukhova's dissertation on the Noun Phrase in South American languages for both of these issues) best, Adam On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 8:25 AM ?sten Dahl wrote: > Thanks, Frans, for the link to this paper, which I had not seen. (I did > read Fehling?s paper, however, quite long ago.) For the record, though: > although Peust claims (reasonably, it seems) that Egyptian is the ultimate > source, he doesn?t say that Greek got it straight from there. Instead, he > says that it is remarkable that the definite article shows up in Greek in > the same time period as the Greeks took over the Phoenician script, thus > suggesting Phoenician, a Semitic language, as the proximate source for the > Greek definite article. > > > > In light of Peust?s claims, it is maybe Egyptian that is most relevant for > J?rgen?s project. Although who knows if they didn?t get the article from > somebody else? > > > > - ?sten > > > > > > *Fr?n:* Uni KN > *Skickat:* den 17 juni 2020 00:04 > *Till:* ?sten Dahl > *Kopia:* LINGTYP > *?mne:* Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > > > Close, ?sten: they got it from Egyptian. Or so argues Carsten Peust, in G?ttinger > Beitr?ge zur Sprachwissenschaft 2, 1999, S. 99-120 > > > > F?lle von strukturellem Einfluss des ?gyptischen auf europ?ische Sprachen > > > (1) Die Herausbildung des definiten Artikels, (2) Die Entwicklung des grammatischen femininen Genus, (3) Die inklusive Z?hlweise von Zeitintervallen > > > > > https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/2274/1/Peust_Faelle_von_strukturellen_Einfluessen_1999.pdf > > > > Similarly > > > LEVIN, Saul 1992: Studies in comparative grammar: I. The definite article, an Egyptian/Semitic/Indo?European etymology, in General Linguistics 32:1?-15. > > > FEHLING, Detlev 1980: The origins of European syntax, in Folia Linguistica Historica 1:353-387. > > > > Frans > > > > > > On 16. Jun 2020, at 18:25, ?sten Dahl wrote: > > > > This topic happened to come up in my recent conversation with Martin > Haspelmath on his blog (https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361). There are also > some references there to earlier literature. > > I would not bet on the definite article in Ancient Greek as an independent > development. After all, definite articles were around in the neighbouring > Semitic languages. If the Greeks got their alphabet from the > Semitic-speaking peoples, they could also get the article from them, I > think. > > - ?sten > > > -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- > Fr?n: Lingtyp F?r Bohnemeyer, > Juergen > Skickat: den 16 juni 2020 15:44 > Till: LINGTYP > ?mne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Christian ? Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much > more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I?d just like to try a > clarification: > > > On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann < > christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> wrote: > > > To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the > sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective > information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there > would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. > > > > I?m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely > inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much > inferencing the hearer has to do. > > Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement > morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed > for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still > facilitates processing by further boosting the predictability of the > referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing > the gender information is minimal (that?s where grammaticalization comes > in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage. > > Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense > markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech > communities that get by happily without them), so that can?t be the reason > why we grammaticalize them (that?s my thinking, anyway). > > (As to Giv?n, yes, absolutely, I?m well aware that I?m merely trying to > retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of > functionalism :-)) > > Best ? Juergen > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and > Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email > me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 > and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard > Cohen) > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -- Adam J.R. Tallman PhD, University of Texas at Austin Investigador del Museo de Etnograf?a y Folklore, la Paz ELDP -- Postdoctorante CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From npatel at austin.utexas.edu Wed Jun 17 10:29:56 2020 From: npatel at austin.utexas.edu (Pat-El, Na'ama) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 10:29:56 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> <04f0ac16ca8d4776816aaca299524fdf@ling.su.se> Message-ID: <1732D7ED-CC2E-4C0E-A476-64FE9C91D12F@austin.utexas.edu> The definite article in Semitic developed also in Arabic, Aramaic, and Old South Arabian, languages that were not in contact with Egyptian in the relevant period and likely did not borrow their article from Canaanite. We know that either because they weren?t in contact with Canaanite (Old South Arabian), or because the development of the article is attested (Arabic, Aramaic). Additionally, Semitic had already a nascent article, which only fully developed in Ethiopic (bibliographical details below). This is all to say that I doubt Egyptian is the catalyst. Huehnergard, John and Na?ama Pat-El. 2012. Third Person Possessive Suffixes as Definite Articles in Semitic. Journal of Historical Linguistics 2: 25-51. Na'ama On Jun 17, 2020, at 01:58, Eitan Grossman > wrote: Right, the idea is that it spreads from Egyptian to Canaanite and from there onwards. As for Ancient Egyptian, the development of the definite article (and later, the indefinite article) is documented extensively and has been written about quite a lot. It's pretty clear that the definite article emerges relatively late in the history of the language, first in more colloquial texts and then later in higher-register ones. Interestingly, there have also been claims that Egyptian got the definite article from Canaanites who lived in Egypt. Whether within Egyptian it comes from a substrate or adstrate or something else, it's virtually impossible to tell. It's not impossible but also not straightforward -- the contemporary languages, whatever they were, aren't really documented. On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 9:26 AM ?sten Dahl > wrote: Thanks, Frans, for the link to this paper, which I had not seen. (I did read Fehling?s paper, however, quite long ago.) For the record, though: although Peust claims (reasonably, it seems) that Egyptian is the ultimate source, he doesn?t say that Greek got it straight from there. Instead, he says that it is remarkable that the definite article shows up in Greek in the same time period as the Greeks took over the Phoenician script, thus suggesting Phoenician, a Semitic language, as the proximate source for the Greek definite article. In light of Peust?s claims, it is maybe Egyptian that is most relevant for J?rgen?s project. Although who knows if they didn?t get the article from somebody else? * ?sten Fr?n: Uni KN > Skickat: den 17 juni 2020 00:04 Till: ?sten Dahl > Kopia: LINGTYP > ?mne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Close, ?sten: they got it from Egyptian. Or so argues Carsten Peust, in G?ttinger Beitr?ge zur Sprachwissenschaft 2, 1999, S. 99-120 F?lle von strukturellem Einfluss des ?gyptischen auf europ?ische Sprachen (1) Die Herausbildung des definiten Artikels, (2) Die Entwicklung des grammatischen femininen Genus, (3) Die inklusive Z?hlweise von Zeitintervallen https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/2274/1/Peust_Faelle_von_strukturellen_Einfluessen_1999.pdf Similarly LEVIN, Saul 1992: Studies in comparative grammar: I. The definite article, an Egyptian/Semitic/Indo?European etymology, in General Linguistics 32:1?-15. FEHLING, Detlev 1980: The origins of European syntax, in Folia Linguistica Historica 1:353-387. Frans On 16. Jun 2020, at 18:25, ?sten Dahl > wrote: This topic happened to come up in my recent conversation with Martin Haspelmath on his blog (https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361). There are also some references there to earlier literature. I would not bet on the definite article in Ancient Greek as an independent development. After all, definite articles were around in the neighbouring Semitic languages. If the Greeks got their alphabet from the Semitic-speaking peoples, they could also get the article from them, I think. - ?sten -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Fr?n: Lingtyp > F?r Bohnemeyer, Juergen Skickat: den 16 juni 2020 15:44 Till: LINGTYP > ?mne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Christian ? Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I?d just like to try a clarification: On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann > wrote: To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. I?m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much inferencing the hearer has to do. Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still facilitates processing by further boosting the predictability of the referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing the gender information is minimal (that?s where grammaticalization comes in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage. Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech communities that get by happily without them), so that can?t be the reason why we grammaticalize them (that?s my thinking, anyway). (As to Giv?n, yes, absolutely, I?m well aware that I?m merely trying to retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of functionalism :-)) Best ? Juergen -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp This message is from an external sender. Learn more about why this << matters at https://links.utexas.edu/rtyclf. << -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aminatamajigeen at yahoo.com Tue Jun 16 21:30:28 2020 From: aminatamajigeen at yahoo.com (Majigeen Aminata) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 21:30:28 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> Dear all, I am currently workingon what are called ?adverbs? (see words un bold) in wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (WestAfrica) has specific words that only work with some colors: white, black, red and eachword-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. weext?ll:extremely white (it can't be whiter) ?uulkukk:extremely black (it can't be more black) xonqcoyy:extremely red (it can't be more red) Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. They are not commutable. baax lool: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) bees t?q:really new (nobody has ever used it) d?g?r k?cc:extremely hard (it can't be harder) diis gann:really heavy (very difficult to carry) fatt taraj:extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) fess dell:extremely full (it can't be fuller) forox toll:really acidic (it can't be more acidic) g?tt ndugur:really short (he can't be shorter) jeex t?kk:completely finished, ... In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude.I would like to knowif there are languages ??that work like that and what is the terminology usedfor this kind of construction. Can someone also recommend me new documentationon the definition of the concepts of verbs, adverbs, adjectives? in Africanlanguages? Thanks and regards. Aminata? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aminatamajigeen at yahoo.com Tue Jun 16 21:55:58 2020 From: aminatamajigeen at yahoo.com (Majigeen Aminata) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 21:55:58 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs References: <1952472239.1338554.1592344558843.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1952472239.1338554.1592344558843@mail.yahoo.com> Dear all, I am currently workingon what are called ?adverbs? (see words un bold) in wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (WestAfrica) has specific words that only work with some colors: white, black, red and eachword-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. weext?ll:extremely white (it can't be whiter) ?uulkukk:extremely black (it can't be more black) xonqcoyy:extremely red (it can't be more red) Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. They are not commutable. baax lool: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) bees t?q:really new (nobody has ever used it) d?g?r k?cc:extremely hard (it can't be harder) diis gann:really heavy (very difficult to carry) fatt taraj:extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) fess dell:extremely full (it can't be fuller) forox toll:really acidic (it can't be more acidic) g?tt ndugur:really short (he can't be shorter) jeex t?kk:completely finished, ... In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude. They are not onomatopoeias,Wolof also has them and they are different. t?kk j?ppet: catch fire abruptly on the wayup (j?ppet expresses the way of catching fire suddenly on the way up njool t?lli: to be straight t?lli ?are: to be stiffly straight, Thanks and regards. Aminata Bonjour,? Je suis entrain de travailler sur ce qu?onappelle adverbes dans la litt?rature.Le wolof a par exemple des mots sp?cifiques qui ne marchent qu?avec certainescouleurs?: ?blanc, noir, rouge etchaque mot-adverbe ne marche qu?avec sa couleur, ils ne sont pasinterchangeables. weex t?ll?: ????? ??????????? extr?mement blanc (on ne pas ?treplus blanc) ?uul kukk?:?? ??????????? extr?mementnoir (on ne pas ?tre plus noir) xonq coyy?:??? ??????????? extr?mement D?autres vontavec des verbes d??tats et leur sont sp?cifiques aussi. Ils ne sont pasinterchangeables. baax lool: ????????????????? extr?mement gentil (onne pas ?tre plus gentil) bees t?q: ?????? ??????????? vraimentnouveau (personne ne l?a jamais utilis?) d?g?r k?cc : ?? ??????????? extr?mement dur (on ne pas ?tre plusdur) diis gann:????????????????? vraiment lourd (tresdifficile de le soulever) fatt taraj : ????????????????? extr?mementbouch? (on ne pas ?tre plus bouch?) fess dell:???????????????????? extr?mement plein (onne pas ?tre plus plein) forox toll: ????????????????? vraiment acide (on ne pas ?tre plus acide) g?tt ndugur: ????????????? vraimentcourt (on ne pas ?tre plus court) jeex t?kk:????????????????? tout ? fait termin?, etc? En wolof on les appelledes intensifieurs ou intensificateurs mais ce terme ne me convainc pas car ilpeut porter ? confusion. Ils n?intensifient pas. Ces mots veulent dirent que l??tatou l?action du verbe est ? son extr?mit?. Ce ne sont pasdes onomatop?es. Le wolof a aussi des onomatop?es diff?rentes de ces mots. Je voudrais savoirs?il existe des langues qui fonctionnent comme ?a et quelle est la terminologieemploy?e pour ce genre de construction Est-ce quelqu?un peut aussi me recommanderde la documentation nouvelle sur la d?finition des notions de verbes, adverbes,adjectifs? dans les langues africaines?? Merci Aminata -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From a.y.aikhenvald at live.com Wed Jun 17 04:12:54 2020 From: a.y.aikhenvald at live.com (Alexandra Aikhenvald) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 04:12:54 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] PhD scholarships at the Language and Culture Research Centre, JCU In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ________________________________ From: Alexandra Aikhenvald Sent: Wednesday, 17 June 2020 2:11 PM To: Lingtyp at listserv.linguistilist.org Subject: PhD scholarships at the Language and Culture Research Centre, JCU Announcement PhD scholarships at the language and culture research centre Come and work in an exotic location, investigating a language which has never previously been described! Applications are invited, from suitably qualified students, to enter the PhD program of the Language and Culture Research Centre at James Cook University Australia. Supervision will be provided by Professor Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Professor R. M. W. Dixon, Professor Rosita Henry, Dr Luca Ciucci, and Dr Michael Wood, all highly experienced in documenting languages and cultures of the tropics and with a substantial record of publications in the relevant fields. Our PhD candidates generally undertake extensive immersion fieldwork on a previously undescribed (or scarcely described) language and write a comprehensive grammar of it for their dissertation. They are expected to work on a language which is still actively spoken, and to establish a field situation within a community in which it is the first language. Their first fieldtrip lasts for six to nine months. After completing a first draft of the grammar, back in Cairns, they undertake a second fieldtrip of two to three months. Fieldwork methodology centres on the collection, transcription and analysis of texts, together with participant observation, and ? at a later stage ? judicious grammatical elicitation in the language under description (not through the lingua franca of the country). Our main priority areas are the Papuan and Austronesian languages of New Guinea and surrounding areas, and the languages of tropical Amazonia. However, we do not exclude applicants who have an established interest in languages from other areas (which need not necessarily lie within the tropics). PhDs in Australian universities involve some coursework and a substantial dissertation. Candidates must thus have had thorough coursework training before embarking on this PhD program. This should have included courses on morphology, syntax, semantics, and phonology/phonetics, taught from a non-formalist perspective. We place emphasis on work that has a sound empirical basis but also shows a firm theoretical orientation (in terms of general typological theory, or what has recently come to be called basic linguistic theory). Distinguished Professor Alexandra (Sasha) Aikhenvald is Australian Laureate Fellow and Research Leader for People and Societies of the Tropics. Together with Professor R. M. W. Dixon, she heads the Language and Culture Research Centre, which includes Research Fellows and a growing number of doctoral students. In addition, senior scholars from across the world opt to spend their sabbatical at the Language and Culture Research Centre. The LCRC has strong links with anthropologists, archaeologists and educationalists, and with scholars working on environmental issues, all within James Cook University. Further information is available at http://www.jcu.edu.au/lcrc/ The scholarship will be at the standard James Cook University rate, Australian $27.082 pa. Students coming from overseas are liable for a tuition fee; but this will be waived if scholarship is awarded. A small relocation allowance may be provided on taking up the scholarship. In addition, an adequate allowance will be made to cover fieldwork expenses and conference attendance. The scholarship is for three and a half years. The deadline for application (starting in 2021) is 30 September 2020. Successful applicants would take up their PhD scholarships between January and June 2021. (The academic year in Australia runs from February to November.) Application form and procedures for international students can be found at: https://www.jcu.edu.au/graduate-research-school/candidates/postgraduate-research-scholarships (JCUPRS scholarships). The applications are expected to be open in July 2020. Prospective applicants are invited, in the first place, to get in touch with Professor Alexandra Aikhenvald at Alexandra.Aikhenvald at jcu.edu.au, providing details of their background, qualifications and interests (including a curriculum vitae). Applicants are advised to send samples of their written work in linguistics (at least some of this should be in English). Best wishes Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, PhD, DLitt, FAHA Distinguished Professor and Australian Laureate Fellow Director of the Language and Culture Research Centre James Cook University PO Box 6811, Cairns, Queensland 4870, Australia http://www.jcu.edu.au/faess/JCUPRD_043649.html mobile 0400 305315, office 61-7-40421117 fax 61-7-4042 1880 http://www.aikhenvaldlinguistics.com/ https://research.jcu.edu.au/researchatjcu/research/lcrc -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: PhD announcement LCRC JCU.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 608957 bytes Desc: PhD announcement LCRC JCU.pdf URL: From linjr at cc.au.dk Wed Jun 17 11:50:26 2020 From: linjr at cc.au.dk (Jan Rijkhoff) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 11:50:26 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> <04f0ac16ca8d4776816aaca299524fdf@ling.su.se>, Message-ID: Adam Tallman wrote: Wouldn't your definition imply that anything that was not an open lexical class would be "functional"? Indeed, to call grammatical (non-lexical) items ?functional? elements is confusing and perpetuates the use of a misnomer (esp. popular in syntactico-centric circles). This can easily be illustrated by the fact that the ?functions? (see below) of grammatical elements like articles and TAM markers can also be expressed in other ways: e.g. lexically (with adverbs like ?yesterday? or ?probably?), syntactically or phonologically (as when definiteness is expressed by word order or tone) - not to mention non-verbal means of expression (like pointing in the case of deixis). For a good example, see: Beier, C., Hansen, C., Lai, I-W., Michael, L., 2011. Exploiting word order to express an inflectional category: reality status in Iquito. Linguistic Typology 15, 65-99. The terminological confusion is solved when we recognise that morphosyntactic units (such as clauses, phrases, words and free or bound morphemes) can all be characterised in terms of formal, semantic and functional (communicative, interpersonal) properties. Consequently, morphosyntactic units can simultaneously belong to a formal, a semantic and a functional category. Formal categories are, for example, ?NP? or ?affix?; examples of semantic categories are ?Agent ?or ?Transitive?). Since Adam questioned the use of the label ?functional categories? in this context, here is how I defined them in an article in LT in 2016: Members of functional categories are the products of a speech act. Speech acts come in four main types. In the table below these functional categories are called: Illocutions, Theticals, Propositions, and Pragmaticals. They are all products of an interpersonal or communicative speech, i.e. an Illocutionary, a Thetical, a Propositional, or a Pragmatic act. Hopefully the format of the Table stays intact (else see Rijkhoff 2016: 348): = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Speech Act. Functional Category Main Subtypes Illocutionary Act Illocutions Declarative, Imperative, Interrogative, ? Thetical Act Theticals Address, Summons, Greeting, Leave-taking, afterthought, ? Propositional Act Propositionals Predicate, Referential Phrase (?noun phrase?, complement clause, etc.), Modifier (adjective, relative clause, genitive, adverb, adverbial, prepositional phrase, article, demonstrative, numeral; also TAM affixes, number affixes, ?) Pragmatic Act. Pragmaticals Topic, Focus Table 1. Speech acts, functional categories and some of their main subtypes. = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Propositional acts consist of three main subtypes - and their functional categories: (i) acts of predication, (ii) acts of referring, and (iii) acts of modification - which can be formally realised as e.g. TAM markers, manner adverbs, adjectives, genitives, to mention just a few (see also e.g. Croft 1990 on propositional acts and modification). Notice that both lexical (adjectives) and grammatical elements (like article and TAM markers) can be members of a functional category In this approach, both definite articles and TAM markers are expressions of acts of modification (i.e. a subtype of one of the speech act types: Propositionals). Notice that each subtype has its own ?minigrammar?. In brief, I think ?grammatical (non-lexical) elements' is the correct label here. References Beier, C., Hansen, C., Lai, I-W., Michael, L., 2011. Exploiting word order to express an inflectional category: reality status in Iquito. Linguistic Typology 15, 65-99. Croft, William. 1990. A conceptual framework for grammatical categories (or: a taxonomy of Propositional Acts). Journal of Semantics 7-3, 245-279. Rijkhoff, Jan. 2014. Modification as a propositional act. In Mar?a de los ?ngeles G?mez Gonz?lez et al. (eds.), Theory and Practice in Functional-Cognitive Space (Studies in Functional and Structural Linguistics, 68), 129-150. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Rijkhoff, Jan. 2016. Crosslinguistic categories in morphosyntactic typology: Problems and prospects. Linguistic Typology 20-2, 333-363. Jan R J. Rijkhoff - Associate Professor, Linguistics School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University Jens Chr. Skous Vej 2, Building 1485-621 DK-8000 Aarhus C, DENMARK Phone: (+45) 87162143 URL: http://pure.au.dk/portal/en/linjr at cc.au.dk ________________________________________ From: Lingtyp on behalf of Adam James Ross Tallman Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2020 9:22 AM To: LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Juergen, Just a clarifying question (I'm interested because I've attempted to develop a method to quantify the degree to which some set of morphemes is morphologized and I have struggled with defining "functional" in a consistent fashion, and actually I have just given up) Wouldn't your definition imply that anything that was not an open lexical class would be "functional"? There's plenty of languages that have a closed class of adjectives - shouldn't these be "functional" in your sense? Maybe adjectives could be added to your class of morphemes that tend to become functional regardless of contact [?]... but just in case they are not a lexical class. But do adjectives express redundant information or not? I'm also skeptical that an easy decision can be made regarding the lexical vs. functional status of classifiers, but this is perhaps outside the scope of your research question. (I would take a close look at Krasnoukhova's dissertation on the Noun Phrase in South American languages for both of these issues) best, Adam On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 8:25 AM ?sten Dahl > wrote: Thanks, Frans, for the link to this paper, which I had not seen. (I did read Fehling?s paper, however, quite long ago.) For the record, though: although Peust claims (reasonably, it seems) that Egyptian is the ultimate source, he doesn?t say that Greek got it straight from there. Instead, he says that it is remarkable that the definite article shows up in Greek in the same time period as the Greeks took over the Phoenician script, thus suggesting Phoenician, a Semitic language, as the proximate source for the Greek definite article. In light of Peust?s claims, it is maybe Egyptian that is most relevant for J?rgen?s project. Although who knows if they didn?t get the article from somebody else? * ?sten Fr?n: Uni KN > Skickat: den 17 juni 2020 00:04 Till: ?sten Dahl > Kopia: LINGTYP > ?mne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Close, ?sten: they got it from Egyptian. Or so argues Carsten Peust, in G?ttinger Beitr?ge zur Sprachwissenschaft 2, 1999, S. 99-120 F?lle von strukturellem Einfluss des ?gyptischen auf europ?ische Sprachen (1) Die Herausbildung des definiten Artikels, (2) Die Entwicklung des grammatischen femininen Genus, (3) Die inklusive Z?hlweise von Zeitintervallen https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/2274/1/Peust_Faelle_von_strukturellen_Einfluessen_1999.pdf Similarly LEVIN, Saul 1992: Studies in comparative grammar: I. The definite article, an Egyptian/Semitic/Indo?European etymology, in General Linguistics 32:1?-15. FEHLING, Detlev 1980: The origins of European syntax, in Folia Linguistica Historica 1:353-387. Frans On 16. Jun 2020, at 18:25, ?sten Dahl > wrote: This topic happened to come up in my recent conversation with Martin Haspelmath on his blog (https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361). There are also some references there to earlier literature. I would not bet on the definite article in Ancient Greek as an independent development. After all, definite articles were around in the neighbouring Semitic languages. If the Greeks got their alphabet from the Semitic-speaking peoples, they could also get the article from them, I think. - ?sten -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Fr?n: Lingtyp > F?r Bohnemeyer, Juergen Skickat: den 16 juni 2020 15:44 Till: LINGTYP > ?mne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Christian ? Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I?d just like to try a clarification: On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann > wrote: To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. I?m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much inferencing the hearer has to do. Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still facilitates processing by further boosting the predictability of the referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing the gender information is minimal (that?s where grammaticalization comes in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage. Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech communities that get by happily without them), so that can?t be the reason why we grammaticalize them (that?s my thinking, anyway). (As to Giv?n, yes, absolutely, I?m well aware that I?m merely trying to retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of functionalism :-)) Best ? Juergen -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Adam J.R. Tallman PhD, University of Texas at Austin Investigador del Museo de Etnograf?a y Folklore, la Paz ELDP -- Postdoctorante CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) From gil at shh.mpg.de Wed Jun 17 12:14:00 2020 From: gil at shh.mpg.de (David Gil) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 15:14:00 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> Dear Juergen and all, My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below.? For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite.? McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form//(cognate to Standard Malay /nya/). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. Best, David McKinnon, Timothy (2011) /The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations/, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, /Language/ 87.4:715?750. McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., /Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics/, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371.DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", /Linguistik Indonesia/ 33.1:1-19. On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. > > Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) > > I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. > > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > > As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). > > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen > -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From koenig at zedat.fu-berlin.de Wed Jun 17 12:22:18 2020 From: koenig at zedat.fu-berlin.de (=?utf-8?B?IkVra2VoYXJkIEvDtm5pZyI=?=) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 14:22:18 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <53258.217.238.217.61.1592396538.webmail@webmail.zedat.fu-berlin.de> Dear Aminata, I have never seen adverbs of this kind before. Incidentally, I think the term "degree adverb" would be a good designation. In English and European languages upgrading expressions of this kind are usually called 'BOOSTERS'. Even though very different, your data remind me of the formation of adjectival compounds in Germanic languages (ice-cold, crystal clear, pitch-black, etc.). These are certainly based on comparisons, but spelling out the comparison might no longer make sense. I haven given you some English examples, but the phenomenon is much more wide-spread in German. Here are a few examples, with literal translations into English: b?renstark 'bear-strong', hundem?de 'dog-tired', br?hwarm 'broth-warm', sauschlecht 'sow-bad', stockdunkel 'stickdark', etc. What is similar to your cases is that each adjective takes a different noun as booster, even though some may come to be used for several adjectives. (cf. Koenig, E. (2017) "The comparative basis of identification". In: M. Napoli & M. Ravetto (eds.) Exploring Intensification. Amsterdam: Benjamins.) So, here is a potentially related phenomenon, though not exactly what you are looking for. Very best, Ekkehard > Dear all, > I am currently workingon what are called ?adverbs? (see words un bold) in > wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (WestAfrica) has specific words > that only work with some colors: white, black, red and eachword-adverb > match only with its color, they are not commutable. > > weext?ll:extremely white (it can't be whiter) > > ?uulkukk:extremely black (it can't be more black) > > xonqcoyy:extremely red (it can't be more red) > > Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. > They are not commutable. > > > baax lool: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) > > bees t?q:really new (nobody has ever used it) > > d?g?r k?cc:extremely hard (it can't be harder) > > diis gann:really heavy (very difficult to carry) > > fatt taraj:extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) > > fess dell:extremely full (it can't be fuller) > > forox toll:really acidic (it can't be more acidic) > > g?tt ndugur:really short (he can't be shorter) > > jeex t?kk:completely finished, ... > > > In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me > because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words > mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude.I > would like to knowif there are languages ??that work like that and what is > the terminology usedfor this kind of construction. Can someone also > recommend me new documentationon the definition of the concepts of verbs, > adverbs, adjectives? in Africanlanguages? > > Thanks and regards. > > Aminata? > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > From gil at shh.mpg.de Wed Jun 17 12:37:29 2020 From: gil at shh.mpg.de (David Gil) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 15:37:29 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> <04f0ac16ca8d4776816aaca299524fdf@ling.su.se> Message-ID: Dear all, I sympathize with Adam Tallman's struggling with the notion of "functional": On 17/06/2020 10:22, Adam James Ross Tallman wrote: > Dear Juergen, > > Just a clarifying question (I'm interested because I've attempted to > develop a method to quantify the degree to which some set of morphemes > is morphologized and I have struggled with defining "functional" in a > consistent fashion, and actually I have just given up) I have also struggled with the related notion of "grammatical". In my 2015 paper (reference below), I argued that languages of the Mekong-Mamberamo linguistic area are characterized by "Low Grammatical Morpheme Density".? While I remain convinced that this is a really central core property of these languages, I was painfully aware of the difficulties in objectively defining the notion of grammatical morpheme.? In an earlier draft of the paper I proposed a semantically-based definition, but in the final version it got whittled down to a single lengthy footnote (no. 26), which I have reproduced below for those who are interested. It's a topic that I am hoping to work on more in the future. Best, David Gil, David (2015) "The Mekong-Mamberamo Linguistic Area", in N.J. Enfield and B. Comrie eds., /Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia, The State of the Art/, Pacific Linguistics, DeGruyter Mouton, Berlin, 266-355. Footnote 26: It must be acknowledged that the distinction between contentives and grammatical markers is itself somewhat problematical, not least because it conflates two orthogonal dimensions, formal and semantic. In part, the distinction is of a formal nature: whereas contentives are typically independent words or word stems belonging to open word classes, grammatical markers are usually either words or word stems belonging to closed classes or else bound morphemes, often exhibiting idiosyncratic morphosyntactic behaviour. Nevertheless, the formal distinction exhibits a strong empirical correlation to a logically-independent semantic distinction, between different kinds of concepts. For example, within the domain of time, days of the week are the kind of concept expressed by contentives such as English /Tuesday/, whereas past is the kind of concept typically expressed by grammatical morphemes such as English /-ed/, though exceptions do exist (e.g. the Riau Indonesian proximate past expression /tadi,/ a separate word belonging to the single open word-class of the language and exhibiting no idiosyncratic grammatical properties whatsoever). These two kinds of concepts may be characterized with reference to /encyclopaedic knowledge/, that is to say, our structured and highly detailed understanding of the way things are in the world around us. Particular concepts may be said to be encyclopaedic to the extent that they draw upon such encyclopaedic knowledge, resulting in a classification of concepts as either /encyclopaedically-rich/ or /encyclopaedically-poor/. Examples of encyclopaedically-rich concepts are ?Tuesday?, ?dog?, and ?buy?, which make reference to complex and detailed knowledge in various domains of human activity and experience. In contrast, encyclopaedically-poor concepts are ones like past, plural and locative, typically of a more abstract, logical and relational nature, with little or no reference to such detailed real-world knowledge. For the most part, encyclopaedically-rich concepts are expressed by words and larger phrases, while encyclopaedically-poor concepts are encoded by grammatical markers, but there are exceptions (e.g. the non-grammatical but encyclopaedically-poor Riau Indonesian /tadi/ above). This points towards a possible alternative semantically-based characterization of Mekong-Mamberamo languages as displaying /low encyclopaedically-poor-concept articulation/, in that the expression of encyclopaedically-poor concepts by means of overt morphemes is impoverished, that is to say, paradigmatically optional and syntagmatically infrequent. -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alex.francois.cnrs at gmail.com Wed Jun 17 14:01:18 2020 From: alex.francois.cnrs at gmail.com (Alex Francois) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 16:01:18 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: dear Aminata, Thanks for an interesting query. *Mwotlap*, an Oceanic language of northern Vanuatu, has several strategies for intensifying its stative predicates (adjectives). Some are general strategies, that apply to any adjective: for ex. *meh* 'too much' can combine with any predicate (*too big, too heavy...*) But Mwotlap also has a whole set of *lexically-specific intensifiers*, very similar to what you describe for Wolof: - thus the intensifier *len?* [l??] is only used with two adjectives meaning 'big, large', namely *liwo *and *k?k?n *? *k?k?n len? * "super-large" - the intensifier *ton?ton?* [t??t??] only goes with the stative verb *sis* 'swell, be full' ? *sis ton?ton?* "chock-full" - the intensifier *tewiwi* [t?wiwi] goes with *yeh *'remote' ? *yeh tewiwi* "really far" - etc. I guess I would call them *lexically-specific intensifiers*. I found 69 of them in Mwotlap; you can find a list in my grammatical description (p.266-267 , reference below), under the label *intensifs sp?cifiques*. - Fran?ois, Alexandre. 2001. Contraintes de structures et libert? dans l'organisation du discours. Une description du mwotlap, langue oc?anienne du Vanuatu. PhD dissertation in Linguistics, Universit? Paris-IV Sorbonne. (link ) When their etymology can be reconstructed, these intensifiers may originate in a former noun, or adjective, or verb: - *gagah* 'ribs' ? *newkah gagah* 'rib-skinny' = 'very skinny' - *lam* 'ocean' ? *n?q?q? lam* 'ocean-deep' = 'very deep' - *m?l?gl?g * 'dark' ? *nemy?py?p m?l?gl?g* 'dark-blurry' = 'very blurry' - *m?d?* 'orphan' ? *nemgays?n m?d?* 'orphan-sad' = 'really sad' - *yeyey* 'quiver' ? *tamayge yeyey* 'quiver-old' = 'very old' - *lawlaw* 'shiny' ? *n?mnay lawlaw* 'shiny-smart' = 'very smart, brilliant' - ? Some languages would use ideophones for such intensifying uses. But I don't believe that the Mwotlap intensifiers qualify as ideophones. These words are indeed ? as Ekkehard rightly points out ? reminiscent of the lexically-specific intensifiers of English, such as *brand new*, *chock full*, *boiling hot*... French also has *rouge sang* (intensely red), and phrases like *fier comme Artaban*, *riche comme Cr?sus*... best Alex ------------------------------ Alex Fran?ois LaTTiCe ? CNRS? ENS ?Sorbonne nouvelle Australian National University Academia page ? Personal homepage ------------------------------ On Wed, 17 Jun 2020 at 13:06, Majigeen Aminata wrote: > Dear all, > > I am currently working on what are called ?adverbs? (see words un bold) in > wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (West Africa) has specific words > that only work with some colors: *white*, *black*, *red* and each > word-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. > > weex* t?ll*: extremely white (it can't be whiter) > > ?uul *kukk*: extremely black (it can't be more black) > > xonq *coyy*: extremely red (it can't be more red) > > Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. > They are not commutable. > > baax *lool*: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) > > bees* t?q:* really new (nobody has ever used it) > > d?g*?r k?cc*: extremely hard (it can't be harder) > > diis* gann*: really heavy (very difficult to carry) > > fatt* taraj*: extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) > > fess *dell*: extremely full (it can't be fuller) > > forox* toll*: really acidic (it can't be more acidic) > > g?tt *ndugur*: really short (he can't be shorter) > > jeex* t?kk*: completely finished, ... > > In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me > because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words > mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude. I > would like to know if there are languages ??that work like that and what is > the terminology used for this kind of construction. Can someone also > recommend me new documentation on the definition of the concepts of verbs, > adverbs, adjectives? in African languages? > > Thanks and regards. > > Aminata > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jussi.ylikoski at oulu.fi Wed Jun 17 14:31:04 2020 From: jussi.ylikoski at oulu.fi (Jussi Ylikoski) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 14:31:04 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com>, Message-ID: Dear Aminata, The following source and my examples take us away from the adverbs of the Wolof type, but Kamil Stachowski's (2014) thesis Standard Turkic C-Type Reduplications at http://info.filg.uj.edu.pl/zhjij/~stachowski.kamil/store/pub/stachowski_k-standard_turkic_c_type_reduplications.pdf might be of interest. As the title tells us, his study is on reduplication, but on pages 20 and 22 he fleetingly refers to Finnish and Estonian analogues, which probably (implicitly but seldom explicitly) are usually regarded as a kind of reduplication and compounding. However, now that I am able to look at my native language from a Wolof perspective, it might also be possible to think that Finnish expressions like upouusi 'extremely new', supisuomalainen 'extremely Finnish' could consist of adverbial intensifiers of adjective; in fact, non-standard spellings like upo uusi and supi suomalainen also occur and suggest this alternative interpretation. Best regards, Jussi ________________________________ Saatja: Lingtyp Alex Francois nimel Saadetud: kolmap?ev, 17. juuni 2020 17:01 Adressaat: Majigeen Aminata Koopia: Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Teema: Re: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs dear Aminata, Thanks for an interesting query. Mwotlap, an Oceanic language of northern Vanuatu, has several strategies for intensifying its stative predicates (adjectives). Some are general strategies, that apply to any adjective: for ex. meh 'too much' can combine with any predicate (too big, too heavy...) But Mwotlap also has a whole set of lexically-specific intensifiers, very similar to what you describe for Wolof: * thus the intensifier len? [l??] is only used with two adjectives meaning 'big, large', namely liwo and k?k?n ? k?k?n len? "super-large" * the intensifier ton?ton? [t??t??] only goes with the stative verb sis 'swell, be full' ? sis ton?ton? "chock-full" * the intensifier tewiwi [t?wiwi] goes with yeh 'remote' ? yeh tewiwi "really far" * etc. I guess I would call them lexically-specific intensifiers. I found 69 of them in Mwotlap; you can find a list in my grammatical description (p.266-267, reference below), under the label intensifs sp?cifiques. * Fran?ois, Alexandre. 2001. Contraintes de structures et libert? dans l'organisation du discours. Une description du mwotlap, langue oc?anienne du Vanuatu. PhD dissertation in Linguistics, Universit? Paris-IV Sorbonne. (link) When their etymology can be reconstructed, these intensifiers may originate in a former noun, or adjective, or verb: * gagah 'ribs' ? newkah gagah 'rib-skinny' = 'very skinny' * lam 'ocean' ? n?q?q? lam 'ocean-deep' = 'very deep' * m?l?gl?g 'dark' ? nemy?py?p m?l?gl?g 'dark-blurry' = 'very blurry' * m?d? 'orphan' ? nemgays?n m?d? 'orphan-sad' = 'really sad' * yeyey 'quiver' ? tamayge yeyey 'quiver-old' = 'very old' * lawlaw 'shiny' ? n?mnay lawlaw 'shiny-smart' = 'very smart, brilliant' * ? Some languages would use ideophones for such intensifying uses. But I don't believe that the Mwotlap intensifiers qualify as ideophones. These words are indeed ? as Ekkehard rightly points out ? reminiscent of the lexically-specific intensifiers of English, such as brand new, chock full, boiling hot... French also has rouge sang (intensely red), and phrases like fier comme Artaban, riche comme Cr?sus... best Alex ________________________________ Alex Fran?ois LaTTiCe ? CNRS?ENS?Sorbonne nouvelle Australian National University Academia page ? Personal homepage ________________________________ On Wed, 17 Jun 2020 at 13:06, Majigeen Aminata > wrote: Dear all, I am currently working on what are called ?adverbs? (see words un bold) in wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (West Africa) has specific words that only work with some colors: white, black, red and each word-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. weex t?ll: extremely white (it can't be whiter) ?uul kukk: extremely black (it can't be more black) xonq coyy: extremely red (it can't be more red) Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. They are not commutable. baax lool: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) bees t?q: really new (nobody has ever used it) d?g?r k?cc: extremely hard (it can't be harder) diis gann: really heavy (very difficult to carry) fatt taraj: extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) fess dell: extremely full (it can't be fuller) forox toll: really acidic (it can't be more acidic) g?tt ndugur: really short (he can't be shorter) jeex t?kk: completely finished, ... In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude. I would like to know if there are languages ??that work like that and what is the terminology used for this kind of construction. Can someone also recommend me new documentation on the definition of the concepts of verbs, adverbs, adjectives? in African languages? Thanks and regards. Aminata _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From honohiiri at yandex.ru Wed Jun 17 14:42:13 2020 From: honohiiri at yandex.ru (Idiatov Dmitry) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 17:42:13 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <141931592404496@mail.yandex.ru> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natalevs at gmail.com Wed Jun 17 16:42:10 2020 From: natalevs at gmail.com (Natalia Levshina) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 18:42:10 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: <53258.217.238.217.61.1592396538.webmail@webmail.zedat.fu-berlin.de> References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> <53258.217.238.217.61.1592396538.webmail@webmail.zedat.fu-berlin.de> Message-ID: Dear Aminata, I think it might be useful to check Carita Paradis's study of English degree modifiers: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256398339_Degree_Modifiers_of_Adjectives_in_Spoken_British_English It has nothing to do with African languages, but it offers a few useful terminological distinctions. I fully agree with you that the term "intensifiers" is too vague here. Adjectives that represent an ultimate point on a scale are called "extreme" adjectives. Examples in English are excellent, huge, minute, terrible, disastrous and brilliant. They have a "superlative" meaning component in them and therefore are normally not used in the superlative form, e.g. *hugest or *the most disastrous. I also wanted to mention that the semantics of expressions like "completely finished" and "extremely hard" from your list of examples is slightly different. I don't know how well the English translations match the original examples, but in English the modifier "completely" means the total presence of some quality ("all or nothing", e.g. finished or not finished). In Paradis' framework, such degree adverbs are called "maximizers". Other examples are absolutely, perfectly, totally, entirely, utterly and (sometimes) quite. In contrast, "extremely" presupposes a scale (a bit hard, very hard, extremely hard). Reinforcing adverbs of this type are called "boosters". In addition to extremely, this class includes very, awfully, frightfully, highly, jolly, most and terribly. So there can be subtle differences between the expressions in that regard. By the way, Russian has expressions with colour adjectives (and some others), such as "whiter than white", "darker than dark", which represent the extreme degree (nothing can't be whiter or darker). They are used in poetic contexts or idiomatically (turn whiter than white = turn very pale with fear or other emotions). Best wishes, Natalia On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 2:33 PM "Ekkehard K?nig" wrote: > Dear Aminata, > > I have never seen adverbs of this kind before. Incidentally, I think the > term "degree adverb" would be a good designation. In English and European > languages upgrading expressions of this kind are usually called > 'BOOSTERS'. > > Even though very different, your data remind me of the formation of > adjectival compounds in Germanic languages (ice-cold, crystal clear, > pitch-black, etc.). These are certainly based on comparisons, but spelling > out the comparison might no longer make sense. I haven given you some > English examples, but the phenomenon is much more wide-spread in German. > Here are a few examples, with literal translations into English: > b?renstark 'bear-strong', hundem?de 'dog-tired', br?hwarm 'broth-warm', > sauschlecht 'sow-bad', stockdunkel 'stickdark', etc. What is similar to > your cases is that each adjective takes a different noun as booster, even > though some may come to be used for several adjectives. > (cf. Koenig, E. (2017) "The comparative basis of identification". In: M. > Napoli & M. Ravetto (eds.) Exploring Intensification. Amsterdam: > Benjamins.) > > So, here is a potentially related phenomenon, though not exactly what you > are looking for. > > Very best, > > Ekkehard > > > > > > > Dear all, > > I am currently workingon what are called ?adverbs? (see words un bold) in > > wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (WestAfrica) has specific > words > > that only work with some colors: white, black, red and eachword-adverb > > match only with its color, they are not commutable. > > > > weext?ll:extremely white (it can't be whiter) > > > > ?uulkukk:extremely black (it can't be more black) > > > > xonqcoyy:extremely red (it can't be more red) > > > > Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as > well. > > They are not commutable. > > > > > > baax lool: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) > > > > bees t?q:really new (nobody has ever used it) > > > > d?g?r k?cc:extremely hard (it can't be harder) > > > > diis gann:really heavy (very difficult to carry) > > > > fatt taraj:extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) > > > > fess dell:extremely full (it can't be fuller) > > > > forox toll:really acidic (it can't be more acidic) > > > > g?tt ndugur:really short (he can't be shorter) > > > > jeex t?kk:completely finished, ... > > > > > > In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me > > because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words > > mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude.I > > would like to knowif there are languages that work like that and what is > > the terminology usedfor this kind of construction. Can someone also > > recommend me new documentationon the definition of the concepts of verbs, > > adverbs, adjectives? in Africanlanguages? > > > > Thanks and regards. > > > > Aminata > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Lingtyp mailing list > > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -- Natalia Levshina Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Wundtlaan 1, 6525 XD Nijmegen The Netherlands -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jb77 at buffalo.edu Wed Jun 17 16:51:35 2020 From: jb77 at buffalo.edu (Bohnemeyer, Juergen) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 16:51:35 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <2100f0c3-7a92-2bfb-011d-24b97ebf8acb@Uni-Erfurt.De> <923C2D06-584A-45AE-8DEF-F88685E15EBA@buffalo.edu> <07def9c846ce4100846bb1406c809eda@ling.su.se> <04f0ac16ca8d4776816aaca299524fdf@ling.su.se> Message-ID: <252F1B6A-D5E4-4BD6-ADBB-660397690EF2@buffalo.edu> Dear Adam ? Thanks for your questions! My sense is that some languages have a productive open class of adverbs and others do not. In the latter kind of language (e.g., Mayan languages), expressions that one would traditionally treat as adverbs because they combine directly with the verb or some verbal projection are functional expressions of varying subtypes. In the former - and here I would include all Indo-European languages as far as I know - the vast majority of adverbs are not functional expressions. The problem is that since we traditionally treat all non-phrasal adverbial modifiers as adverbs, the open adverb class will in such languages swallow up a lot of adverbial or adsentential particles that are semantically clearly functional elements - e.g., focus particles, adverbial quantifiers, and all kinds of interjections. So the (or one?) inherent weakness of my definition is that I would like to exclude those particles from getting sucked into the adverb category, but unfortunately I do not know how. In my thinking, this is an instance of the general ?leakiness? (to borrow Sally Rice? phrase) of grammars. (It seems that some Generative Grammarians would do away altogether with the adverb as a lexical category, but that strikes me too broad a brush.) As to closed classes of adjectives, I would still want to treat those as lexical categories, so I was wrong to include _major_ (in ?major lexical category?) in my definition. The definition of ?lexical category? carries a lot of weight in my definition of ?functional expression? - really the bulk of it. So the question is can we independently define ?lexical category? in order to avoid circularity? Let me try: a ?lexical category? is a class of expressions defined in terms of shared morphosyntactic properties. The members of lexical categories are inherently suitable for expressing ?at-issue? content and are backgrounded only when they appear in certain syntactic positions (e.g., attributive as opposed to predicative adjectives). Their combinatorial types (e.g., in a Categorial Grammar framework) are relatively simple. They express concepts of basic ontological categories. (On this approach, lexical categories share the property of expressing primarily at-issue content with functional expressions that are not pragmatically redundant, such as modals, negation, demonstratives, etc.. They differ from those functional expressions in their combinatorial properties.) It might be best to treat this list of properties as defining the notion of ?lexical category? as a cluster/radio/prototype concept. As to classifiers. Mayan languages have two flavors of numeral classifiers, first distinguished by Berlin (1968) in Tseltal. He calls them ?inherent? vs. ?temporary? classifiers. Inherent classifiers are redundant and thus fall into the class of functional expressions I call ?restrictors? - the class that also contains tense, viewpoint aspect, gender, noun class, and definiteness. Yucatec has only three of these - one for humans and animals, one for plants and hair, and one for inanimates. OTOH the so-called temporary classifiers form a very large set and are in Yucatec actually primarily used in nonverbal predication. They are non-redundant and I consider them to belong to the same class of functional expressions as negation, modals, and do on. Best ? Juergen > On Jun 17, 2020, at 3:22 AM, Adam James Ross Tallman wrote: > > Dear Juergen, > > Just a clarifying question (I'm interested because I've attempted to develop a method to quantify the degree to which some set of morphemes is morphologized and I have struggled with defining "functional" in a consistent fashion, and actually I have just given up) > > Wouldn't your definition imply that anything that was not an open lexical class would be "functional"? > > There's plenty of languages that have a closed class of adjectives - shouldn't these be "functional" in your sense? > > Maybe adjectives could be added to your class of morphemes that tend to become functional regardless of contact [?]... but just in case they are not a lexical class. But do adjectives express redundant information or not? > I'm also skeptical that an easy decision can be made regarding the lexical vs. functional status of classifiers, but this is perhaps outside the scope of your research question. > (I would take a close look at Krasnoukhova's dissertation on the Noun Phrase in South American languages for both of these issues) > > best, > > Adam > > > > On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 8:25 AM ?sten Dahl wrote: > Thanks, Frans, for the link to this paper, which I had not seen. (I did read Fehling?s paper, however, quite long ago.) For the record, though: although Peust claims (reasonably, it seems) that Egyptian is the ultimate source, he doesn?t say that Greek got it straight from there. Instead, he says that it is remarkable that the definite article shows up in Greek in the same time period as the Greeks took over the Phoenician script, thus suggesting Phoenician, a Semitic language, as the proximate source for the Greek definite article. > > > > In light of Peust?s claims, it is maybe Egyptian that is most relevant for J?rgen?s project. Although who knows if they didn?t get the article from somebody else? > > > > ? ?sten > > > > > Fr?n: Uni KN > Skickat: den 17 juni 2020 00:04 > Till: ?sten Dahl > Kopia: LINGTYP > ?mne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > > > Close, ?sten: they got it from Egyptian. Or so argues Carsten Peust, in G?ttinger Beitr?ge zur Sprachwissenschaft 2, 1999, S. 99-120 > > > > F?lle von strukturellem Einfluss des ?gyptischen auf europ?ische Sprachen > > (1) Die Herausbildung des definiten Artikels, (2) Die Entwicklung des grammatischen femininen Genus, (3) Die inklusive Z?hlweise von Zeitintervallen > > > > https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/2274/1/Peust_Faelle_von_strukturellen_Einfluessen_1999.pdf > > > > Similarly > > LEVIN, Saul 1992: Studies in comparative grammar: I. The definite article, an Egyptian/Semitic/Indo?European etymology, in General Linguistics 32:1?-15. > > FEHLING, Detlev 1980: The origins of European syntax, in Folia Linguistica Historica 1:353-387. > > > > Frans > > > > > > > On 16. Jun 2020, at 18:25, ?sten Dahl wrote: > > > > This topic happened to come up in my recent conversation with Martin Haspelmath on his blog (https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361). There are also some references there to earlier literature. > > I would not bet on the definite article in Ancient Greek as an independent development. After all, definite articles were around in the neighbouring Semitic languages. If the Greeks got their alphabet from the Semitic-speaking peoples, they could also get the article from them, I think. > > - ?sten > > > -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- > Fr?n: Lingtyp F?r Bohnemeyer, Juergen > Skickat: den 16 juni 2020 15:44 > Till: LINGTYP > ?mne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Christian ? Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I?d just like to try a clarification: > > > > On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann wrote: > > > To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing. > > > > I?m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much inferencing the hearer has to do. > > Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still facilitates processing by further boosting the predictability of the referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing the gender information is minimal (that?s where grammaticalization comes in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage. > > Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech communities that get by happily without them), so that can?t be the reason why we grammaticalize them (that?s my thinking, anyway). > > (As to Giv?n, yes, absolutely, I?m well aware that I?m merely trying to retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of functionalism :-)) > > Best ? Juergen > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > -- > Adam J.R. Tallman > PhD, University of Texas at Austin > Investigador del Museo de Etnograf?a y Folklore, la Paz > ELDP -- Postdoctorante > CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) From boye at hum.ku.dk Wed Jun 17 17:10:39 2020 From: boye at hum.ku.dk (Kasper Boye) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 17:10:39 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: Dear all, I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas about the job grammatical items do. There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar?s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. With best wishes, Kasper References Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af David Gil Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Juergen and all, My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. Best, David McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bernhard at ling.su.se Wed Jun 17 20:10:00 2020 From: bernhard at ling.su.se (=?Windows-1252?Q?Bernhard_W=E4lchli?=) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 20:10:00 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de>, Message-ID: <4009d510b53e48bd8d524276121981f5@ling.su.se> Dear all, Several of the ideas mentioned have in some or other form been around for a very long time. Consider, for instance, Anton Marty?s distinction between autosemantic and synsemantic expressions. https://stanford.library.sydney.edu.au/entries/marty/ and G. K. Zipf?s findings that frequency correlates with the number of meanings of an expression. [And, of course, also Marty and Zipf have their predecessors.] Zipf, George Kingsley. 1945. The meaning-frequency relationship of words. The Journal of General Psychology 33:2, 251-256 ?If we postulate (A) that man is always economical in his speech, and if we assume (B) that there are M number of different meanings to be verbalized by a given vocabulary, then we see the emergence of two conflicting economies in allocating meanings to words. One economy (a) will be the speaker's economy which would favor a single word of 100 per cent frequency with M different meanings; although such an arrangement would cause the auditor extreme work in understanding, it would save the speaker the work of selecting particular words with particular meanings. On the other hand (b) there will be an auditor's economy which, for the auditor's greater ease of comprehension and to the disadvantage of the speaker, would favor a different word for each different meaning, and therefore favor a vocabulary of M different words with a much lower average relative frequency. Hence there are two opposing drives: the one (a) making for a vocabulary of a single word with M meanings and 100 per cent frequency, and the other (b) making for a vocabulary of M different words with one meaning per word and with a lower average relative frequency. As a result (C) of the above opposing drives we may expect to find in a sizeable sample of running speech some sort of balance between the n-number of different words on the one hand and their frequency of occurrence on the other.? (1945: 255) [Alas, linguistic terms are subject to Zipf?s meaning-frequency relationship as much as expressions of natural languages. ?Fore-/background(ing)? are good examples of terms that are used in quite different senses in the literature.] Given that linguistic items vastly differ in frequency (incidentally, another of Zipf?s findings), it is not particularly surprising that some items will always be more synsemantic than others (to different extents in different languages or proto-proto-languages). It seems to me that it does not speak against these and similar ideas that these wheels are constantly reinvented in linguistics ? with slight variations. Bernhard ________________________________ From: Lingtyp on behalf of Kasper Boye Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2020 7:10:39 PM To: David Gil; lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Cc: Peter Harder Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear all, I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas about the job grammatical items do. There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar?s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. With best wishes, Kasper References Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af David Gil Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Juergen and all, My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. Best, David McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ebender at uw.edu Wed Jun 17 20:40:04 2020 From: ebender at uw.edu (Emily M. Bender) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 13:40:04 -0700 Subject: [Lingtyp] Overview paper for Terraling Message-ID: Dear all, Is there an overview paper for the Terraling project ( http://www.terraling.com/)? A student and I would like to get a better sense of how it conceptualizes language properties, and how that relates to the conceptualization in other resources such as WALS or the Grammar Matrix. Thanks! Emily -- Emily M. Bender (she/her) Howard and Frances Nostrand Endowed Professor Department of Linguistics Faculty Director, CLMS University of Washington Twitter: @emilymbender -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From boye at hum.ku.dk Wed Jun 17 21:00:48 2020 From: boye at hum.ku.dk (Kasper Boye) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 21:00:48 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <4009d510b53e48bd8d524276121981f5@ling.su.se> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de>, <4009d510b53e48bd8d524276121981f5@ling.su.se> Message-ID: Dear Bernhard and all, The idea that J?rgen Bohnemeyer cited (viz. that grammatical items are those that are conventionalized as carriers of background information) certainly has predecessors, but I believe it presents a rather new take on the problem of defining grammatical items. Firstly, the auto- vs. synsemantic (or categorematic vs. syncategorematic) distinction, which can indeed be traced back at least to Aristotle, captures only the fact that grammatical items depend on host items, not the fact that they contribute to prioritizing the parts of complex messages. Secondly, while frequency unquestionably plays a role in grammaticalization, grammar and grammaticalization cannot be reduced to frequency (perhaps this is also not what you were saying, Bernhard). For one thing, individuals with agrammatic aphasia have problems producing grammatical items, but no problems producing frequent items (e.g. Hachard 2015; Mart?nez-Ferreiro et al. 2019). Best wishes, Kasper References Hatchard, R. (2015). A construction-based approach to spoken language in aphasia. University of Sheffield thesis. Mart?nez-Ferreiro, S., R. Bastiaanse & K. Boye. 2019. "Functional and usage-based approaches to aphasia: the grammatical-lexical distinction and the role of frequency". Aphasiology, DOI: 10.1080/02687038.2019.1615335. Fra: Bernhard W?lchli Sendt: 17. juni 2020 22:10 Til: Kasper Boye ; David Gil ; lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Cc: Peter Harder Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear all, Several of the ideas mentioned have in some or other form been around for a very long time. Consider, for instance, Anton Marty's distinction between autosemantic and synsemantic expressions. https://stanford.library.sydney.edu.au/entries/marty/ and G. K. Zipf's findings that frequency correlates with the number of meanings of an expression. [And, of course, also Marty and Zipf have their predecessors.] Zipf, George Kingsley. 1945. The meaning-frequency relationship of words. The Journal of General Psychology 33:2, 251-256 "If we postulate (A) that man is always economical in his speech, and if we assume (B) that there are M number of different meanings to be verbalized by a given vocabulary, then we see the emergence of two conflicting economies in allocating meanings to words. One economy (a) will be the speaker's economy which would favor a single word of 100 per cent frequency with M different meanings; although such an arrangement would cause the auditor extreme work in understanding, it would save the speaker the work of selecting particular words with particular meanings. On the other hand (b) there will be an auditor's economy which, for the auditor's greater ease of comprehension and to the disadvantage of the speaker, would favor a different word for each different meaning, and therefore favor a vocabulary of M different words with a much lower average relative frequency. Hence there are two opposing drives: the one (a) making for a vocabulary of a single word with M meanings and 100 per cent frequency, and the other (b) making for a vocabulary of M different words with one meaning per word and with a lower average relative frequency. As a result (C) of the above opposing drives we may expect to find in a sizeable sample of running speech some sort of balance between the n-number of different words on the one hand and their frequency of occurrence on the other." (1945: 255) [Alas, linguistic terms are subject to Zipf's meaning-frequency relationship as much as expressions of natural languages. "Fore-/background(ing)" are good examples of terms that are used in quite different senses in the literature.] Given that linguistic items vastly differ in frequency (incidentally, another of Zipf's findings), it is not particularly surprising that some items will always be more synsemantic than others (to different extents in different languages or proto-proto-languages). It seems to me that it does not speak against these and similar ideas that these wheels are constantly reinvented in linguistics - with slight variations. Bernhard ________________________________ From: Lingtyp > on behalf of Kasper Boye > Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2020 7:10:39 PM To: David Gil; lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Cc: Peter Harder Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear all, I would like to first respond to David Gil's comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer's ideas about the job grammatical items do. There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining "grammatical" on the market. One is Christian Lehmann's (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder's and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d'?tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann's remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of 'audience design': the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) - it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar's schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. With best wishes, Kasper References Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca's aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 Fra: Lingtyp > P? vegne af David Gil Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Juergen and all, My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra - see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. Best, David McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and 'pro-drop' in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715-750. McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: Dear colleagues - I'm looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By 'functional categories', I mean the 'grammatical categories' of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. Here is what I mean by 'innovation': language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the "Dark Ages". In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn't. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I'm particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker's communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer's inference load. This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn't translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express "at issue" content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. I hope that wasn't too convoluted ;-) Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. - Best - Juergen -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kofi at hku.hk Thu Jun 18 08:56:19 2020 From: kofi at hku.hk (Kofi Yakpo) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 16:56:19 +0800 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Dear Aminata, As Dmitry points out, these words would normally be referred to as ideophones in African linguistics. Most ideophones in "African languages" (they are more of an areal than a genetic feature) are lexically/constructionally restricted in one or the other way, so there is not much need to invent a new label for them besides "ideophone". Colour-specific ideophones can be found in all Atlantic-Congo languages I am familiarity with, and the European-lexifier creoles of Africa incl. Kriyol (Casamance, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde). You could check the work of Mark Dingemanse and the works he cites for an overview of most of the literature. Best, Kofi ???? Dr Kofi Yakpo ? Associate Professor University of Hong Kong ? Linguistics ? Scholars Hub Resident Scholar: Chi Sun College My publications @ zenodo On the Outcomes of Prosodic Contact A Grammar of Pichi On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 7:07 PM Majigeen Aminata wrote: > Dear all, > > I am currently working on what are called ?adverbs? (see words un bold) in > wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (West Africa) has specific words > that only work with some colors: *white*, *black*, *red* and each > word-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. > > weex* t?ll*: extremely white (it can't be whiter) > > ?uul *kukk*: extremely black (it can't be more black) > > xonq *coyy*: extremely red (it can't be more red) > > Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. > They are not commutable. > > baax *lool*: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) > > bees* t?q:* really new (nobody has ever used it) > > d?g*?r k?cc*: extremely hard (it can't be harder) > > diis* gann*: really heavy (very difficult to carry) > > fatt* taraj*: extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) > > fess *dell*: extremely full (it can't be fuller) > > forox* toll*: really acidic (it can't be more acidic) > > g?tt *ndugur*: really short (he can't be shorter) > > jeex* t?kk*: completely finished, ... > > In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me > because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words > mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude. I > would like to know if there are languages ??that work like that and what is > the terminology used for this kind of construction. Can someone also > recommend me new documentation on the definition of the concepts of verbs, > adverbs, adjectives? in African languages? > > Thanks and regards. > > Aminata > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From haspelmath at shh.mpg.de Thu Jun 18 09:21:08 2020 From: haspelmath at shh.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 11:21:08 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Yes, they remind one of ideophones, but it seems that Alex Fran?ois's term "lexically specific intensifiers" captures best what these forms are (though I would prefer "degree modifiers", to avoid confusion with self-intensifiers). It seems that "ideophones" are generally understood more broadly, because they do not have to be degree modifiers (and maybe more narrowly at the same time, because they have to be "marked", and "depict sensory imagery", according to Dingemanse: http://ideophone.org/working-definition/). It may be worth studying lexically specific degree modifiers more systematically across languages. Ekkehard K?nig mentioned English "ice-cold", "crystal clear", "pitch-black", and German "hunde-m?de" [dog-tired], "stock-dunkel" [stick-dark], and Jussi Ylikoski mentioned Finnish "upo-uusi" (extremeley new) ? these are usually treated as marginal phenomena, but the fact that such lexically specific degree modifiers are found on at least three different continents (Wolof, Mwotlap, English) may point to something more general. Martin P.S. The term "adverb" is not wrong, but I try to avoid it, because it has been applied to a very heterogeneous range of phenomena. Am 18.06.20 um 10:56 schrieb Kofi Yakpo: > Dear Aminata, > > As Dmitry points out, these words would normally be referred to as > ideophones in African linguistics. Most ideophones in "African > languages" (they are more of an areal than a genetic feature) are > lexically/constructionally restricted in one or the other way, so > there is not much need to invent a new label for them besides > "ideophone". Colour-specific ideophones can be found in all > Atlantic-Congo languages I am familiarity with, and the > European-lexifier creoles of Africa incl. Kriyol (Casamance, > Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde). > > You could check the work of Mark Dingemanse and the works he cites for > an overview of most of the literature. > > Best, > Kofi > ???? > Dr Kofi Yakpo?? Associate Professor > University of Hong Kong ? Linguistics > ? Scholars Hub > > Resident Scholar:Chi Sun College > > > My publications @ zenodo > > On the Outcomes of Prosodic Contact > A Grammar of Pichi > > > On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 7:07 PM Majigeen Aminata > > wrote: > > Dear all, > > I am currently working on what are called ?adverbs? (see words un > bold) in wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (West Africa) > has specific words that only work with some colors: /white/, > /black/, /red/ and each word-adverb match only with its color, > they are not commutable. > > weex*t?ll*: extremely white (it can't be whiter) > > ?uul *kukk*: extremely black (it can't be more black) > > xonq *coyy*: extremely red (it can't be more red) > > Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them > as well. They are not commutable. > > baax *lool*: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) > > bees*t?q:* really new (nobody has ever used it) > > d?g*?r k?cc*: extremely hard (it can't be harder) > > diis*gann*: really heavy (very difficult to carry) > > fatt*taraj*: extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) > > fess *dell*: extremely full (it can't be fuller) > > forox*toll*: really acidic (it can't be more acidic) > > g?tt *ndugur*: really short (he can't be shorter) > > jeex*t?kk*: completely finished, ... > > In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not > convince me because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the > verbs. These words mean that the state or action of the verb is at > its end of completude. I would like to know if there are languages > ??that work like that and what is the terminology used for this > kind of construction. Can someone also recommend me new > documentation on the definition of the concepts of verbs, adverbs, > adjectives? in African languages? > > Thanks and regards. > > Aminata > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Martin Haspelmath (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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From henrik at ling.su.se Thu Jun 18 12:18:29 2020 From: henrik at ling.su.se (Henrik Liljegren) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 12:18:29 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: <1952472239.1338554.1592344558843@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1952472239.1338554.1592344558843.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1952472239.1338554.1592344558843@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <83077a82f9284a5abc515a3618bbc274@ling.su.se> Dear Majigeen and all, What you describe is strikingly similar to what I have found in Indo-Aryan Palula (Pakistan). I refer to them as co-lexicalised intensifiers (I quote from my own grammar below, p. 184): ?There is a number of more or less standard compounds with an adjective/adverb and a matching intensifying element, not much different from the effect other degree adverbs have on the modified constituent. Such an intensifier is either uniquely occurring with a particular adjective/adverb, or occurs only with a limited set of adjectives/adverbs. It seems those elements are mostly made up of a single closed syllable, as can be seen in Table 8.9. Table 8.9: Examples of co-lexicalised intensifiers pha? pa??aru ?white as a sheet? tap c?hi? ?pitch dark? kham ki???u ?pitch black? bak pr?al ?shining bright? ??u lh?ilu ?bright red? ?an? khilay? ?all alone? tak ze? ?bright yellow? ?ap mho?ru ?extremely sweet? pak kaant?iru ?mad as a hat? ?am ?id?alu ?ice-cold? pak b?idri ?completely clear? ?am n?ilu ?deep green/blue? Strikingly similar compounds have been observed in several other languages in the region, some of them even involving similar or identical forms as those found in Palula: e.g., in Dameli (Perder 2013: 163) and Khowar (Elena Bashir, pc, and own field notes).? Liljegren, Henrik. A Grammar of Palula. Studies in Diversity Linguistics 8. Berlin: Language Science Press, 2016. The region I refer to above is the mountainous Hindu Kush-Karakorum of northern Pakistan and surrounding areas in adjacent countries (Afghanistan and India), but the phenomenon mi?ht very well be more widespread in South and West Asia. Best, Henrik From: Lingtyp On Behalf Of Majigeen Aminata Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2020 11:56 PM To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs Dear all, I am currently working on what are called ?adverbs? (see words un bold) in wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (West Africa) has specific words that only work with some colors: white, black, red and each word-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. weex t?ll: extremely white (it can't be whiter) ?uul kukk: extremely black (it can't be more black) xonq coyy: extremely red (it can't be more red) Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. They are not commutable. baax lool: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) bees t?q: really new (nobody has ever used it) d?g?r k?cc: extremely hard (it can't be harder) diis gann: really heavy (very difficult to carry) fatt taraj: extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) fess dell: extremely full (it can't be fuller) forox toll: really acidic (it can't be more acidic) g?tt ndugur: really short (he can't be shorter) jeex t?kk: completely finished, ... In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude. They are not onomatopoeias, Wolof also has them and they are different. t?kk j?ppet: catch fire abruptly on the way up (j?ppet expresses the way of catching fire suddenly on the way up njool t?lli: to be straight t?lli ?are: to be stiffly straight, Thanks and regards. Aminata Bonjour, Je suis entrain de travailler sur ce qu?on appelle adverbes dans la litt?rature. Le wolof a par exemple des mots sp?cifiques qui ne marchent qu?avec certaines couleurs : blanc, noir, rouge et chaque mot-adverbe ne marche qu?avec sa couleur, ils ne sont pas interchangeables. weex t?ll : extr?mement blanc (on ne pas ?tre plus blanc) ?uul kukk : extr?mement noir (on ne pas ?tre plus noir) xonq coyy : extr?mement D?autres vont avec des verbes d??tats et leur sont sp?cifiques aussi. Ils ne sont pas interchangeables. baax lool : extr?mement gentil (on ne pas ?tre plus gentil) bees t?q : vraiment nouveau (personne ne l?a jamais utilis?) d?g?r k?cc : extr?mement dur (on ne pas ?tre plus dur) diis gann: vraiment lourd (tres difficile de le soulever) fatt taraj : extr?mement bouch? (on ne pas ?tre plus bouch?) fess dell: extr?mement plein (on ne pas ?tre plus plein) forox toll: vraiment acide (on ne pas ?tre plus acide) g?tt ndugur: vraiment court (on ne pas ?tre plus court) jeex t?kk: tout ? fait termin?, etc? En wolof on les appelle des intensifieurs ou intensificateurs mais ce terme ne me convainc pas car il peut porter ? confusion. Ils n?intensifient pas. Ces mots veulent dirent que l??tat ou l?action du verbe est ? son extr?mit?. Ce ne sont pas des onomatop?es. Le wolof a aussi des onomatop?es diff?rentes de ces mots. Je voudrais savoir s?il existe des langues qui fonctionnent comme ?a et quelle est la terminologie employ?e pour ce genre de construction Est-ce quelqu?un peut aussi me recommander de la documentation nouvelle sur la d?finition des notions de verbes, adverbes, adjectifs? dans les langues africaines ? Merci Aminata -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From oesten at ling.su.se Thu Jun 18 12:29:00 2020 From: oesten at ling.su.se (=?utf-8?B?w5ZzdGVuIERhaGw=?=) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 12:29:00 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I would agree with Martin here. I think ideophones can have different functions, so just calling them ?ideophones? would be only half the story anyway. It is also worth mentioning that lexically specific intensifiers may start out with a transparent meaning which is later bleached as the intensifier generalizes. In spoken Swedish, the noun j?tte ?giant? was prefixed to stor ?big? as a lexically specific intensifier, but is now frequently used with just any adjective, e.g. j?ttebra ?very good?. Prescriptivists were not happy with combinations such as j?tteliten ?(lit.) giant small?. * ?sten Fr?n: Lingtyp F?r Martin Haspelmath Skickat: den 18 juni 2020 11:21 Till: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org ?mne: Re: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs Yes, they remind one of ideophones, but it seems that Alex Fran?ois's term "lexically specific intensifiers" captures best what these forms are (though I would prefer "degree modifiers", to avoid confusion with self-intensifiers). It seems that "ideophones" are generally understood more broadly, because they do not have to be degree modifiers (and maybe more narrowly at the same time, because they have to be "marked", and "depict sensory imagery", according to Dingemanse: http://ideophone.org/working-definition/). It may be worth studying lexically specific degree modifiers more systematically across languages. Ekkehard K?nig mentioned English "ice-cold", "crystal clear", "pitch-black", and German "hunde-m?de" [dog-tired], "stock-dunkel" [stick-dark], and Jussi Ylikoski mentioned Finnish "upo-uusi" (extremeley new) ? these are usually treated as marginal phenomena, but the fact that such lexically specific degree modifiers are found on at least three different continents (Wolof, Mwotlap, English) may point to something more general. Martin P.S. The term "adverb" is not wrong, but I try to avoid it, because it has been applied to a very heterogeneous range of phenomena. Am 18.06.20 um 10:56 schrieb Kofi Yakpo: Dear Aminata, As Dmitry points out, these words would normally be referred to as ideophones in African linguistics. Most ideophones in "African languages" (they are more of an areal than a genetic feature) are lexically/constructionally restricted in one or the other way, so there is not much need to invent a new label for them besides "ideophone". Colour-specific ideophones can be found in all Atlantic-Congo languages I am familiarity with, and the European-lexifier creoles of Africa incl. Kriyol (Casamance, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde). You could check the work of Mark Dingemanse and the works he cites for an overview of most of the literature. Best, Kofi ???? Dr Kofi Yakpo ? Associate Professor University of Hong Kong ? Linguistics ? Scholars Hub Resident Scholar: Chi Sun College My publications @ zenodo On the Outcomes of Prosodic Contact A Grammar of Pichi On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 7:07 PM Majigeen Aminata > wrote: Dear all, I am currently working on what are called ?adverbs? (see words un bold) in wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (West Africa) has specific words that only work with some colors: white, black, red and each word-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. weex t?ll: extremely white (it can't be whiter) ?uul kukk: extremely black (it can't be more black) xonq coyy: extremely red (it can't be more red) Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. They are not commutable. baax lool: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) bees t?q: really new (nobody has ever used it) d?g?r k?cc: extremely hard (it can't be harder) diis gann: really heavy (very difficult to carry) fatt taraj: extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) fess dell: extremely full (it can't be fuller) forox toll: really acidic (it can't be more acidic) g?tt ndugur: really short (he can't be shorter) jeex t?kk: completely finished, ... In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude. I would like to know if there are languages ??that work like that and what is the terminology used for this kind of construction. Can someone also recommend me new documentation on the definition of the concepts of verbs, adverbs, adjectives? in African languages? Thanks and regards. Aminata _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Martin Haspelmath (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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellenparker at gmail.com Thu Jun 18 12:43:47 2020 From: kellenparker at gmail.com (Kellen Parker van Dam) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 14:43:47 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: <83077a82f9284a5abc515a3618bbc274@ling.su.se> References: <1952472239.1338554.1592344558843.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1952472239.1338554.1592344558843@mail.yahoo.com> <83077a82f9284a5abc515a3618bbc274@ling.su.se> Message-ID: Dear all, Very interesting! This also looks incredibly similar to something which I've described for Tangsa-Nocte (Northern Naga) varieties within Tibeto-Burman. I also was hesitant to call them intensifiers for the same reasons mentioned. In the case of Tangsa-Noctem there is also a metrically constricted reduplication of the modifier itself, but otherwise looks very much like this same sort of thing. They are not commutable (although some terms do share modifier shapes, e.g. *black, hard, rough* all have the most common of the modifiers shared between them, and they are also generally only found in more "basic" descriptive terms. An older write up of mine on this is here , which is limited only to the colour terms, but they occur for a much wider range of meanings than just that. Quite happy to see these examples, thank you for sharing. Kellen On Thu, 18 Jun 2020 at 14:19, Henrik Liljegren wrote: > Dear Majigeen and all, > > What you describe is strikingly similar to what I have found in Indo-Aryan > Palula (Pakistan). I refer to them as co-lexicalised intensifiers (I quote > from my own grammar below, p. 184): > > > > ?There is a number of more or less standard compounds with an > adjective/adverb and a matching intensifying element, not much different > from the effect other > > degree adverbs have on the modified constituent. Such an intensifier is > either uniquely occurring with a particular adjective/adverb, or occurs > only with a limited > > set of adjectives/adverbs. It seems those elements are mostly made up of a > single closed syllable, as can be seen in Table 8.9. > > > > Table 8.9: Examples of co-lexicalised intensifiers > > *pha? pa??aru *?white as a sheet? *tap **c?h**i? *?pitch > dark? > > *kham ki???u *?pitch black? *bak pr?al *?shining > bright? > > *??u lh?ilu *?bright red? *?an? khilay? > *?all alone? > > *tak ze? *?bright yellow? *?ap mho?ru *?extremely > sweet? > > *pak kaant?iru *?mad as a hat? *?am ?id?alu * > ?ice-cold? > > *pak b?idri *?completely clear? *?am n?ilu *?deep > green/blue? > > > > Strikingly similar compounds have been observed in several other languages > in the region, some of them even involving similar or identical forms as > those found in Palula: e.g., in Dameli (Perder 2013: 163) and Khowar (Elena > Bashir, pc, and own field notes).? > > > > Liljegren, Henrik. *A Grammar of Palula*. Studies in Diversity > Linguistics 8. Berlin: Language Science Press, 2016. > > > > The region I refer to above is the mountainous Hindu Kush-Karakorum of > northern Pakistan and surrounding areas in adjacent countries (Afghanistan > and India), but the phenomenon mi?ht very well be more widespread in South > and West Asia. > > > > Best, > > Henrik > > > > > > *From:* Lingtyp *On Behalf Of > *Majigeen Aminata > *Sent:* Tuesday, June 16, 2020 11:56 PM > *To:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > *Subject:* [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs > > > > Dear all, > > I am currently working on what are called ?adverbs? (see words un bold) in > wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (West Africa) has specific words > that only work with some colors: *white*, *black*, *red* and each > word-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. > > weex* t?ll*: extremely white (it can't be whiter) > > ?uul *kukk*: extremely black (it can't be more black) > > xonq *coyy*: extremely red (it can't be more red) > > Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. > They are not commutable. > > baax *lool*: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) > > bees* t?q:* really new (nobody has ever used it) > > d?g*?r k?cc*: extremely hard (it can't be harder) > > diis* gann*: really heavy (very difficult to carry) > > fatt* taraj*: extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) > > fess *dell*: extremely full (it can't be fuller) > > forox* toll*: really acidic (it can't be more acidic) > > g?tt *ndugur*: really short (he can't be shorter) > > jeex* t?kk*: completely finished, ... > > In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me > because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words > mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude. > > They are not onomatopoeias, Wolof also has them and they are different. > > t?kk *j?ppet:* catch fire abruptly on the way up (j?ppet expresses the > way of catching fire suddenly on the way up > njool *t?lli*: to be straight > t?lli *?are*: to be stiffly straight, > > Thanks and regards. > > Aminata > > Bonjour, > > Je suis entrain de travailler sur ce qu?on appelle *adverbes* dans la > litt?rature. Le wolof a par exemple des mots sp?cifiques qui ne marchent > qu?avec certaines couleurs : blanc, noir, rouge et chaque mot-adverbe ne > marche qu?avec sa couleur, ils ne sont pas interchangeables. > > *weex t?ll *: extr?mement blanc (on ne pas ?tre plus > blanc) > > *?uul kukk* : extr?mement noir (on ne pas ?tre plus noir) > > *xonq coyy* : extr?mement > > D?autres vont avec des verbes d??tats et leur sont sp?cifiques aussi. Ils > ne sont pas interchangeables. > > *baax lool* : extr?mement gentil (on ne pas ?tre plus > gentil) > > *bees t?q* : vraiment nouveau (personne ne l?a jamais > utilis?) > > *d?g?r k?cc* : extr?mement dur (on ne pas ?tre plus dur) > > *diis gann*: vraiment lourd (tres difficile de le > soulever) > > *fatt taraj* : extr?mement bouch? (on ne pas ?tre plus > bouch?) > > *fess dell*: extr?mement plein (on ne pas ?tre plus > plein) > > *forox toll:* vraiment acide (on ne pas ?tre plus acide) > > *g?tt ndugur*: vraiment court (on ne pas ?tre plus court) > > *jeex t?kk*: tout ? fait termin?, etc? > > En wolof on les appelle des intensifieurs ou intensificateurs mais ce > terme ne me convainc pas car il peut porter ? confusion. Ils n?intensifient > pas. Ces mots veulent dirent que l??tat ou l?action du verbe est ? son > extr?mit?. > > Ce ne sont pas des onomatop?es. Le wolof a aussi des onomatop?es > diff?rentes de ces mots. Je voudrais savoir s?il existe des langues qui > fonctionnent comme ?a et quelle est la terminologie employ?e pour ce genre > de construction Est-ce quelqu?un peut aussi me recommander de la > documentation nouvelle sur la d?finition des notions de verbes, adverbes, > adjectifs? dans les langues africaines ? > > Merci > > Aminata > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From joeylovestrand at gmail.com Thu Jun 18 13:25:24 2020 From: joeylovestrand at gmail.com (Joey Lovestrand) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 14:25:24 +0100 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: There are similar "ideophones? in Chadic languages. Newman (1968) calls them ?adjectival intensifiers? in Hausa. Blench (2013) refers to ?colour intensifiers? in Mwaghavul. I treat them as a type of ideophone in Barayin (Lovestrand 2019). Note that ?ideophones? in Chadic languages typically have adverb-like morphosyntactic properties. -Joey Blench, R. (2013). Mwaghavul expressives. In H. Tourneux (Ed.), Topics in Chadic Linguistics VII: papers from the 6th Biennial International Colloquium on the Chadic Languages, Villejuif, September 22-23, 2011 (pp. 53?75). Cologne: K?ppe. Lovestrand, Joseph. (2019). Ideophones in Barayin. In *Topics in Chadic Linguistics X: Papers from the 9th Biennial International Colloquium on the Chadic Languages*. Cologne: R?diger K?ppe Verlag. Newman, P. (1968). Ideophones from a syntactic point of view. Journal of West African Languages, 2, 107?117. -- Joseph Lovestrand British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics SOAS University of London On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 1:29 PM ?sten Dahl wrote: > I would agree with Martin here. I think ideophones can have different > functions, so just calling them ?ideophones? would be only half the story > anyway. > > It is also worth mentioning that lexically specific intensifiers may start > out with a transparent meaning which is later bleached as the intensifier > generalizes. In spoken Swedish, the noun *j?tte *?giant? was prefixed to > *stor* ?big? as a lexically specific intensifier, but is now frequently > used with just any adjective, e.g. *j?ttebra* ?very good?. > Prescriptivists were not happy with combinations such as *j?tteliten* > ?(lit.) giant small?. > > > > - ?sten > > > > *Fr?n:* Lingtyp *F?r *Martin > Haspelmath > *Skickat:* den 18 juni 2020 11:21 > *Till:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > *?mne:* Re: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs > > > > Yes, they remind one of ideophones, but it seems that Alex Fran?ois's term > "lexically specific intensifiers" captures best what these forms are > (though I would prefer "degree modifiers", to avoid confusion with > self-intensifiers). > > It seems that "ideophones" are generally understood more broadly, because > they do not have to be degree modifiers (and maybe more narrowly at the > same time, because they have to be "marked", and "depict sensory imagery", > according to Dingemanse: http://ideophone.org/working-definition/). > > It may be worth studying lexically specific degree modifiers more > systematically across languages. Ekkehard K?nig mentioned English > "ice-cold", "crystal clear", "pitch-black", and German "hunde-m?de" > [dog-tired], "stock-dunkel" [stick-dark], and Jussi Ylikoski mentioned > Finnish "upo-uusi" (extremeley new) ? these are usually treated as marginal > phenomena, but the fact that such lexically specific degree modifiers are > found on at least three different continents (Wolof, Mwotlap, English) may > point to something more general. > > Martin > > P.S. The term "adverb" is not wrong, but I try to avoid it, because it has > been applied to a very heterogeneous range of phenomena. > > Am 18.06.20 um 10:56 schrieb Kofi Yakpo: > > Dear Aminata, > > > > As Dmitry points out, these words would normally be referred to as > ideophones in African linguistics. Most ideophones in "African languages" > (they are more of an areal than a genetic feature) are > lexically/constructionally restricted in one or the other way, so there is > not much need to invent a new label for them besides "ideophone". > Colour-specific ideophones can be found in all Atlantic-Congo languages I > am familiarity with, and the European-lexifier creoles of Africa incl. > Kriyol (Casamance, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde). > > > > You could check the work of Mark Dingemanse and the works he cites for an > overview of most of the literature. > > > > Best, > > Kofi > > ???? > > Dr Kofi Yakpo ? Associate Professor > > University of Hong Kong ? Linguistics > ? Scholars Hub > > > Resident Scholar: Chi Sun College > > > > > My publications @ zenodo > > > On the Outcomes of Prosodic Contact > > A Grammar of Pichi > > > > > > On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 7:07 PM Majigeen Aminata < > aminatamajigeen at yahoo.com> wrote: > > Dear all, > > I am currently working on what are called ?adverbs? (see words un bold) in > wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (West Africa) has specific words > that only work with some colors: *white*, *black*, *red* and each > word-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. > > weex* t?ll*: extremely white (it can't be whiter) > > ?uul *kukk*: extremely black (it can't be more black) > > xonq *coyy*: extremely red (it can't be more red) > > Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. > They are not commutable. > > baax *lool*: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) > > bees* t?q:* really new (nobody has ever used it) > > d?g*?r k?cc*: extremely hard (it can't be harder) > > diis* gann*: really heavy (very difficult to carry) > > fatt* taraj*: extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) > > fess *dell*: extremely full (it can't be fuller) > > forox* toll*: really acidic (it can't be more acidic) > > g?tt *ndugur*: really short (he can't be shorter) > > jeex* t?kk*: completely finished, ... > > In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me > because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words > mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude. I > would like to know if there are languages ??that work like that and what is > the terminology used for this kind of construction. Can someone also > recommend me new documentation on the definition of the concepts of verbs, > adverbs, adjectives? in African languages? > > Thanks and regards. > > Aminata > > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Lingtyp mailing list > > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > > Martin Haspelmath (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 > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From haspelmath at shh.mpg.de Thu Jun 18 13:58:41 2020 From: haspelmath at shh.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 15:58:41 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Overview paper for Terraling In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6c049ab1-a86e-68eb-6a59-fb63ca6ed654@shh.mpg.de> It seems that some of the people behind Terraling are: ? Hilda Koopman (see https://linguistics.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Navigating-Terraling-1.pdf) ? Chris Collins (see https://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/tools-at-lingboard/questionnaire/syntactic_structures.php) ? Dominique Sportiche (see https://grantome.com/grant/NSF/BCS-1424336) But they do not seem to have produced a general document. I was invited to a kickoff meeting for SSWL at NYU in 2007, so I have known about the SSWL part for quite some time, but it hasn't been developed very much. Martin Am 17.06.20 um 22:40 schrieb Emily M. Bender: > Dear all, > > Is there an overview paper for the Terraling project > (http://www.terraling.com/)? A student and I would like to get a > better sense of how it conceptualizes language properties, and how > that relates to the conceptualization?in other resources such as > WALS?or the Grammar Matrix. > > Thanks! > Emily > > -- > Emily M. Bender (she/her) > Howard and Frances Nostrand Endowed Professor > Department of Linguistics > Faculty Director, CLMS > University of Washington > Twitter: @emilymbender > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Martin Haspelmath (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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From arppe at ualberta.ca Wed Jun 17 17:29:43 2020 From: arppe at ualberta.ca (Antti Arppe) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 11:29:43 -0600 Subject: [Lingtyp] ComputEL-4: 2nd Call-for-Papers (REVISED: virtual workshop + timeline) Message-ID: [Apologies for cross-postings] ComputEL-4 Fourth Workshop on the Use of Computational Methods in the Study of Endangered Languages 2nd Call-for-Papers -- WITH IMPORTANT CHANGES (VIRTUAL WORKSHOP + REVISED TIMELINE) The ComputEL-4 workshop will focus on the use of computational methods in the study, support, and revitalization of endangered languages. The primary aim of the workshop is to continue narrowing the gap between computational linguists interested in working on methods for endangered languages, field linguists working on documenting these languages, and the language communities who are striving to maintain their languages. We take seriously the goal of reaching all relevant communities. To support this goal, ComputEL aims to alternate co-location with computational linguistics conferences and language documentation conferences. Workshop format/venue and the COVID-19 pandemic ComputEL-4 will take place on March 2-3, 2021, immediately preceding the 7th International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC7) hosted by the University of Hawaii. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and in line with the current plans for ICLDC7, we expect that ComputEL-4 will be held as a fully virtual workshop. Submission and notification deadlines have changed to reflect this. Call for Papers Papers are invited which explore the interface and intersection of computational linguistics, documentary linguistics, and community-based language revitalization and conservation efforts. The committee encourages submissions which: (i) examine the use of specific methods in the analysis of data from low-resource languages, with a focus on endangered languages, or propose new methods for analysis of such data, (ii) propose new models for the collection, management, and deployment of data in endangered language settings, or (iii) consider what concrete steps are required to allow for a more fruitful interaction between computer scientists, documentary linguists, and language communities. The intention of the workshop is not merely to allow for the presentation of research, but also to continue building a network of computational linguists, documentary linguists, and community language activists who are able to effectively join together and serve their common interests. Presentations We will have both oral presentation sessions and a poster session, but we will be working on how these are realized in practice in our now virtual workshop. The decision on whether a presentation will be oral or poster will be made by the Organizing Committee on the advice of the Program Committee, taking into account the subject matter and how the content might be best conveyed. Oral and poster presentations will not be distinguished in the Proceedings. Submissions In line with our goal of reaching different academic communities, we offer two different modes of submission: extended abstract and full paper. Either can be submitted to our two tracks: (a) language community perspective and (b) academic perspective. The mode of submission does not influence likelihood of acceptance. Submissions must be uploaded via Easychair (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=computel4) no later than September 30, 2020, 11:59PM (UTC-11, time zone of American Samoa). Please indicate clearly (in the Abstract) which of the two modes (Extended abstractor Full paper) you are submitting to. All submissions must be anonymous and will be peer-reviewed by the scientific committee. Notification of acceptance will be sent out by mid-November 2020. A. Extended abstract: Please submit anonymous abstracts of up to 1500 words. B. Full paper: Please submit anonymously either a) long papers (max. 8 pages plus references) or b) short papers (max. 4 pages plus references) according to the style and formatting guidelines provided our ComputeEL Style Files (with template files for both LaTeX and Microsoft Word: see: https://computel-workshop.org/computel4-submissions/). Authors will be allowed one extra page for the final version (altogether 5 and 9 pages) excluding references. Proceedings The authors of selected accepted full papers (long or short) will be invited by the Organizing Committee to submit their papers for online publication via the open-access ACL Anthology. All other accepted full papers (long and short) and extended abstracts will be published electronically in University of Colorado Boulder Scholar (https://scholar.colorado.edu/scil-cmel/). Final versions of long and short papers will be allotted one additional page (altogether 5 and 9 pages) excluding references. Extended abstracts will be allotted up to 5 pages (according to the short paper format) excluding references. Any revisionsshould concern responses to reviewer comments or the addition of relevant details and clarifications, but not entirely new, unreviewed content.Proceedings papers should be revised and improved versions of the version that was submitted for, and which underwent, review. Camera-ready versions of the articles for publication will be due on January 25, 2021. Important Dates (REVISED): Mon30-September-2020? Deadline for submission of papers or short abstracts Wed15-November-2020? Notification of acceptance Tue-Wed 2-3-March-2021? Workshop Endorsements: ComputEL-4 is endorsed by the ACL Special Interest Group for Endangered Languages (SIGEL: https://acl-sigel.github.io/), and the ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group for Under-resources Languages (SIGUL: http://www.elra.info/en/sig/sigul/). Organizing Committee Antti Arppe (University of Alberta) Jeff Good (University at Buffalo) Atticus Harrigan (University of Alberta): community track Mans Hulden (University Colorado Boulder) Jordan Lachler (University Alberta) Sarah Moeller (University of Colorado Boulder): general/computational track Alexis Palmer (University of North Texas) Lane Schwartz (University of Illinois) Miikka Silfverberg (University of British Columbia) Contact - website and email For further information, please consult our website: https://computel-workshop.org/computel-4/ or email us at: computel.workshop at gmail.com Previous workshops The first ComputEL workshop was co-located with ACL in June 2014 in Baltimore; ComputEL-2 was co-located with the 5th International Conference of Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC5) in Honolulu, Hawai?i, in March 2017; ComputEL-3 was co-located with the 6th International Conference of Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC6) in Honolulu, Hawai?i, in March 2019. The proceedings of the previous ComputEL workshops have been published online by ACL and University of Colorado Boulder Scholar. For further information, see: https://computel-workshop.org/ From fleischhauer at phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de Thu Jun 18 05:07:29 2020 From: fleischhauer at phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de (fleischhauer at phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 05:07:29 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20200618050729.Horde.qCmCcNTNoQyso6j1fybPr-U@webmail.phil.hhu.de> Dear Aminata, I analyze expressions similar to those you mentioned from Wolof as intensifiers/degree adverbs (https://www.academia.edu/25454456/Degree_Gradation_of_Verbs). Why do you think that the Wolof intensifiers do not intensify the verb? You might have a look at my thesis (link below), there I present an analyse of verb gradation/intensification that might be helpful for the analysis of your data. It is not uncommon that that certain intensifiers/degree adverbs are restricted to specific verbs. Some German verbs, for example, take the degree adverb 'sehr' (very): 'Der Hund stinkt sehr' (The dog really stinks, lit. The dog stinks very). Others do not license 'sehr' but require others intensifiers like 'viel': 'Das Buch kostet viel' (The book costs a lot, lit. The book costs much). English is also a good example of a language showing lexical variation with respect to the choice of intensifiers/degree adverbs. Of course, the restrictions you mention seem to be much stricter than those we observe in German or English. Best, Jens Zitat von Majigeen Aminata : > Dear all, > I am currently workingon what are called ?adverbs? (see words un > bold) in wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (WestAfrica) has > specific words that only work with some colors: white, black, red > and eachword-adverb match only with its color, they are not > commutable. > > weext?ll:extremely white (it can't be whiter) > > ?uulkukk:extremely black (it can't be more black) > > xonqcoyy:extremely red (it can't be more red) > > Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as > well. They are not commutable. > > > baax lool: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) > > bees t?q:really new (nobody has ever used it) > > d?g?r k?cc:extremely hard (it can't be harder) > > diis gann:really heavy (very difficult to carry) > > fatt taraj:extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) > > fess dell:extremely full (it can't be fuller) > > forox toll:really acidic (it can't be more acidic) > > g?tt ndugur:really short (he can't be shorter) > > jeex t?kk:completely finished, ... > > > In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not > convince me because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the > verbs. These words mean that the state or action of the verb is at > its end of completude.I would like to knowif there are languages > ??that work like that and what is the terminology usedfor this kind > of construction. Can someone also recommend me new documentationon > the definition of the concepts of verbs, adverbs, adjectives? in > Africanlanguages? > > Thanks and regards. > > Aminata? -- Dr. Jens Helfer-Fleischhauer Vertretungsprofessur f?r Linguistik Heinrich-Heine Universit?t D?sseldorf Institut f?r Sprache und Information Abteilung f?r Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Universit?tsstra?e 1 Geb?ude 24.53.00.89 40225 D?sseldorf, Germany e-mail: fleischhauer at phil.uni-duesseldorf.de https://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/asw/personal/jens-fleischhauer/ tel.: +49-211-81-10717; fax: +49-211-81-11325 From joo at shh.mpg.de Thu Jun 18 22:39:51 2020 From: joo at shh.mpg.de (joo at shh.mpg.de) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 07:39:51 +0900 Subject: [Lingtyp] Semantic role of body parts References: <65d86211-1396-4a19-ae8a-4731b3392af2@Spark> Message-ID: <7c90a6ae-ca55-497b-ab62-f9bb0e7b65bf@Spark> Dear all, What is the semantic role of the object NP ?my hand? in the phrase ?I moved my hand?? Is it the patient (because it is affected by the agent?s movement) or the agent (because it is the inalienable part of the agent who moves)? Regards, Ian -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jb77 at buffalo.edu Fri Jun 19 00:29:20 2020 From: jb77 at buffalo.edu (Bohnemeyer, Juergen) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 00:29:20 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Semantic role of body parts In-Reply-To: <7c90a6ae-ca55-497b-ab62-f9bb0e7b65bf@Spark> References: <65d86211-1396-4a19-ae8a-4731b3392af2@Spark> <7c90a6ae-ca55-497b-ab62-f9bb0e7b65bf@Spark> Message-ID: <98320EDC-90CC-4768-99AB-4B74F0179F6C@buffalo.edu> Dear Ian ? The figure of motion events is most commonly classified as a theme, which in turn is of course a kind of undergoer. It?s arguably not really a patient since it isn?t causally affected: (1) ?What I did to my hand was move it As to the second part of your question, semantic roles are (defined by) semantic relations between the referents of expressions, in this case between the referents of the verb _move_ and the object NP _my hand_. In English, at least, the fact that the subject is coreferential with the possessor of the object in (1) has no discernible impact on the behavior of (1). It would be interesting to see whether this is different in other languages. Languages with inverse alignment constraints tend to disfavor the use of transitive active voice forms for possessed acting on possessor, as in (2) and (3): (2) His wife left him (3) My knee was bothering me In such languages, inverse voice or some other construction would be used to avoid the constraint violation in (2) and (3). Best ? Juergen > On Jun 18, 2020, at 6:39 PM, joo at shh.mpg.de wrote: > > Dear all, > > What is the semantic role of the object NP ?my hand? in the phrase ?I moved my hand?? > Is it the patient (because it is affected by the agent?s movement) or the agent (because it is the inalienable part of the agent who moves)? > > Regards, > Ian > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) From mark.post at sydney.edu.au Fri Jun 19 01:38:17 2020 From: mark.post at sydney.edu.au (Mark Post) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 01:38:17 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40D4ED4F-0EA5-4DA8-B394-E80E1A8EAE0A@sydney.edu.au> Hi folks, To add to Kellen?s remarks, we also find these things in Adi and Milang, two Trans-Himalayan languages spoken in Arunachal Pradesh, India. We call them ?expressive intensifiers?, to capture their ideophone-like expressive quality, but distinguish them both from the ?four-syllable-expression?-type expressive one often finds in Southeast Asia (which also exist in Adi and Milang), and from ideophones proper (which also exist in Adi and Milang). It would of course be possible to expand either the class of expressives or the class of ideophones (on a mostly functional basis) to include expressive intensifiers, but, well - they are certainly distributionally well-distinguished. https://www.academia.edu/35372326/The_functional_value_of_formal_exuberance_Expressive_intensification_in_Adi_and_Milang It?s remarkable to see such a similar (almost identical) phenomenon in Wolof. We found the Adi and Milang cases striking since these languages are geographically close, but not genealogically close, while languages that are genealogically closer to Adi (such as Galo) seem to lack this construction. In principle therefore, it looks contagious. Cheers Mark Modi, Y. and M. W. Post. In press 2020. ?The functional value of formal exuberance: Expressive intensification in Adi and Milang.? In Jeffrey P. Williams, Ed., Expressive Morphology in the Languages of South Asia. London, Routledge. On 18 Jun 2020, at 23:25, Joey Lovestrand > wrote: There are similar "ideophones? in Chadic languages. Newman (1968) calls them ?adjectival intensifiers? in Hausa. Blench (2013) refers to ?colour intensifiers? in Mwaghavul. I treat them as a type of ideophone in Barayin (Lovestrand 2019). Note that ?ideophones? in Chadic languages typically have adverb-like morphosyntactic properties. -Joey Blench, R. (2013). Mwaghavul expressives. In H. Tourneux (Ed.), Topics in Chadic Linguistics VII: papers from the 6th Biennial International Colloquium on the Chadic Languages, Villejuif, September 22-23, 2011 (pp. 53?75). Cologne: K?ppe. Lovestrand, Joseph. (2019). Ideophones in Barayin. In Topics in Chadic Linguistics X: Papers from the 9th Biennial International Colloquium on the Chadic Languages. Cologne: R?diger K?ppe Verlag. Newman, P. (1968). Ideophones from a syntactic point of view. Journal of West African Languages, 2, 107?117. -- Joseph Lovestrand British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics SOAS University of London On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 1:29 PM ?sten Dahl > wrote: I would agree with Martin here. I think ideophones can have different functions, so just calling them ?ideophones? would be only half the story anyway. It is also worth mentioning that lexically specific intensifiers may start out with a transparent meaning which is later bleached as the intensifier generalizes. In spoken Swedish, the noun j?tte ?giant? was prefixed to stor ?big? as a lexically specific intensifier, but is now frequently used with just any adjective, e.g. j?ttebra ?very good?. Prescriptivists were not happy with combinations such as j?tteliten ?(lit.) giant small?. * ?sten Fr?n: Lingtyp > F?r Martin Haspelmath Skickat: den 18 juni 2020 11:21 Till: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org ?mne: Re: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs Yes, they remind one of ideophones, but it seems that Alex Fran?ois's term "lexically specific intensifiers" captures best what these forms are (though I would prefer "degree modifiers", to avoid confusion with self-intensifiers). It seems that "ideophones" are generally understood more broadly, because they do not have to be degree modifiers (and maybe more narrowly at the same time, because they have to be "marked", and "depict sensory imagery", according to Dingemanse: http://ideophone.org/working-definition/). It may be worth studying lexically specific degree modifiers more systematically across languages. Ekkehard K?nig mentioned English "ice-cold", "crystal clear", "pitch-black", and German "hunde-m?de" [dog-tired], "stock-dunkel" [stick-dark], and Jussi Ylikoski mentioned Finnish "upo-uusi" (extremeley new) ? these are usually treated as marginal phenomena, but the fact that such lexically specific degree modifiers are found on at least three different continents (Wolof, Mwotlap, English) may point to something more general. Martin P.S. The term "adverb" is not wrong, but I try to avoid it, because it has been applied to a very heterogeneous range of phenomena. Am 18.06.20 um 10:56 schrieb Kofi Yakpo: Dear Aminata, As Dmitry points out, these words would normally be referred to as ideophones in African linguistics. Most ideophones in "African languages" (they are more of an areal than a genetic feature) are lexically/constructionally restricted in one or the other way, so there is not much need to invent a new label for them besides "ideophone". Colour-specific ideophones can be found in all Atlantic-Congo languages I am familiarity with, and the European-lexifier creoles of Africa incl. Kriyol (Casamance, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde). You could check the work of Mark Dingemanse and the works he cites for an overview of most of the literature. Best, Kofi ???? Dr Kofi Yakpo ? Associate Professor University of Hong Kong ? Linguistics ? Scholars Hub Resident Scholar: Chi Sun College My publications @ zenodo On the Outcomes of Prosodic Contact A Grammar of Pichi On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 7:07 PM Majigeen Aminata > wrote: Dear all, I am currently working on what are called ?adverbs? (see words un bold) in wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (West Africa) has specific words that only work with some colors: white, black, red and each word-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. weex t?ll: extremely white (it can't be whiter) ?uul kukk: extremely black (it can't be more black) xonq coyy: extremely red (it can't be more red) Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. They are not commutable. baax lool: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) bees t?q: really new (nobody has ever used it) d?g?r k?cc: extremely hard (it can't be harder) diis gann: really heavy (very difficult to carry) fatt taraj: extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) fess dell: extremely full (it can't be fuller) forox toll: really acidic (it can't be more acidic) g?tt ndugur: really short (he can't be shorter) jeex t?kk: completely finished, ... In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude. I would like to know if there are languages ??that work like that and what is the terminology used for this kind of construction. Can someone also recommend me new documentation on the definition of the concepts of verbs, adverbs, adjectives? in African languages? Thanks and regards. Aminata _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Martin Haspelmath (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 _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/UM8tCMwGxOtEGq37hOe0N1?domain=listserv.linguistlist.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de Fri Jun 19 07:13:48 2020 From: christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de (Christian Lehmann) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 09:13:48 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Semantic role of body parts In-Reply-To: <7c90a6ae-ca55-497b-ab62-f9bb0e7b65bf@Spark> References: <65d86211-1396-4a19-ae8a-4731b3392af2@Spark> <7c90a6ae-ca55-497b-ab62-f9bb0e7b65bf@Spark> Message-ID: Dear Ian, a recent paper of mine (bound to be published for some years now) https://www.christianlehmann.eu/publ/lehmann_body.pdf discusses your question at some length. Cheers, Christian --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Am 19.06.20 um 00:39 schrieb joo at shh.mpg.de: > Dear all, > > What is the semantic role of the object NP ?my hand? in the phrase ?I > moved my hand?? > Is it the patient (because it is affected by the agent?s movement) or > the agent (because it is the inalienable part of the agent who moves)? > > Regards, > Ian > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann Rudolfstr. 4 99092 Erfurt Deutschland Tel.: +49/361/2113417 E-Post: christianw_lehmann at arcor.de Web: https://www.christianlehmann.eu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jussi.ylikoski at oulu.fi Fri Jun 19 08:19:49 2020 From: jussi.ylikoski at oulu.fi (Jussi Ylikoski) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 08:19:49 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: <40D4ED4F-0EA5-4DA8-B394-E80E1A8EAE0A@sydney.edu.au> References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> , <40D4ED4F-0EA5-4DA8-B394-E80E1A8EAE0A@sydney.edu.au> Message-ID: Dear all, A follow-up to my previous comments on Finnish and Estonian: It appears that the self-published (and partly idiosyncratic) Handbook of Finnish by Jukka K. Korpela quite nicely captures the essence of the Finnish phenomenon: https://books.google.com/books?id=VE2NCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT386 Best regards, Jussi ________________________________ Saatja: Lingtyp Mark Post nimel Saadetud: reede, 19. juuni 2020 04:38 Adressaat: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Teema: Re: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs Hi folks, To add to Kellen?s remarks, we also find these things in Adi and Milang, two Trans-Himalayan languages spoken in Arunachal Pradesh, India. We call them ?expressive intensifiers?, to capture their ideophone-like expressive quality, but distinguish them both from the ?four-syllable-expression?-type expressive one often finds in Southeast Asia (which also exist in Adi and Milang), and from ideophones proper (which also exist in Adi and Milang). It would of course be possible to expand either the class of expressives or the class of ideophones (on a mostly functional basis) to include expressive intensifiers, but, well - they are certainly distributionally well-distinguished. https://www.academia.edu/35372326/The_functional_value_of_formal_exuberance_Expressive_intensification_in_Adi_and_Milang It?s remarkable to see such a similar (almost identical) phenomenon in Wolof. We found the Adi and Milang cases striking since these languages are geographically close, but not genealogically close, while languages that are genealogically closer to Adi (such as Galo) seem to lack this construction. In principle therefore, it looks contagious. Cheers Mark Modi, Y. and M. W. Post. In press 2020. ?The functional value of formal exuberance: Expressive intensification in Adi and Milang.? In Jeffrey P. Williams, Ed., Expressive Morphology in the Languages of South Asia. London, Routledge. On 18 Jun 2020, at 23:25, Joey Lovestrand > wrote: There are similar "ideophones? in Chadic languages. Newman (1968) calls them ?adjectival intensifiers? in Hausa. Blench (2013) refers to ?colour intensifiers? in Mwaghavul. I treat them as a type of ideophone in Barayin (Lovestrand 2019). Note that ?ideophones? in Chadic languages typically have adverb-like morphosyntactic properties. -Joey Blench, R. (2013). Mwaghavul expressives. In H. Tourneux (Ed.), Topics in Chadic Linguistics VII: papers from the 6th Biennial International Colloquium on the Chadic Languages, Villejuif, September 22-23, 2011 (pp. 53?75). Cologne: K?ppe. Lovestrand, Joseph. (2019). Ideophones in Barayin. In Topics in Chadic Linguistics X: Papers from the 9th Biennial International Colloquium on the Chadic Languages. Cologne: R?diger K?ppe Verlag. Newman, P. (1968). Ideophones from a syntactic point of view. Journal of West African Languages, 2, 107?117. -- Joseph Lovestrand British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics SOAS University of London On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 1:29 PM ?sten Dahl > wrote: I would agree with Martin here. I think ideophones can have different functions, so just calling them ?ideophones? would be only half the story anyway. It is also worth mentioning that lexically specific intensifiers may start out with a transparent meaning which is later bleached as the intensifier generalizes. In spoken Swedish, the noun j?tte ?giant? was prefixed to stor ?big? as a lexically specific intensifier, but is now frequently used with just any adjective, e.g. j?ttebra ?very good?. Prescriptivists were not happy with combinations such as j?tteliten ?(lit.) giant small?. * ?sten Fr?n: Lingtyp > F?r Martin Haspelmath Skickat: den 18 juni 2020 11:21 Till: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org ?mne: Re: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs Yes, they remind one of ideophones, but it seems that Alex Fran?ois's term "lexically specific intensifiers" captures best what these forms are (though I would prefer "degree modifiers", to avoid confusion with self-intensifiers). It seems that "ideophones" are generally understood more broadly, because they do not have to be degree modifiers (and maybe more narrowly at the same time, because they have to be "marked", and "depict sensory imagery", according to Dingemanse: http://ideophone.org/working-definition/). It may be worth studying lexically specific degree modifiers more systematically across languages. Ekkehard K?nig mentioned English "ice-cold", "crystal clear", "pitch-black", and German "hunde-m?de" [dog-tired], "stock-dunkel" [stick-dark], and Jussi Ylikoski mentioned Finnish "upo-uusi" (extremeley new) ? these are usually treated as marginal phenomena, but the fact that such lexically specific degree modifiers are found on at least three different continents (Wolof, Mwotlap, English) may point to something more general. Martin P.S. The term "adverb" is not wrong, but I try to avoid it, because it has been applied to a very heterogeneous range of phenomena. Am 18.06.20 um 10:56 schrieb Kofi Yakpo: Dear Aminata, As Dmitry points out, these words would normally be referred to as ideophones in African linguistics. Most ideophones in "African languages" (they are more of an areal than a genetic feature) are lexically/constructionally restricted in one or the other way, so there is not much need to invent a new label for them besides "ideophone". Colour-specific ideophones can be found in all Atlantic-Congo languages I am familiarity with, and the European-lexifier creoles of Africa incl. Kriyol (Casamance, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde). You could check the work of Mark Dingemanse and the works he cites for an overview of most of the literature. Best, Kofi ???? Dr Kofi Yakpo ? Associate Professor University of Hong Kong ? Linguistics ? Scholars Hub Resident Scholar: Chi Sun College My publications @ zenodo On the Outcomes of Prosodic Contact A Grammar of Pichi On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 7:07 PM Majigeen Aminata > wrote: Dear all, I am currently working on what are called ?adverbs? (see words un bold) in wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (West Africa) has specific words that only work with some colors: white, black, red and each word-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. weex t?ll: extremely white (it can't be whiter) ?uul kukk: extremely black (it can't be more black) xonq coyy: extremely red (it can't be more red) Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. They are not commutable. baax lool: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) bees t?q: really new (nobody has ever used it) d?g?r k?cc: extremely hard (it can't be harder) diis gann: really heavy (very difficult to carry) fatt taraj: extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) fess dell: extremely full (it can't be fuller) forox toll: really acidic (it can't be more acidic) g?tt ndugur: really short (he can't be shorter) jeex t?kk: completely finished, ... In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude. I would like to know if there are languages ??that work like that and what is the terminology used for this kind of construction. Can someone also recommend me new documentation on the definition of the concepts of verbs, adverbs, adjectives? in African languages? Thanks and regards. Aminata _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Martin Haspelmath (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 _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/UM8tCMwGxOtEGq37hOe0N1?domain=listserv.linguistlist.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From linjr at cc.au.dk Fri Jun 19 08:37:26 2020 From: linjr at cc.au.dk (Jan Rijkhoff) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 08:37:26 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> , <40D4ED4F-0EA5-4DA8-B394-E80E1A8EAE0A@sydney.edu.au>, Message-ID: Some useful references in this context (English keyword 'elatives' - Dutch 'elatieven' or 'elativus') - Coppock, Elizabeth & Elisabet Engdahl. 2016. Quasi-definites in Swedish: Elative superlatives and emphatic assertion. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 34-4, 1181-1243. - Jespersen, Otto. 1924. The philosophy of grammar. London: Allen & Unwin. (see pp-. 244-253; referred to in: De Vooys 1967 - see below) For those who can read Dutch: - De Tier, Veronique & Siemon Reker (ed.), In vergelijking met dieren. Intensiverend Taalgebruik volgens de SND-krantenenqu?te (1998) (Het Dialectenboek 5), Stichting Nederlandse Dialecten, Groesbeek 1999, 375 blz. 500 BEF, ISBN 90-73869-05-6. Het boek kan besteld worden bij het secretariaat van de SND, Generaal Gavinstraat 344, 6562 MR Groesbeek; tel. 024 - 361 20 48; fax 024 - 361 19 72. (375 blz.). ISBN 90 73869 05 6 - de Vooys, Cornelis G. N. 1967. Nederlandse Spraakkunst. Groningen: Wolters (see pp. 67-68 on the ?elativus?) - Reker, Siemon & Ludie Postmus. 1996. Dikke woorden: bikkelhaard, bragelvet, strontdeurnat en hun soortgenoten in het Gronings en verwante talen; Bedum: Profiel; 90-5294-143-2. Jan R J. Rijkhoff - Associate Professor, Linguistics School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University Jens Chr. Skous Vej 2, Building 1485-621 DK-8000 Aarhus C, DENMARK Phone: (+45) 87162143 URL: http://pure.au.dk/portal/en/linjr at cc.au.dk ________________________________________ From: Lingtyp on behalf of Jussi Ylikoski Sent: Friday, June 19, 2020 10:19 AM To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs Dear all, A follow-up to my previous comments on Finnish and Estonian: It appears that the self-published (and partly idiosyncratic) Handbook of Finnish by Jukka K. Korpela quite nicely captures the essence of the Finnish phenomenon: https://books.google.com/books?id=VE2NCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT386 Best regards, Jussi ________________________________ Saatja: Lingtyp Mark Post nimel Saadetud: reede, 19. juuni 2020 04:38 Adressaat: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Teema: Re: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs Hi folks, To add to Kellen?s remarks, we also find these things in Adi and Milang, two Trans-Himalayan languages spoken in Arunachal Pradesh, India. We call them ?expressive intensifiers?, to capture their ideophone-like expressive quality, but distinguish them both from the ?four-syllable-expression?-type expressive one often finds in Southeast Asia (which also exist in Adi and Milang), and from ideophones proper (which also exist in Adi and Milang). It would of course be possible to expand either the class of expressives or the class of ideophones (on a mostly functional basis) to include expressive intensifiers, but, well - they are certainly distributionally well-distinguished. https://www.academia.edu/35372326/The_functional_value_of_formal_exuberance_Expressive_intensification_in_Adi_and_Milang It?s remarkable to see such a similar (almost identical) phenomenon in Wolof. We found the Adi and Milang cases striking since these languages are geographically close, but not genealogically close, while languages that are genealogically closer to Adi (such as Galo) seem to lack this construction. In principle therefore, it looks contagious. Cheers Mark Modi, Y. and M. W. Post. In press 2020. ?The functional value of formal exuberance: Expressive intensification in Adi and Milang.? In Jeffrey P. Williams, Ed., Expressive Morphology in the Languages of South Asia. London, Routledge. On 18 Jun 2020, at 23:25, Joey Lovestrand > wrote: There are similar "ideophones? in Chadic languages. Newman (1968) calls them ?adjectival intensifiers? in Hausa. Blench (2013) refers to ?colour intensifiers? in Mwaghavul. I treat them as a type of ideophone in Barayin (Lovestrand 2019). Note that ?ideophones? in Chadic languages typically have adverb-like morphosyntactic properties. -Joey Blench, R. (2013). Mwaghavul expressives. In H. Tourneux (Ed.), Topics in Chadic Linguistics VII: papers from the 6th Biennial International Colloquium on the Chadic Languages, Villejuif, September 22-23, 2011 (pp. 53?75). Cologne: K?ppe. Lovestrand, Joseph. (2019). Ideophones in Barayin. In Topics in Chadic Linguistics X: Papers from the 9th Biennial International Colloquium on the Chadic Languages. Cologne: R?diger K?ppe Verlag. Newman, P. (1968). Ideophones from a syntactic point of view. Journal of West African Languages, 2, 107?117. -- Joseph Lovestrand British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics SOAS University of London On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 1:29 PM ?sten Dahl > wrote: I would agree with Martin here. I think ideophones can have different functions, so just calling them ?ideophones? would be only half the story anyway. It is also worth mentioning that lexically specific intensifiers may start out with a transparent meaning which is later bleached as the intensifier generalizes. In spoken Swedish, the noun j?tte ?giant? was prefixed to stor ?big? as a lexically specific intensifier, but is now frequently used with just any adjective, e.g. j?ttebra ?very good?. Prescriptivists were not happy with combinations such as j?tteliten ?(lit.) giant small?. * ?sten Fr?n: Lingtyp > F?r Martin Haspelmath Skickat: den 18 juni 2020 11:21 Till: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org ?mne: Re: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs Yes, they remind one of ideophones, but it seems that Alex Fran?ois's term "lexically specific intensifiers" captures best what these forms are (though I would prefer "degree modifiers", to avoid confusion with self-intensifiers). It seems that "ideophones" are generally understood more broadly, because they do not have to be degree modifiers (and maybe more narrowly at the same time, because they have to be "marked", and "depict sensory imagery", according to Dingemanse: http://ideophone.org/working-definition/). It may be worth studying lexically specific degree modifiers more systematically across languages. Ekkehard K?nig mentioned English "ice-cold", "crystal clear", "pitch-black", and German "hunde-m?de" [dog-tired], "stock-dunkel" [stick-dark], and Jussi Ylikoski mentioned Finnish "upo-uusi" (extremeley new) ? these are usually treated as marginal phenomena, but the fact that such lexically specific degree modifiers are found on at least three different continents (Wolof, Mwotlap, English) may point to something more general. Martin P.S. The term "adverb" is not wrong, but I try to avoid it, because it has been applied to a very heterogeneous range of phenomena. Am 18.06.20 um 10:56 schrieb Kofi Yakpo: Dear Aminata, As Dmitry points out, these words would normally be referred to as ideophones in African linguistics. Most ideophones in "African languages" (they are more of an areal than a genetic feature) are lexically/constructionally restricted in one or the other way, so there is not much need to invent a new label for them besides "ideophone". Colour-specific ideophones can be found in all Atlantic-Congo languages I am familiarity with, and the European-lexifier creoles of Africa incl. Kriyol (Casamance, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde). You could check the work of Mark Dingemanse and the works he cites for an overview of most of the literature. Best, Kofi ???? Dr Kofi Yakpo ? Associate Professor University of Hong Kong ? Linguistics ? Scholars Hub Resident Scholar: Chi Sun College My publications @ zenodo On the Outcomes of Prosodic Contact A Grammar of Pichi On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 7:07 PM Majigeen Aminata > wrote: Dear all, I am currently working on what are called ?adverbs? (see words un bold) in wolof literature. Wolof, spoken in Senegal (West Africa) has specific words that only work with some colors: white, black, red and each word-adverb match only with its color, they are not commutable. weex t?ll: extremely white (it can't be whiter) ?uul kukk: extremely black (it can't be more black) xonq coyy: extremely red (it can't be more red) Others words adverbs go with state verbs and are specific to them as well. They are not commutable. baax lool: extremely nice (it can't be nicer) bees t?q: really new (nobody has ever used it) d?g?r k?cc: extremely hard (it can't be harder) diis gann: really heavy (very difficult to carry) fatt taraj: extremely blocked (it can't be more blocked) fess dell: extremely full (it can't be fuller) forox toll: really acidic (it can't be more acidic) g?tt ndugur: really short (he can't be shorter) jeex t?kk: completely finished, ... In Wolof they are called intensifiers but this term does not convince me because it can be confusing. They do not intensify the verbs. These words mean that the state or action of the verb is at its end of completude. I would like to know if there are languages ??that work like that and what is the terminology used for this kind of construction. Can someone also recommend me new documentation on the definition of the concepts of verbs, adverbs, adjectives? in African languages? Thanks and regards. Aminata _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Martin Haspelmath (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 _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/UM8tCMwGxOtEGq37hOe0N1?domain=listserv.linguistlist.org From martin.kohlberger at gmail.com Fri Jun 19 08:46:47 2020 From: martin.kohlberger at gmail.com (Martin Kohlberger) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 10:46:47 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Call: SSILA 2021 Call for Papers Message-ID: *THE SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF THE INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES OF THE AMERICAS* *Annual Winter Meeting, Online* *January 7-10, 2021* *Call for Papers* *Deadline for abstracts:* *July 17, 2020* The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA) will hold its annual winter meeting on January 7-10, 2021. SSILA meetings allow scholars to present on a wide range of topics centered on any aspect of Indigenous American languages. Because of the global COVID-19 crisis, this conference will be held online on a virtual platform, allowing participants to take part in the meeting without the need to travel. The SSILA executive committee is currently exploring all options so that registration fees can be kept at a minimum. *Call for Organized Session Proposals* SSILA welcomes abstracts for papers that present original research focusing on the linguistic study of the Indigenous languages of the Americas. Presenters must be members of SSILA in order to present. (You can join SSILA at: https://ssila.org/memberships/.) Abstract Submission The *deadline* for receipt of all abstracts is on *July 17th at 11:59PM (Hawaii-Aleutian time). *Abstracts should be submitted electronically, using the electronic submission website EasyChair. Consult the SSILA website for detailed instructions. Also, e-mail or hard-copy submissions will be accepted if arrangements are made in advance with the SSILA Program Committee Administrator, Martin Kohlberger (conferences at ssila.org). Abstracts may be submitted in English, Spanish, French or Portuguese. The EasyChair submission page address is https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ssila2021. Abstracts must conform to the guidelines below. General Requirements 1. All authors must be members of SSILA. See the SSILA website for information about membership and renewal ( https://ssila.org/memberships/). The membership requirement may be waived for co-authors who are from disciplines other than those ordinarily represented by SSILA (linguistics and linguistic anthropology). Requests for waivers of membership must be made by a member of the Society to the SSILA Secretary, Mary Linn (secretary at ssila.org). (Note*: Membership of LSA is not required for participation in SSILA sessions*.) 2. Any member may submit one single-author abstract and one multi-author abstract OR two multi-author abstracts. 3. After an abstract has been submitted, no changes of author, title, or wording of the abstract, other than those due to typographical errors, are permitted. 4. Papers must be delivered as projected in the abstract or represent bona fide developments of the same research. 5. Papers must not appear in print before the meeting. 6. All presenters of individual papers must register for the meeting if their papers are accepted. 7. Authors who must withdraw from the program should inform the SSILA Program Committee Administrator (conferences at ssila.org) as soon as possible. 8. Authors may not submit identical abstracts for presentation at the SSILA meeting and the LSA meeting or a meeting of one of the Sister Societies (ADS, ANS, NAAHoLS, SPCL, TALE). Authors who are discovered to have done so will have these abstracts removed from consideration. Authors may submit substantially different abstracts for presentation at the SSILA meeting and the LSA or a Sister Society meeting. Abstract Format *Please see the section below, ?Abstract Submission?, for important information about long and short abstracts.* 1. Abstracts should be uploaded as a file in PDF format to the abstract submittal form on the EasyChair website. 2. The abstract, including examples as needed, should be no more than one typed page (12pt font, single spaced, with 1-inch margins); a second page may be used for references. Abstracts longer than one page will be rejected without being evaluated. 3. At the top of the abstract, give a title that is not more than one 7-inch typed line and that clearly indicates the topic of the paper. 4. Abstracts will be reviewed anonymously. Do not include your name on the abstract. If you identify yourself in any way in the abstract (e.g. ?In Smith (1992)...I?), the abstract will be rejected without being evaluated. Of course, it may be necessary to refer to your own work in the third person in order to appropriately situate the research. 5. Abstracts which do not conform to these format guidelines will be rejected without being evaluated. Abstract Contents Papers whose main topic does not focus on the Indigenous languages of the Americas will be rejected without further consideration by the Program Committee. SSILA requires further that the subject matter be related to linguistics and/or language revitalization, that the research presented include new findings or developments not published before the meeting, that there be reflection on the social outcomes/impacts/implication of the work, that the papers not be submitted with malicious or scurrilous intent, and that the abstract be coherent and in accord with these guidelines. Abstracts are more often rejected because they omit crucial information rather than because of errors in what they include. The most important criterion is relevance to the understanding of Indigenous languages of the Americas, but other factors are important, too. It is important to present results so that they will be of interest to the whole SSILA (and larger) linguistic community, not just to those who work on the same language or language family that you do. A suggested outline for abstracts is as follows: 1. State the problem or research question raised by prior work, with specific reference to relevant prior research. 2. Give a clear indication of the nature and source of your data (primary fieldwork, archival research, secondary sources). 3. State the main point or argument of the proposed presentation. 4. Regardless of the subfield, cite sufficient data, and explain why and how they support the main point or argument. For examples in languages other than English, provide word-by-word glosses and *underline* or *boldface* the portions of the examples which are critical to the argument. 5. State the relevance of your ideas to past work or to the future development of the field. Describe analyses in as much detail as possible. Avoid saying in effect "a solution to this problem will be presented". If you are taking a stand on a controversial issue, summarize the arguments that led you to your position. 6. State the contribution to linguistics made by the analysis and state the social outcomes/impacts/implications of the work (which may be positive, neutral or negative, immediate or potential). Consideration of the social outcomes/impacts/implications of the work might focus on the specific topic under consideration or take into account the broader scope of a project. Effects might take a while to be felt, and might be nuanced with respect to who is influenced and how. Implications are likely to relate to the social significance to the language community, such as the project?s capacity for developing tools for pedagogy or revitalization, valorizing the language within a broader social context, or (perhaps at the same time) introducing points of tension regarding approaches to language teaching. They might also include bringing a situation regarding a language community?s status to wider attention, educating the public regarding language endangerment and its significance, promoting the application of Native ways of knowing in linguistic research or community-related goals. 7. Please include a list of references for any work cited in the abstract. The references can be on a second page. Categories of Presentation Authors are required to indicate the preferred category of their presentation at the time of submitting the abstract. The program committee will try to accommodate this preference as space and time allow. The categories to choose from are: Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, Historical Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Lexicography, Applied Linguistics, Language Revitalization, Other. Authors will also be able to select the geographic area that the languages discussed in their abstract are/were spoken in. Abstract Submission Submissions for the SSILA Annual Meeting require *two abstracts*: *Short Abstract.* This abstract should be no more than 100 words and will be used in the meeting handbook. In *EasyChair*, you will paste this abstract into the ?Abstract? box under the Title and Abstract heading. *Long Abstract*. This abstract is the one that will be evaluated for inclusion in the meeting program. The long abstract should be a PDF file. In *EasyChair*, you will select the PDF file containing your abstract to upload at the ?Long Abstract? prompt under the ?Files? heading. *Detailed instructions for using EasyChair* The submission process requires two stages: Get your own *EasyChair* account Submit your abstract(s) *Creating an account in EasyChair: * - Go to the EasyChair site: www.easychair.org ? Click ?Signup? at the top right corner of the page and follow the instructions for entry into the system. ? Enter your name and e-mail address and click ?Continue? - Check your e-mail: You will receive a message from EasyChair. Follow the instructions there. - Make a note of your user name and password for future reference. *Submitting your abstracts: * Go to the SSILA 2021 submission page: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ssila2021 Log in using the username and password you just established. Click "New Submission". On the page that appears, you will need to identify the author(s), title, keywords, and submission groups of the proposed paper, and submit your *short abstract* and *long abstract *(see clarification above). *Authors: * Enter the information requested about the author(s): ? For yourself, you can click the link at the top of the author box to enter the information from your account profile into the form. ? For co-authors, type in their information. ? If there are more than three authors, select *Click here to add more authors*. ? Use the ?corresponding author? checkboxes to select which author(s) will get e-mail from the EasyChair system and the Program Committee. *Title and Abstract and Other Information * ? Enter the *title* of the paper. - Enter the *short* *abstract*. If your paper is accepted, this short abstract will appear in the Meeting Handbook. Cut and paste the abstract into the text box provided. Maximum length is 100 words. - [If your short abstract requires special characters, please also send it as a PDF file to the SSILA Program Committee Administrator at .] ? Enter the *keywords* (at least 3, up to 5) that apply to your paper. ? Under *Topics*, select the main subfield of the paper (to be used by the program committee to group papers) and the geographic region to which it pertains. *Files* ? The long abstract, written according to the guidelines described above, must be uploaded here. ? Use PDF format. ? Use the browse button to select your abstract document. ? Click *Submit * *Logout* by selecting ?Sign out? in the top menu bar. *Questions? *Please contact conferences at ssila.org if you have any questions about or difficulty with your abstract submission. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From martin.kohlberger at gmail.com Fri Jun 19 09:01:36 2020 From: martin.kohlberger at gmail.com (Martin Kohlberger) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 11:01:36 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Call: SSILA 2021 Call for Papers (Amended) Message-ID: Dear colleagues, I would like to apologise for sending this out again, but it was pointed out to me that the previous e-mail mistakenly called for organized sessions. This is a call for individual papers. Apologies once again, Martin Kohlberger -- Program Committee Administrator SSILA *THE SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF THE INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES OF THE AMERICAS* *Annual Winter Meeting, Online* *January 7-10, 2021* *Call for Papers* *Deadline for abstracts:* *July 17, 2020* The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA) will hold its annual winter meeting on January 7-10, 2021. SSILA meetings allow scholars to present on a wide range of topics centered on any aspect of Indigenous American languages. Because of the global COVID-19 crisis, this conference will be held online on a virtual platform, allowing participants to take part in the meeting without the need to travel. The SSILA executive committee is currently exploring all options so that registration fees can be kept at a minimum. *Call for papers* SSILA welcomes abstracts for papers that present original research focusing on the linguistic study of the Indigenous languages of the Americas. Presenters must be members of SSILA in order to present. (You can join SSILA at: https://ssila.org/memberships/.) Abstract Submission The *deadline* for receipt of all abstracts is on *July 17th at 11:59PM (Hawaii-Aleutian time). *Abstracts should be submitted electronically, using the electronic submission website EasyChair. Consult the SSILA website for detailed instructions. Also, e-mail or hard-copy submissions will be accepted if arrangements are made in advance with the SSILA Program Committee Administrator, Martin Kohlberger (conferences at ssila.org). Abstracts may be submitted in English, Spanish, French or Portuguese. The EasyChair submission page address is https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ssila2021. Abstracts must conform to the guidelines below. General Requirements 1. All authors must be members of SSILA. See the SSILA website for information about membership and renewal (https://ssila.org/memberships/). The membership requirement may be waived for co-authors who are from disciplines other than those ordinarily represented by SSILA (linguistics and linguistic anthropology). Requests for waivers of membership must be made by a member of the Society to the SSILA Secretary, Mary Linn ( secretary at ssila.org). (Note*: Membership of LSA is not required for participation in SSILA sessions*.) 2. Any member may submit one single-author abstract and one multi-author abstract OR two multi-author abstracts. 3. After an abstract has been submitted, no changes of author, title, or wording of the abstract, other than those due to typographical errors, are permitted. 4. Papers must be delivered as projected in the abstract or represent bona fide developments of the same research. 5. Papers must not appear in print before the meeting. 6. All presenters of individual papers must register for the meeting if their papers are accepted. 7. Authors who must withdraw from the program should inform the SSILA Program Committee Administrator (conferences at ssila.org) as soon as possible. 8. Authors may not submit identical abstracts for presentation at the SSILA meeting and the LSA meeting or a meeting of one of the Sister Societies (ADS, ANS, NAAHoLS, SPCL, TALE). Authors who are discovered to have done so will have these abstracts removed from consideration. Authors may submit substantially different abstracts for presentation at the SSILA meeting and the LSA or a Sister Society meeting. Abstract Format *Please see the section below, ?Abstract Submission?, for important information about long and short abstracts.* 1. Abstracts should be uploaded as a file in PDF format to the abstract submittal form on the EasyChair website. 2. The abstract, including examples as needed, should be no more than one typed page (12pt font, single spaced, with 1-inch margins); a second page may be used for references. Abstracts longer than one page will be rejected without being evaluated. 3. At the top of the abstract, give a title that is not more than one 7-inch typed line and that clearly indicates the topic of the paper. 4. Abstracts will be reviewed anonymously. Do not include your name on the abstract. If you identify yourself in any way in the abstract (e.g. ?In Smith (1992)...I?), the abstract will be rejected without being evaluated. Of course, it may be necessary to refer to your own work in the third person in order to appropriately situate the research. 5. Abstracts which do not conform to these format guidelines will be rejected without being evaluated. Abstract Contents Papers whose main topic does not focus on the Indigenous languages of the Americas will be rejected without further consideration by the Program Committee. SSILA requires further that the subject matter be related to linguistics and/or language revitalization, that the research presented include new findings or developments not published before the meeting, that there be reflection on the social outcomes/impacts/implication of the work, that the papers not be submitted with malicious or scurrilous intent, and that the abstract be coherent and in accord with these guidelines. Abstracts are more often rejected because they omit crucial information rather than because of errors in what they include. The most important criterion is relevance to the understanding of Indigenous languages of the Americas, but other factors are important, too. It is important to present results so that they will be of interest to the whole SSILA (and larger) linguistic community, not just to those who work on the same language or language family that you do. A suggested outline for abstracts is as follows: 1. State the problem or research question raised by prior work, with specific reference to relevant prior research. 2. Give a clear indication of the nature and source of your data (primary fieldwork, archival research, secondary sources). 3. State the main point or argument of the proposed presentation. 4. Regardless of the subfield, cite sufficient data, and explain why and how they support the main point or argument. For examples in languages other than English, provide word-by-word glosses and *underline* or *boldface* the portions of the examples which are critical to the argument. 5. State the relevance of your ideas to past work or to the future development of the field. Describe analyses in as much detail as possible. Avoid saying in effect "a solution to this problem will be presented". If you are taking a stand on a controversial issue, summarize the arguments that led you to your position. 6. State the contribution to linguistics made by the analysis and state the social outcomes/impacts/implications of the work (which may be positive, neutral or negative, immediate or potential). Consideration of the social outcomes/impacts/implications of the work might focus on the specific topic under consideration or take into account the broader scope of a project. Effects might take a while to be felt, and might be nuanced with respect to who is influenced and how. Implications are likely to relate to the social significance to the language community, such as the project?s capacity for developing tools for pedagogy or revitalization, valorizing the language within a broader social context, or (perhaps at the same time) introducing points of tension regarding approaches to language teaching. They might also include bringing a situation regarding a language community?s status to wider attention, educating the public regarding language endangerment and its significance, promoting the application of Native ways of knowing in linguistic research or community-related goals. 7. Please include a list of references for any work cited in the abstract. The references can be on a second page. Categories of Presentation Authors are required to indicate the preferred category of their presentation at the time of submitting the abstract. The program committee will try to accommodate this preference as space and time allow. The categories to choose from are: Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, Historical Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Lexicography, Applied Linguistics, Language Revitalization, Other. Authors will also be able to select the geographic area that the languages discussed in their abstract are/were spoken in. Abstract Submission Submissions for the SSILA Annual Meeting require *two abstracts*: *Short Abstract.* This abstract should be no more than 100 words and will be used in the meeting handbook. In *EasyChair*, you will paste this abstract into the ?Abstract? box under the Title and Abstract heading. *Long Abstract*. This abstract is the one that will be evaluated for inclusion in the meeting program. The long abstract should be a PDF file. In *EasyChair*, you will select the PDF file containing your abstract to upload at the ?Long Abstract? prompt under the ?Files? heading. *Detailed instructions for using EasyChair* The submission process requires two stages: Get your own *EasyChair* account Submit your abstract(s) *Creating an account in EasyChair: * - Go to the EasyChair site: www.easychair.org ? Click ?Signup? at the top right corner of the page and follow the instructions for entry into the system. ? Enter your name and e-mail address and click ?Continue? - Check your e-mail: You will receive a message from EasyChair. Follow the instructions there. - Make a note of your user name and password for future reference. *Submitting your abstracts: * Go to the SSILA 2021 submission page: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ssila2021 Log in using the username and password you just established. Click "New Submission". On the page that appears, you will need to identify the author(s), title, keywords, and submission groups of the proposed paper, and submit your *short abstract* and *long abstract *(see clarification above). *Authors: * Enter the information requested about the author(s): ? For yourself, you can click the link at the top of the author box to enter the information from your account profile into the form. ? For co-authors, type in their information. ? If there are more than three authors, select *Click here to add more authors*. ? Use the ?corresponding author? checkboxes to select which author(s) will get e-mail from the EasyChair system and the Program Committee. *Title and Abstract and Other Information * ? Enter the *title* of the paper. - Enter the *short* *abstract*. If your paper is accepted, this short abstract will appear in the Meeting Handbook. Cut and paste the abstract into the text box provided. Maximum length is 100 words. - [If your short abstract requires special characters, please also send it as a PDF file to the SSILA Program Committee Administrator at .] ? Enter the *keywords* (at least 3, up to 5) that apply to your paper. ? Under *Topics*, select the main subfield of the paper (to be used by the program committee to group papers) and the geographic region to which it pertains. *Files* ? The long abstract, written according to the guidelines described above, must be uploaded here. ? Use PDF format. ? Use the browse button to select your abstract document. ? Click *Submit * *Logout* by selecting ?Sign out? in the top menu bar. *Questions? *Please contact conferences at ssila.org if you have any questions about or difficulty with your abstract submission. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de Fri Jun 19 09:02:22 2020 From: christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de (Christian Lehmann) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 11:02:22 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] questions about adverbs In-Reply-To: References: <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1944807504.1335953.1592343028688@mail.yahoo.com> <40D4ED4F-0EA5-4DA8-B394-E80E1A8EAE0A@sydney.edu.au> Message-ID: <39ec5108-02cf-8f21-d6ff-ea6b5c144a71@Uni-Erfurt.De> Thanks for reminding us of the availability of a traditional term. Could we say that 'elative' is the degree on a parameter reached if this is combined with Natalia's 'maximizer? -- Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann Rudolfstr. 4 99092 Erfurt Deutschland Tel.: +49/361/2113417 E-Post: christianw_lehmann at arcor.de Web: https://www.christianlehmann.eu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From honohiiri at yandex.ru Fri Jun 19 15:48:06 2020 From: honohiiri at yandex.ru (Idiatov Dmitry) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 18:48:06 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jb77 at buffalo.edu Fri Jun 19 16:57:11 2020 From: jb77 at buffalo.edu (Bohnemeyer, Juergen) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 16:57:11 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> Message-ID: <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> Dear Dmitry ? I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ?inflection? that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It?s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. So what I?m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ?functional expressions? (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ?syncategoremata?. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) Best ? Juergen > On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > > I would like to react to Kasper Boye?s summary of the ?solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market?. > > There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson ?Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey? (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)?s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining ?grammatical?, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)?s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. > > Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case ?grammatical meaning?, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of ?grammatical meaning?, for example because it?s easier to apply consistently. > > Best wishes, > Dmitry > > -------- > Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151?169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. > (accessible at: https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 ; it?s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) > > > 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear all, > > I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas about the job grammatical items do. > > There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. > > Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. > > Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. > > If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. > > Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar?s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. > > With best wishes, > Kasper > > References > Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. > Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf > > Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. > > Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. > > Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 > > Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. > Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af David Gil > Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 > Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Juergen and all, > > My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. > > Best, > > David > > > McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. > McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. > McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 > McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. > > > On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. > > Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) > > I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. > > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > > As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). > > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen > > -- > David Gil > > Senior Scientist (Associate) > 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 > Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 > , > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) From honohiiri at yandex.ru Fri Jun 19 19:51:17 2020 From: honohiiri at yandex.ru (Idiatov Dmitry) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 22:51:17 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> Message-ID: <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From slobin at berkeley.edu Fri Jun 19 21:58:30 2020 From: slobin at berkeley.edu (Dan I. SLOBIN) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 14:58:30 -0700 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> Message-ID: Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency?all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as ?grammatical? elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb?entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, Dan On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > Dear Juergen, > > I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two > issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the > end of your message. > > The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the > distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may > appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of > ?optionality? possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by > others) in my (2008) paper. > > However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality > may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is > that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific > language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. > Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical > much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described > as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the > same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely > optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact > it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, > as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in > many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same > about English. > > The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being > morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to > the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that > derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the > defining criterion, does not mean that *grammatical *is the same as > *inflectional*, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine > (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of > inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as > much as possible. > > Best, > Dmitry > > > 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : > > Dear Dmitry ? I think the typological literature on functional expressions > has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To > give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both > nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious > semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it > in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I > not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category > just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. > > A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if > a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past > tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the > language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. > > My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a > larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a > notion of ?inflection? that was developed on the basis and for the > treatment of Indo-European languages. It?s a concept that seems > unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that > package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of > strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you > begin to run into all kinds of problems. > > So what I?m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very > real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just > one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection > that is typologically woefully inadequate. > > (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ?functional > expressions? (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label > expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional > ?syncategoremata?. But, I also believe that we should worry about the > concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize > that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) > > Best ? Juergen > > > On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > > I would like to react to Kasper Boye?s summary of the ?solutions to the > problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market?. > > There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these > purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the > well-known quote by Jakobson ?Languages differ essentially in what they > _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey? (see > https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of > obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being > categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)?s criterion > of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes > the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss > obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining ?grammatical?, but > dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would > exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around > long before Boye & Harder (2012)?s paper, it so happened that I discussed > why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts > of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. > > Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case > ?grammatical meaning?, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using > one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical > terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of > ?grammatical meaning?, for example because it?s easier to apply > consistently. > > Best wishes, > Dmitry > > -------- > Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and > the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couso & (in > collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues > in grammaticalization, 151?169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: > 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. > (accessible at: > https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 > ; it?s also available from my website, but the server has been down for > some time, hence this temporary link) > > > 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear all, > > I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems of > defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas about > the job grammatical items do. > > There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? > on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural definition in > terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own functional and > usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his > initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse > prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). > Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of > being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, > being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being > dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. > > Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the > same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison > d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, > which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster > than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations > (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap > shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather > superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. > > Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is > clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. > Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than > not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are > in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et > al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their > dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider > which host expression to attach it to. > > If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer > perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human > communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the > notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production > resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. > > Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical > morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and > we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably > did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are > quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are > not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar?s > schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are > conventionalized as carriers of background info. > > With best wishes, > Kasper > > References > Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status > and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. > Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf > > Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of > evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. > > Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, > Germany: Language Science Press. > > Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. > (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in > multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. > https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 > > Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The > production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. > Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. > Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af > David Gil > Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 > Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Juergen and all, > > My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from > some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For the > most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional > categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in > Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language > has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex > rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also > complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier > discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase > final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it > takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace > the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of > a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of > erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological > attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). > Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and > since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form > the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the > absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated > development of a functional category. > > Best, > > David > > > McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci > Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. > McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object > agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. > McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From > Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. > B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of > Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural > Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/ > 978-3-319-90710-9_22 > McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) > "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", > Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. > > > On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional > categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? > of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I > propose a more technical definition below. > > Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in which > the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more > members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the > balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former > languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no > obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in > question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based > innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of > functional categories in the absence of contact models.) > > I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not > most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of > definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the > ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation > event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some > of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors > of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what > role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as > Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to > be unclear. > > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of > innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest > here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not > present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > > As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a > superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might > be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical > category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional > combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very > broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of > great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform > in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of > the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every > single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of > quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for > languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential > predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for > universal quantification). > > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly > interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, > and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two > thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My > hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the > communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, > number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in > which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative > intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. > The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently > serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining > feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t > translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively > advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as > negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in > turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in > question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, > and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a > sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen > > -- > David Gil > > Senior Scientist (Associate) > 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 > Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 > , > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies > Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science > University at Buffalo > > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. > Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu > 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In > (Leonard Cohen) > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -- *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * *Dan I. Slobin * *Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics* *University of California, Berkeley* *email: slobin at berkeley.edu * *address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708* *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jb77 at buffalo.edu Sat Jun 20 03:50:17 2020 From: jb77 at buffalo.edu (Bohnemeyer, Juergen) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 03:50:17 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> Message-ID: Dear Dmitry ? The analogy with evidentiality in English is rather misleading. Evidentiality in English is not grammaticalized, plural in Yucatec is. Evidential expressions in English are readily identified as members of lexical categories by their morphological properties: they inflect as verbs (and perfectly regularly so, unlike modals) or carry the adverb formative _-ly_. The plural suffix of Yucatec does not belong to a lexical category and does not have any lexical meaning, it just encodes plurality. If the Yucatec plural suffix does not express a "grammatical meaning,? as you suggest, then it must express a lexical meaning. But how can that be if it does not belong to any lexical category and is inherently backgrounded, unlike any other lexical expression of the language? The conditions that govern the distribution of plural marking in Yucatec discourse are fundamentally akin to those that govern object case marking in languages in which it is optional, such as Japanese: the more predictably the information the marker conveys can be inferred from context, the more likely speakers will omit it, and the less likely hearers will infer the relevant information in its absence, the more likely speakers are to produce it. See here for experimental studies on object case in Japanese: https://kinderlab.bcs.rochester.edu/papers/KurumadaJaeger2015.pdf Would you argue that accusative case in Japanese is not grammatical? Is it lexical, then? What does that mean? Respectfully, I?m afraid the idea that grammatical categories must be obligatory is a convenient fiction. Best ? Juergen > On Jun 19, 2020, at 3:51 PM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > > Dear Juergen, > > I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. > > The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of ?optionality? possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. > > However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. > > The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. > > Best, > Dmitry > > > 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : > Dear Dmitry ? I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. > > A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. > > My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ?inflection? that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It?s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. > > So what I?m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. > > (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ?functional expressions? (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ?syncategoremata?. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) > > Best ? Juergen > > > On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > > I would like to react to Kasper Boye?s summary of the ?solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market?. > > There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson ?Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey? (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)?s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining ?grammatical?, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)?s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. > > Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case ?grammatical meaning?, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of ?grammatical meaning?, for example because it?s easier to apply consistently. > > Best wishes, > Dmitry > > -------- > Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151?169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. > (accessible at: https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 ; it?s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) > > > 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear all, > > I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas about the job grammatical items do. > > There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. > > Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. > > Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. > > If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. > > Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar?s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. > > With best wishes, > Kasper > > References > Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. > Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf > > Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. > > Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. > > Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 > > Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. > Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af David Gil > Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 > Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Juergen and all, > > My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. > > Best, > > David > > > McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. > McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. > McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 > McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. > > > On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. > > Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) > > I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. > > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > > As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). > > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen > > -- > David Gil > > Senior Scientist (Associate) > 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 > Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 > , > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies > Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science > University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In > (Leonard Cohen) > > -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) From boye at hum.ku.dk Sat Jun 20 12:12:14 2020 From: boye at hum.ku.dk (Kasper Boye) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 12:12:14 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> Message-ID: Dear Dmitry and all, First a comment on obligatoriness, then one closed classes. J?rgen Bohnemeyer pointed out that obligatoriness is too restrictive as a definiens of grammatical status. Another problem is that it is also too inclusive. Consider a language like German where indicative verbs are inflected for past and present tense. The intuition (which is backed up by the ?encoded secondariness? definition; Boye & Harder 2012) is that the tense inflections are grammatical. But neither the past nor the present tense inflection is of course obligatory in itself: instead of past we can choose present, and vice versa. So, instead we have to say that the tense paradigm ? or the choice between tenses ? is obligatory: whenever you select an indicative verb, you also have to select a tense inflection. Now comes the problem. Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else ? and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion. Of course, there are many ways in which obligatoriness can be saved as a definiens, but they all require that this notion is combined with something else. Dan Slobin pointed to the fact that items that are intuitively (and by the ?encoded secondariness? definition) lexical, may form closed classes. I would like to add that closed classes may comprise both lexical and grammatical members. Within the classes of prepositions and pronouns, for instance, distinctions have occasionally been made between lexical and grammatical prepositions. Just as closed class membership seems to have a processing impact, so does the contrast between grammatical and lexical. For instance, Ishkhanyan et al. (2017) showed that the production of French pronouns identified as grammatical based on Boye & Harder (2017) is more severely impaired in agrammatic aphasia than the production of pronouns classified as lexical, and Messerschmidt et al. (2019) showed that Danish prepositions classified as grammatical attract less attention than prepositions classified as lexical. Best wishes, Kasper Boye, K. & P. Harder. 2012. "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization". Language 88.1. 1-44. Ishkhanyan, B., H. Sahraoui, P. Harder, J. Mogensen & K. Boye. 2017. "Grammatical and lexical pronoun dissociation in French speakers with agrammatic aphasia: A usage-based account and REF-based hypothesis". Journal of Neurolinguistics 44. 1-16. Messerschmidt, M., K. Boye, M.M. Overmark, S.T. Kristensen & P. Harder. 2018. "Sondringen mellem grammatiske og leksikalske pr?positioner" [?The distinction between grammatical and lexical prepositions?]. Ny forskning i grammatik 25. 89-106. Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af Dan I. SLOBIN Sendt: 19. juni 2020 23:59 Til: Idiatov Dmitry Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency?all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as ?grammatical? elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb?entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, Dan On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: Dear Juergen, I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of ?optionality? possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. Best, Dmitry 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" >: Dear Dmitry ? I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ?inflection? that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It?s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. So what I?m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ?functional expressions? (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ?syncategoremata?. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) Best ? Juergen On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: I would like to react to Kasper Boye?s summary of the ?solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market?. There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson ?Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey? (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)?s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining ?grammatical?, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)?s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case ?grammatical meaning?, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of ?grammatical meaning?, for example because it?s easier to apply consistently. Best wishes, Dmitry -------- Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151?169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. (accessible at: https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 ; it?s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" >: Dear all, I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas about the job grammatical items do. There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar?s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. With best wishes, Kasper References Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 Fra: Lingtyp > P? vegne af David Gil Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Juergen and all, My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. Best, David McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 , _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Dan I. Slobin Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics University of California, Berkeley email: slobin at berkeley.edu address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From honohiiri at yandex.ru Sat Jun 20 12:59:54 2020 From: honohiiri at yandex.ru (Idiatov Dmitry) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 15:59:54 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> Message-ID: <651101592657926@mail.yandex.ru> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From honohiiri at yandex.ru Sat Jun 20 13:23:04 2020 From: honohiiri at yandex.ru (Idiatov Dmitry) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 16:23:04 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> Message-ID: <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Adam.TALLMAN at cnrs.fr Sat Jun 20 14:19:10 2020 From: Adam.TALLMAN at cnrs.fr (TALLMAN Adam) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 14:19:10 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> ,<7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> Message-ID: <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED341@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> Dear all, A few of you have elaborated on my question about the meaning of "functional" and and then critiqued Juergen's terminological choices. I wonder if my question about adjectives was interpreted facetiously (like "wouldn't it be absurd if adjectives were considered functional?!"). Actually, it was not meant as a facetious question at all as I was attempting to understand Juergen's research question in its own terms to discern whether there was anything in the languages I was familiar with that would count as functional, but diachronically lexical without contact. Juergen, you answered my question, in the sense, that I think I have a better idea of how one might go about operationalizing a distinction between lexical and functional. But now I am less sure about what your original question to the listserve was. Allow me to elaborate. Here is your new definition: "a ?lexical category? is a class of expressions defined in terms of shared morphosyntactic properties. The members of lexical categories are inherently suitable for expressing ?at-issue? content and are backgrounded only when they appear in certain syntactic positions (e.g., attributive as opposed to predicative adjectives). Their combinatorial types (e.g., in a Categorial Grammar framework) are relatively simple. They express concepts of basic ontological categories." I think this points in the right* direction and makes me understand where you are coming from (I assume at-issue just means anything that is not presuppositional nor just implicates some meaning). But crucially the concept is now scalar or gradient (depending on how we operationalize the notion). Saying that it concerns at-issue meaning in "certain syntactic positions" (I would prefer "morphosyntactic" positions) means that for some set of morphemes / constructs / categories or whatever a, b, c, d ? we could rank them in terms of the number of positions they can occur in where they express (or tend to express?) at-issue content a>b>c>d ?. Or we could formulate this in terms of tokens in discourse rather than constructions abstracted from their use, but you get my point. And indeed you state. "It might be best to treat this list of properties as defining the notion of ?lexical category? as a cluster/radio/prototype concept." But now there is no nonarbitrary cut-off point between lexical and grammatical. If there is a boundary it will refer to quantal shifts in the distribution of elements along the lexical-grammatical scale: or stated another way, we know there is some sort of boundary because the distribution of elements along the scale is bimodal and elements in between the modes are statistically marginal. To make this more concrete, in Ch?cobo there are some adjectives / adverbials that express small size or small amount of time. In certain syntactic positions they are more likely to express backgrounded information and in a classifier like manner appear "redundantly", but plausibly help to track referents (referring to someone as honi yoi 'poor man' throughout the discourse). If I scan around related languages (I haven't done this, but let's just say hypothetically) and I find that in these other languages they more typically display at-issue notions (perhaps they more commonly appear in a predicative function), have I found a case of a "functional element" that has grammaticalized? Certainly, it expresses at-issue content less often than others ? I think there are *a lot* of morphemes like this in Amazonia. In my description of Chacobo I actually called them "semi-functional" (it includes associated motion morphemes, time of day adverbials, temporal distance markers) and I try to make the explicit argument that temporal distance morphemes mix and match properties of temporal adverbials with those of tense. It would be hard for me to make the case that these were not a result of contact (in fact, myself and Pattie Epps have a paper where we argue that such liminal cases might be an areal property of Southwestern Amazonia), but the point is that I find a performative contradiction in your attempt to exclude (certain types of?) adjectives and adverbs and the definition you supply. Seems like if you really wanted to test the idea that languages grammaticalize functional notions for the specific reasons you claim, you would need to actually include all of these liminal cases and explain why they do not all disappear under communicative pressure or else drop off of the grammaticalization cline and become lexical / primarily at-issue expressing elements. So the upshot is that I was actually wondering whether you would consider adjectives, adverbs etc. but not because they are lexical or functional, but rather because, according to your own definition they awkwardly sit in between. I was interested in what you would say about them, not whether they should be classified discretely as lexical versus functional. Adam *By "right direction" I mean interesting direction in that it could lead to developing testable hypotheses with an operationalizable set of variables that define the domain of lexical versus functional categories. I am not making the essentialist claim that it is the best definition regardless of the problem context, research question, or audience. [https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/images/cleardot.gif] Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin) ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, Lyon (07) Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867 ________________________________ De : Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] de la part de Idiatov Dmitry [honohiiri at yandex.ru] Envoy? : samedi 20 juin 2020 15:23 ? : Kasper Boye; Dan I.SLOBIN Cc : lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder Objet : Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Kasper, a quick reaction to this passage: ?Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else ? and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion.? While the application of the criterion of obligatoriness is surely a delicate matter, nobody is obliged to say anything? To avoid the kind of logical figures that you bring up, let?s say that grammatical categories are those sets of mutually exclusive discourse prominence secondary meanings whose expression is obligatory in the constructions to which they apply. Dmitry 20.06.2020, 15:12, "Kasper Boye" : Dear Dmitry and all, First a comment on obligatoriness, then one closed classes. J?rgen Bohnemeyer pointed out that obligatoriness is too restrictive as a definiens of grammatical status. Another problem is that it is also too inclusive. Consider a language like German where indicative verbs are inflected for past and present tense. The intuition (which is backed up by the ?encoded secondariness? definition; Boye & Harder 2012) is that the tense inflections are grammatical. But neither the past nor the present tense inflection is of course obligatory in itself: instead of past we can choose present, and vice versa. So, instead we have to say that the tense paradigm ? or the choice between tenses ? is obligatory: whenever you select an indicative verb, you also have to select a tense inflection. Now comes the problem. Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else ? and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion. Of course, there are many ways in which obligatoriness can be saved as a definiens, but they all require that this notion is combined with something else. Dan Slobin pointed to the fact that items that are intuitively (and by the ?encoded secondariness? definition) lexical, may form closed classes. I would like to add that closed classes may comprise both lexical and grammatical members. Within the classes of prepositions and pronouns, for instance, distinctions have occasionally been made between lexical and grammatical prepositions. Just as closed class membership seems to have a processing impact, so does the contrast between grammatical and lexical. For instance, Ishkhanyan et al. (2017) showed that the production of French pronouns identified as grammatical based on Boye & Harder (2017) is more severely impaired in agrammatic aphasia than the production of pronouns classified as lexical, and Messerschmidt et al. (2019) showed that Danish prepositions classified as grammatical attract less attention than prepositions classified as lexical. Best wishes, Kasper Boye, K. & P. Harder. 2012. "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization". Language 88.1. 1-44. Ishkhanyan, B., H. Sahraoui, P. Harder, J. Mogensen & K. Boye. 2017. "Grammatical and lexical pronoun dissociation in French speakers with agrammatic aphasia: A usage-based account and REF-based hypothesis". Journal of Neurolinguistics 44. 1-16. Messerschmidt, M., K. Boye, M.M. Overmark, S.T. Kristensen & P. Harder. 2018. "Sondringen mellem grammatiske og leksikalske pr?positioner" [?The distinction between grammatical and lexical prepositions?]. Ny forskning i grammatik 25. 89-106. Fra: Lingtyp > P? vegne af Dan I. SLOBIN Sendt: 19. juni 2020 23:59 Til: Idiatov Dmitry > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency?all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as ?grammatical? elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb?entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, Dan On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: Dear Juergen, I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of ?optionality? possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. Best, Dmitry 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" >: Dear Dmitry ? I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ?inflection? that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It?s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. So what I?m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ?functional expressions? (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ?syncategoremata?. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) Best ? Juergen On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: I would like to react to Kasper Boye?s summary of the ?solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market?. There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson ?Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey? (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)?s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining ?grammatical?, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)?s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case ?grammatical meaning?, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of ?grammatical meaning?, for example because it?s easier to apply consistently. Best wishes, Dmitry -------- Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151?169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. (accessible at: https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 ; it?s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" >: Dear all, I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas about the job grammatical items do. There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar?s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. With best wishes, Kasper References Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 Fra: Lingtyp > P? vegne af David Gil Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Juergen and all, My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. Best, David McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 , _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Dan I. Slobin Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics University of California, Berkeley email: slobin at berkeley.edu address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natalie.a.weber at gmail.com Sat Jun 20 15:09:15 2020 From: natalie.a.weber at gmail.com (Natalie Weber) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 11:09:15 -0400 Subject: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic structure Message-ID: I agree. This is a failing of a lot of prosodic phonology literature, although perhaps for good reason. Ideally, a study of the correspondence between prosodic and syntactic structure would have three parts: 1. Independent phonological evidence for prosodic constituents 2. Independent syntactic evidence for syntactic constituents 3. Explicit characterization of the mapping between the two But in practice you will often only see 2 out 3 of those, because it's uncommon for phonologists to be well-versed in syntax enough to study the syntax side of things, and vice versa. Personally, I'm hoping to encourage more cross-subfield collaborations. My dissertation discusses correspondences between syntactic, prosodic, and metrical constituents in Blackfoot (Algonquian), and I address each of the three points above. I discuss independent syntactic evidence for the CP and *v*P constituents, independent phonological evidence for the PPh and PWd constituents, and then discuss some of the implications for mapping between them. It was a huge undertaking (hence why I think we need co-authored studies), but it's also one of the only studies of prosodic phonology I know of that attempts to address all three points. You can download it at http://hdl.handle.net/2429/74075 if you are interested. Regarding some of the recent and seminal papers in prosodic phonology: The mentions of syntactic 'words' (X0) and 'phrases' (XP) have increased since Selkirk's (2011) "The syntax-phonology interface" paper on Match Theory. In her earlier work, she was more explicit about relating the syntactic definitions to X-bar theory. In my interpretation, that means that X0 is a minimal phrase (not a syntactic "word", which is not a primitive type). In theory, then, these papers *could* use typical tests for phrasal constituency, such as movement, uninterruptibility, etc. Like you, I've found that they don't, but it's good to remember that it should in principle be possible to show this. There is also work like Nespor and Vogel (1986/2007) which has explicit mapping algorithms that rely on morphological units like the "stem", or "affix". Much of the time, these constituents are also not defined with a universal morphosyntactic definition, but at least they are usually well-supported on language internal facts. There's other recent work that does pretty decently though, depending on what you'll count as sufficient empirical evidence... maybe if you give us an idea of the sorts of papers you've already considered and rejected, we could fill in the gaps? (Basically, I started typing a lot more, but I wasn't sure if it was the kind of thing you are looking for.) I'd be super happy to start a shared list of prosodic phonology literature (a reading group?), if you're interested! It would be pretty useful to tag papers for how well they address the syntax side of things via empirical generalizations. Best, --Natalie ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: *Adam James Ross Tallman* Date: Wed, Jun 3, 2020, 6:07 AM Subject: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic structure To: Hello all, I've been doing a lit. review (again) in prosodic phonology. Advocates of the prosodic hierarchy claim that prosodic levels map from specific morphosyntactic constituents like 'words' or 'phrases' or X0 and XP etc. However, I have been unable to find a single example of a paper that relates its analysis to the prosodic hierarchy that actually provides evidence for or defines the morphosyntactic categories that the prosodic domains relate to in the language under study. Of course, the fact that no evidence or definitions for X0 / XP and the like are provided does not mean there is no evidence - but the "phonology evidence only please" character of the literature makes it very difficult to come up with global assessment of how the quest for mapping rules has faired (the discussion in Scheer 2010 suggests it has been a total failure) or to distill some sort of testable hypothesis from the literature. I'm wondering if anyone has any examples at hand where such categories are provided with explicit empirical definitions. Perhaps this is just an oversight on my part. best, Adam -- Adam J.R. Tallman PhD, University of Texas at Austin Investigador del Museo de Etnograf?a y Folklore, la Paz ELDP -- Postdoctorante CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Natalie Weber (pronouns: *they/them*) Assistant Professor Department of Linguistics, Yale University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From boye at hum.ku.dk Sat Jun 20 15:14:42 2020 From: boye at hum.ku.dk (Kasper Boye) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 15:14:42 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> Message-ID: Dear Dmitry, Thank you for continuing this interesting discussion! As for your claim that nobody is obliged to say anything: Languages are conventions and social facts, and if you want to make yourself understood, and to make yourself understood as belonging to a language community, you have to follow these conventions. Playing with social facts can be as dangerous as playing with physical facts. You can go around saying ?-ed, -s, -ing? for months at home without producing any bases, but if you do it in public in an English language community, there is a risk that you will be put in a straightjacket until you start producing the bases. Your suggestion to refer to both ?encoded secondariness? and obligatoriness in the definition of grammatical status would exclude all the lexical items, which is fine and due to ?encoded secondariness?. However, as far as I can see, it would also exclude a lot of items that you might not want to exclude, e.g. some auxiliaries and a lot of schematic constructions. For instance, an English caused motion construction (NP V NP PP) is not obligatory in any useful sense of the term, but if you don?t include it under ?grammar?, then you are defining a notion of grammar which is getting far from the notions that most people agree (and disagree) on. This is perfectly fine of course, but you may have to spend a considerable part of your life trying to get it accepted. So, why not stick with ?encoded secondariness?, and say: Within the class of grammatical items there is an interesting subset of items that are obligatory ? and then start thinking about the relationship between encoded secondariness, closed classes and obligatoriness? I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts on that relationship! With best wishes, Kasper Fra: Idiatov Dmitry Sendt: 20. juni 2020 15:23 Til: Kasper Boye ; Dan I.SLOBIN Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder Emne: Re: SV: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Kasper, a quick reaction to this passage: ?Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else ? and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion.? While the application of the criterion of obligatoriness is surely a delicate matter, nobody is obliged to say anything? To avoid the kind of logical figures that you bring up, let?s say that grammatical categories are those sets of mutually exclusive discourse prominence secondary meanings whose expression is obligatory in the constructions to which they apply. Dmitry 20.06.2020, 15:12, "Kasper Boye" >: Dear Dmitry and all, First a comment on obligatoriness, then one closed classes. J?rgen Bohnemeyer pointed out that obligatoriness is too restrictive as a definiens of grammatical status. Another problem is that it is also too inclusive. Consider a language like German where indicative verbs are inflected for past and present tense. The intuition (which is backed up by the ?encoded secondariness? definition; Boye & Harder 2012) is that the tense inflections are grammatical. But neither the past nor the present tense inflection is of course obligatory in itself: instead of past we can choose present, and vice versa. So, instead we have to say that the tense paradigm ? or the choice between tenses ? is obligatory: whenever you select an indicative verb, you also have to select a tense inflection. Now comes the problem. Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else ? and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion. Of course, there are many ways in which obligatoriness can be saved as a definiens, but they all require that this notion is combined with something else. Dan Slobin pointed to the fact that items that are intuitively (and by the ?encoded secondariness? definition) lexical, may form closed classes. I would like to add that closed classes may comprise both lexical and grammatical members. Within the classes of prepositions and pronouns, for instance, distinctions have occasionally been made between lexical and grammatical prepositions. Just as closed class membership seems to have a processing impact, so does the contrast between grammatical and lexical. For instance, Ishkhanyan et al. (2017) showed that the production of French pronouns identified as grammatical based on Boye & Harder (2017) is more severely impaired in agrammatic aphasia than the production of pronouns classified as lexical, and Messerschmidt et al. (2019) showed that Danish prepositions classified as grammatical attract less attention than prepositions classified as lexical. Best wishes, Kasper Boye, K. & P. Harder. 2012. "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization". Language 88.1. 1-44. Ishkhanyan, B., H. Sahraoui, P. Harder, J. Mogensen & K. Boye. 2017. "Grammatical and lexical pronoun dissociation in French speakers with agrammatic aphasia: A usage-based account and REF-based hypothesis". Journal of Neurolinguistics 44. 1-16. Messerschmidt, M., K. Boye, M.M. Overmark, S.T. Kristensen & P. Harder. 2018. "Sondringen mellem grammatiske og leksikalske pr?positioner" [?The distinction between grammatical and lexical prepositions?]. Ny forskning i grammatik 25. 89-106. Fra: Lingtyp > P? vegne af Dan I. SLOBIN Sendt: 19. juni 2020 23:59 Til: Idiatov Dmitry > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency?all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as ?grammatical? elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb?entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, Dan On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: Dear Juergen, I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of ?optionality? possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. Best, Dmitry 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" >: Dear Dmitry ? I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ?inflection? that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It?s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. So what I?m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ?functional expressions? (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ?syncategoremata?. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) Best ? Juergen On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: I would like to react to Kasper Boye?s summary of the ?solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market?. There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson ?Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey? (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)?s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining ?grammatical?, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)?s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case ?grammatical meaning?, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of ?grammatical meaning?, for example because it?s easier to apply consistently. Best wishes, Dmitry -------- Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151?169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. (accessible at: https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 ; it?s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" >: Dear all, I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas about the job grammatical items do. There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar?s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. With best wishes, Kasper References Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 Fra: Lingtyp > P? vegne af David Gil Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Juergen and all, My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. Best, David McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 , _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Dan I. Slobin Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics University of California, Berkeley email: slobin at berkeley.edu address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jb77 at buffalo.edu Sat Jun 20 15:45:38 2020 From: jb77 at buffalo.edu (Bohnemeyer, Juergen) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 15:45:38 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED341@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED341@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> Message-ID: <3180F818-F44B-43FF-A3C9-7053002AFBBF@buffalo.edu> Dear Adam ? The notion of ?at-issue content? is defined in models of information structure that assume that utterances in their discourse contexts introduce or answer explicit or implicit ?questions under discussion? (QuDs). Craige Robert?s work is probably the most widely known exponent of this approach (Roberts 1996, 2012). Others include B?ring (1997, 2003), Carlson (1982), Klein & von Stutterheim (1987, 2002), and van Kuppevelt (1995, 1996). The at-issue content of an utterance (if any) is that part of its content that provides a (complete or partial) answer to the QuD of the utterance context. I do indeed assume that there is no categorical boundary between lexicon and grammar. Any assumption to the contrary would seem to be inconsistent with both grammaticalization theory and most versions of Construction Grammar. Is there a problem with that? I wonder whether the source of your confusion regarding the variable status of adjectives stems from a failure to distinguish between an expression?s actual information status as a token in a given utterance and the expression?s inherent capability as a type of expressing at-issue content. Only the latter, not the former, is part of the proposed definition of restrictors (which I?ll remind you is merely a subtype of functional expressions - I?m *not* actually claiming that *all* functional expressions are inherently backgrounded. That is where I part company with Boye & Harder 2012, to whom I otherwise owe a debt of gratitude, as Kasper pointed out). Adjectives *can* express at-issue content, restrictors cannot. Adjectives do not become restrictors just because they are used in a backgrounded position in a given utterance. It?s type properties not matter, not token properties. What you say about adjectives and classifiers in Chacobo is of great interest to me. There is a similar phenomenon in Mayan languages: so-called ?positionals? (I prefer ?dispositionals?, since the great majority of the roots lexicalize properties of inanimate referents, not postures) constitute a lexical category in their own right in Mayan. They surface as both verbs and stative predicates (traditionally, but arguably misleadingly, the latter are considered participles), but subsets of them require derivational morphology in both cases. Mayan languages have hundreds of such roots. Crucially for present purposes, many if not most of these roots can also be used as numeral classifiers. And when they are, I treat them as functional expressions. I consider this polysemy - that is to say, I assume that there is a single lexicon entry that licenses both the dispositional predicate uses and the classifier uses. In other words, I put less distance between these two uses of dispositional morphemes than I put between, say, _have_ used as a possessive predicators vs. auxiliary. That?s because it seems to me that speakers draft dispositional roots into classifier duty on the fly creatively. In other words, I see the relation between the two kinds of uses as more dynamic than static. Bottomline: we should definitely not assume that we can sort the morphemes of a language (and here I mean strings of sound used as one or multiple signs in the speech community) neatly into two buckets, one labeled ?lexicon?, the other ?grammar?. That is just really not how natural languages work. I?m surprised that this seems controversial? Best ? Juergen Berlin, B. (1968). Tzeltal numeral classifiers: A study in ethnographic semantics. The Hague: Mouton. Bu?ring, Daniel (1997). The 59th Street Bridge Accent. London: Routledge. Bu?ring, Daniel (2003). On D-trees, beans, and B-accents. Linguistics and Philosophy 26: 511-545. Carlson, Lauri. 1982. Dialogue games: an approach to discourse analysis (Synthese Language Library 17). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel. Klein, W., & Von Stutterheim, C. (1987). Quaestio und referenzielle Bewegung in Erz?hlungen [Quaestio and referential shift in narratives]. Linguistische Berichte 109: 163-183. --- (2002). Quaestio and L-perspectivation. In C. F. Graumann, & W. Kallmeyer (Eds.), Perspective and perspectivation in discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 59-88. Roberts, C. (1996). Information Structure in Discourse: Towards an Integrated Formal Theory of Pragmatics. In Jae Hak Yoon and Andreas Kathol (eds.), Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 49. Roberts, C. (2012). Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. Semantics & Pragmatics 5 (Article 6): 1-69. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1995). Discourse structure, topicality and questioning. Linguistics 31, 109?147. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1996). Inferring from topics. Linguistics and Philosophy 19, 393?443. > On Jun 20, 2020, at 10:19 AM, TALLMAN Adam wrote: > > Dear all, > > A few of you have elaborated on my question about the meaning of "functional" and and then critiqued Juergen's terminological choices. I wonder if my question about adjectives was interpreted facetiously (like "wouldn't it be absurd if adjectives were considered functional?!"). > > Actually, it was not meant as a facetious question at all as I was attempting to understand Juergen's research question in its own terms to discern whether there was anything in the languages I was familiar with that would count as functional, but diachronically lexical without contact. > > Juergen, you answered my question, in the sense, that I think I have a better idea of how one might go about operationalizing a distinction between lexical and functional. But now I am less sure about what your original question to the listserve was. Allow me to elaborate. > > Here is your new definition: > > "a ?lexical category? is a class of expressions defined in terms of shared morphosyntactic properties. The members of lexical categories are inherently suitable for expressing ?at-issue? content and are backgrounded only when they appear in certain syntactic positions (e.g., attributive as opposed to predicative adjectives). Their combinatorial types (e.g., in a Categorial Grammar framework) are relatively simple. They express concepts of basic ontological categories." > > I think this points in the right* direction and makes me understand where you are coming from (I assume at-issue just means anything that is not presuppositional nor just implicates some meaning). But crucially the concept is now scalar or gradient (depending on how we operationalize the notion). Saying that it concerns at-issue meaning in "certain syntactic positions" (I would prefer "morphosyntactic" positions) means that for some set of morphemes / constructs / categories or whatever a, b, c, d ? we could rank them in terms of the number of positions they can occur in where they express (or tend to express?) at-issue content a>b>c>d ?. Or we could formulate this in terms of tokens in discourse rather than constructions abstracted from their use, but you get my point. And indeed you state. > > > "It might be best to treat this list of properties as defining the notion of ?lexical category? as a cluster/radio/prototype concept." > > > But now there is no nonarbitrary cut-off point between lexical and grammatical. If there is a boundary it will refer to quantal shifts in the distribution of elements along the lexical-grammatical scale: or stated another way, we know there is some sort of boundary because the distribution of elements along the scale is bimodal and elements in between the modes are statistically marginal. > > To make this more concrete, in Ch?cobo there are some adjectives / adverbials that express small size or small amount of time. In certain syntactic positions they are more likely to express backgrounded information and in a classifier like manner appear "redundantly", but plausibly help to track referents (referring to someone as honi yoi 'poor man' throughout the discourse). If I scan around related languages (I haven't done this, but let's just say hypothetically) and I find that in these other languages they more typically display at-issue notions (perhaps they more commonly appear in a predicative function), have I found a case of a "functional element" that has grammaticalized? Certainly, it expresses at-issue content less often than others ? > > I think there are *a lot* of morphemes like this in Amazonia. In my description of Chacobo I actually called them "semi-functional" (it includes associated motion morphemes, time of day adverbials, temporal distance markers) and I try to make the explicit argument that temporal distance morphemes mix and match properties of temporal adverbials with those of tense. It would be hard for me to make the case that these were not a result of contact (in fact, myself and Pattie Epps have a paper where we argue that such liminal cases might be an areal property of Southwestern Amazonia), but the point is that I find a performative contradiction in your attempt to exclude (certain types of?) adjectives and adverbs and the definition you supply. Seems like if you really wanted to test the idea that languages grammaticalize functional notions for the specific reasons you claim, you would need to actually include all of these liminal cases and explain why they do not all disappear under communicative pressure or else drop off of the grammaticalization cline and become lexical / primarily at-issue expressing elements. > > So the upshot is that I was actually wondering whether you would consider adjectives, adverbs etc. but not because they are lexical or functional, but rather because, according to your own definition they awkwardly sit in between. I was interested in what you would say about them, not whether they should be classified discretely as lexical versus functional. > > Adam > > *By "right direction" I mean interesting direction in that it could lead to developing testable hypotheses with an operationalizable set of variables that define the domain of lexical versus functional categories. I am not making the essentialist claim that it is the best definition regardless of the problem context, research question, or audience. > > > > > > > > Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin) > ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant > CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) > Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, Lyon (07) > Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867 > De : Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] de la part de Idiatov Dmitry [honohiiri at yandex.ru] > Envoy? : samedi 20 juin 2020 15:23 > ? : Kasper Boye; Dan I.SLOBIN > Cc : lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > Objet : Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Kasper, a quick reaction to this passage: > > ?Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else ? and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion.? > > While the application of the criterion of obligatoriness is surely a delicate matter, nobody is obliged to say anything? > > To avoid the kind of logical figures that you bring up, let?s say that grammatical categories are those sets of mutually exclusive discourse prominence secondary meanings whose expression is obligatory in the constructions to which they apply. > > Dmitry > > > 20.06.2020, 15:12, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear Dmitry and all, > > First a comment on obligatoriness, then one closed classes. > > J?rgen Bohnemeyer pointed out that obligatoriness is too restrictive as a definiens of grammatical status. Another problem is that it is also too inclusive. Consider a language like German where indicative verbs are inflected for past and present tense. The intuition (which is backed up by the ?encoded secondariness? definition; Boye & Harder 2012) is that the tense inflections are grammatical. But neither the past nor the present tense inflection is of course obligatory in itself: instead of past we can choose present, and vice versa. So, instead we have to say that the tense paradigm ? or the choice between tenses ? is obligatory: whenever you select an indicative verb, you also have to select a tense inflection. Now comes the problem. Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else ? and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion. Of course, there are many ways in which obligatoriness can be saved as a definiens, but they all require that this notion is combined with something else. > > Dan Slobin pointed to the fact that items that are intuitively (and by the ?encoded secondariness? definition) lexical, may form closed classes. I would like to add that closed classes may comprise both lexical and grammatical members. Within the classes of prepositions and pronouns, for instance, distinctions have occasionally been made between lexical and grammatical prepositions. Just as closed class membership seems to have a processing impact, so does the contrast between grammatical and lexical. For instance, Ishkhanyan et al. (2017) showed that the production of French pronouns identified as grammatical based on Boye & Harder (2017) is more severely impaired in agrammatic aphasia than the production of pronouns classified as lexical, and Messerschmidt et al. (2019) showed that Danish prepositions classified as grammatical attract less attention than prepositions classified as lexical. > > Best wishes, > Kasper > > Boye, K. & P. Harder. 2012. "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization". Language 88.1. 1-44. > > Ishkhanyan, B., H. Sahraoui, P. Harder, J. Mogensen & K. Boye. 2017. "Grammatical and lexical pronoun dissociation in French speakers with agrammatic aphasia: A usage-based account and REF-based hypothesis". Journal of Neurolinguistics 44. 1-16. > > Messerschmidt, M., K. Boye, M.M. Overmark, S.T. Kristensen & P. Harder. 2018. "Sondringen mellem grammatiske og leksikalske pr?positioner" [?The distinction between grammatical and lexical prepositions?]. Ny forskning i grammatik 25. 89-106. > > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af Dan I. SLOBIN > Sendt: 19. juni 2020 23:59 > Til: Idiatov Dmitry > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency?all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as ?grammatical? elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb?entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. > > Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, > Dan > > On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > Dear Juergen, > > I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. > > The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of ?optionality? possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. > > However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. > > The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. > > Best, > Dmitry > > > 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : > Dear Dmitry ? I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. > > A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. > > My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ?inflection? that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It?s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. > > So what I?m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. > > (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ?functional expressions? (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ?syncategoremata?. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) > > Best ? Juergen > > > On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > > I would like to react to Kasper Boye?s summary of the ?solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market?. > > There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson ?Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey? (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)?s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining ?grammatical?, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)?s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. > > Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case ?grammatical meaning?, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of ?grammatical meaning?, for example because it?s easier to apply consistently. > > Best wishes, > Dmitry > > -------- > Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151?169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. > (accessible at: https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 ; it?s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) > > > 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear all, > > I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas about the job grammatical items do. > > There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. > > Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. > > Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. > > If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. > > Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar?s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. > > With best wishes, > Kasper > > References > Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. > Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf > > Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. > > Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. > > Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 > > Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. > Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af David Gil > Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 > Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Juergen and all, > > My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. > > Best, > > David > > > McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. > McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. > McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 > McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. > > > On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. > > Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) > > I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. > > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > > As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). > > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen > > -- > David Gil > > Senior Scientist (Associate) > 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 > Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 > , > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies > Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science > University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In > (Leonard Cohen) > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > -- > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > Dan I. Slobin > Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics > University of California, Berkeley > email: slobin at berkeley.edu > address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) From hyman at berkeley.edu Sat Jun 20 15:48:54 2020 From: hyman at berkeley.edu (Larry M. HYMAN) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 08:48:54 -0700 Subject: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic structure In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Thanks for your comments on prosodic phonology and syntax (and for the link to your Blackfoot!). I wonder if you see one of your first two parts as prior to the other, either logically, temporally, or practically? - 1. Independent phonological evidence for prosodic constituents - 2. Independent syntactic evidence for syntactic constituents The reason I ask is that I find that the interface is best studied by language specialists who let the phonological facts of the language drive the "interface", rather than starting with preconceived notions of abstract syntax (which can/should come in later, once you have a handle on the complexities). Having worked extensively on the syntax-phonology interface in a number of Bantu languages, I can tell you that none of them have prosodic facts that provide a perfect correlation to pre-existing views of abstract syntax. In current work I am doing on Runyankore and related Rutara Bantu languages, there are distinct differences between the prosodic effects on the head noun vs. on the verb, despite X-bar theory, which appear to follow their own "logic". Digging into the details to discover the wide range of surprising facts that speakers/languages exploit has been very rewarding, if not producing quite a bit of humility. I find myself in agreement with some wise remarks made by Akinlabi & Liberman (2000) several years ago: "Whether formal modeling is treated simply as programming for some practical purpose, or as a method of investigating the properties of the cognitive systems involved, it can and should be separated in most cases from the problem of determining the facts and the descriptive generalizations." (p.60) "The documentation of... descriptive generalizations is sometimes clearer and more accessible when expressed in terms of a detailed formal reconstruction, but only in the rare and happy case that the formalism fits the data so well that the resulting account is clearer and easier to understand than the list of categories of facts that it encodes...." (p.54) While I cannot argue against the wisdom of phonologists and syntacticians working together, which is happening, and linguists knowing both phonology and syntax, the main problem in the syntax-phonology interface area is that there are still so few exhaustive studies of "the facts". Linguists on both "persuasions" have been too content to stop short. Akinlabi, Akinbiyi & Mark Liberman. 2000. The tonal phonology of Yoruba clitics. In B. Gerlach & J. Grizjenhout (eds), *Clitics in phonology, morphology, and syntax*, 31-62. Amsterdam: Benjamins. PS If anyone is interested I have a recent paper that I could send that will give a hint of the complexities and non-isomorphisms I refer to above: "Prosodic asymmetries in nominal vs. verbal phrases in Bantu". On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 8:09 AM Natalie Weber wrote: > I agree. This is a failing of a lot of prosodic phonology literature, > although perhaps for good reason. Ideally, a study of the correspondence > between prosodic and syntactic structure would have three parts: > > 1. Independent phonological evidence for prosodic constituents > 2. Independent syntactic evidence for syntactic constituents > 3. Explicit characterization of the mapping between the two > > But in practice you will often only see 2 out 3 of those, because it's > uncommon for phonologists to be well-versed in syntax enough to study the > syntax side of things, and vice versa. Personally, I'm hoping to encourage > more cross-subfield collaborations. > > My dissertation discusses correspondences between syntactic, prosodic, and > metrical constituents in Blackfoot (Algonquian), and I address each of the > three points above. I discuss independent syntactic evidence for the CP and > *v*P constituents, independent phonological evidence for the PPh and PWd > constituents, and then discuss some of the implications for mapping between > them. It was a huge undertaking (hence why I think we need co-authored > studies), but it's also one of the only studies of prosodic phonology I > know of that attempts to address all three points. You can download it at > http://hdl.handle.net/2429/74075 if you are interested. > > Regarding some of the recent and seminal papers in prosodic phonology: > > The mentions of syntactic 'words' (X0) and 'phrases' (XP) have increased > since Selkirk's (2011) "The syntax-phonology interface" paper on Match > Theory. In her earlier work, she was more explicit about relating the > syntactic definitions to X-bar theory. In my interpretation, that means > that X0 is a minimal phrase (not a syntactic "word", which is not a > primitive type). In theory, then, these papers *could* use typical tests > for phrasal constituency, such as movement, uninterruptibility, etc. Like > you, I've found that they don't, but it's good to remember that it should > in principle be possible to show this. > > There is also work like Nespor and Vogel (1986/2007) which has explicit > mapping algorithms that rely on morphological units like the "stem", or > "affix". Much of the time, these constituents are also not defined with a > universal morphosyntactic definition, but at least they are usually > well-supported on language internal facts. > > There's other recent work that does pretty decently though, depending on > what you'll count as sufficient empirical evidence... maybe if you give us > an idea of the sorts of papers you've already considered and rejected, we > could fill in the gaps? (Basically, I started typing a lot more, but I > wasn't sure if it was the kind of thing you are looking for.) > > I'd be super happy to start a shared list of prosodic phonology literature > (a reading group?), if you're interested! It would be pretty useful to tag > papers for how well they address the syntax side of things via empirical > generalizations. > > Best, > --Natalie > > > ---------- Forwarded message --------- > From: *Adam James Ross Tallman* > Date: Wed, Jun 3, 2020, 6:07 AM > Subject: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic > structure > To: > > Hello all, > > I've been doing a lit. review (again) in prosodic phonology. Advocates of > the prosodic hierarchy claim that prosodic levels map from specific > morphosyntactic constituents like 'words' or 'phrases' or X0 and XP etc. > > However, I have been unable to find a single example of a paper that > relates its analysis to the prosodic hierarchy that actually provides > evidence for or defines the morphosyntactic categories that the prosodic > domains relate to in the language under study. > > Of course, the fact that no evidence or definitions for X0 / XP and the > like are provided does not mean there is no evidence - but the "phonology > evidence only please" character of the literature makes it very difficult > to come up with global assessment of how the quest for mapping rules has > faired (the discussion in Scheer 2010 suggests it has been a total failure) > or to distill some sort of testable hypothesis from the literature. I'm > wondering if anyone has any examples at hand where such categories are > provided with explicit empirical definitions. Perhaps this is just an > oversight on my part. > > best, > > Adam > > -- > Adam J.R. Tallman > PhD, University of Texas at Austin > Investigador del Museo de Etnograf?a y Folklore, la Paz > ELDP -- Postdoctorante > CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > -- > > Natalie Weber > (pronouns: *they/them*) > > Assistant Professor > Department of Linguistics, Yale University > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -- Larry M. Hyman, Professor of Linguistics & Executive Director, France-Berkeley Fund Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/person_detail.php?person=19 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dbeck at ualberta.ca Sat Jun 20 16:01:29 2020 From: dbeck at ualberta.ca (David Beck) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 10:01:29 -0600 Subject: [Lingtyp] Lingtyp Digest, Vol 69, Issue 25 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <0CBC1FA5-6917-49D2-B6FC-131979495DBB@ualberta.ca> Hello, I?m coming in on this late and there?s a lot of interesting stuff to catch up on in this thread on a Saturday morning (so I apologize if I missed where somebody already said this), but I have a couple of observations: 1) It seems to me that it is a mistake to want to attribute the term ?functional? as an inherent property of any linguistic item (let?s go out on a limb and use the term ?sign? here). Signs have meanings and they can be used in different ways in an utterance. Uses that are prescribed by structure, as opposed to instances that are ?freely? selected to express meanings, are what I think the common parlance terms ?functional?. Functional uses can be prescribed/allowed for by general rules of grammar or by specific constructions. Many items have only functional uses, many (most?) have non-functional uses, and there are some that have both, or that appear in constructions where it isn?t 100% clear whether we want to call them functional or not. A functional category for me would be the structural specification being filled (predicate, auxiliary, spatial adjunct, etc.) rather than the specific item that fills it. What you call a functional category in a language would really have to be defined in terms of how you describe the grammar, and what generalizable structural characteristics you need to posit to make that description work. The fact that signs can have both types of uses would explain how and why grammaticalization occurs, the ?classic? cline being that of the lexical sign that moves progressively towards having only a functional use. 2) J?rgen?s observation that optional functional categories is real is spot on. This is what Igor Mel??uk calls ?quasi-inflection??optional elements that are inflection-like in that they don?t form new lexical items, are generally applicable across members of a lexical class/classes, and express what he would call ?grammatical meanings? (? (meaning belonging to a) functional category). As J?rgen observes, this is a common thing and a concept that we ignore at our peril. David ================================ David Beck, Professor Department of Linguistics University of Alberta Edmonton, AB T6G 2E7 Canada Phone: (780) 492-0807 FAX: (780) 492-0806 http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbeck/ http://www.artsrn.ualberta.ca/totonaco/ > On Jun 20, 2020, at 9:15 AM, lingtyp-request at listserv.linguistlist.org wrote: > > Send Lingtyp mailing list submissions to > lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > lingtyp-request at listserv.linguistlist.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > lingtyp-owner at listserv.linguistlist.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of Lingtyp digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: Innovation of functional categories (Kasper Boye) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 15:14:42 +0000 > From: Kasper Boye > To: Idiatov Dmitry , Dan I.SLOBIN > > Cc: "lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org" > , Peter Harder > Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > Message-ID: > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Dear Dmitry, > > Thank you for continuing this interesting discussion! > > As for your claim that nobody is obliged to say anything: Languages are conventions and social facts, and if you want to make yourself understood, and to make yourself understood as belonging to a language community, you have to follow these conventions. Playing with social facts can be as dangerous as playing with physical facts. You can go around saying ?-ed, -s, -ing? for months at home without producing any bases, but if you do it in public in an English language community, there is a risk that you will be put in a straightjacket until you start producing the bases. > > Your suggestion to refer to both ?encoded secondariness? and obligatoriness in the definition of grammatical status would exclude all the lexical items, which is fine and due to ?encoded secondariness?. However, as far as I can see, it would also exclude a lot of items that you might not want to exclude, e.g. some auxiliaries and a lot of schematic constructions. For instance, an English caused motion construction (NP V NP PP) is not obligatory in any useful sense of the term, but if you don?t include it under ?grammar?, then you are defining a notion of grammar which is getting far from the notions that most people agree (and disagree) on. This is perfectly fine of course, but you may have to spend a considerable part of your life trying to get it accepted. > > So, why not stick with ?encoded secondariness?, and say: Within the class of grammatical items there is an interesting subset of items that are obligatory ? and then start thinking about the relationship between encoded secondariness, closed classes and obligatoriness? I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts on that relationship! > > With best wishes, > Kasper > > > > > > > > > Fra: Idiatov Dmitry > Sendt: 20. juni 2020 15:23 > Til: Kasper Boye ; Dan I.SLOBIN > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > Emne: Re: SV: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Kasper, a quick reaction to this passage: > > ?Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else ? and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion.? > > While the application of the criterion of obligatoriness is surely a delicate matter, nobody is obliged to say anything? > > To avoid the kind of logical figures that you bring up, let?s say that grammatical categories are those sets of mutually exclusive discourse prominence secondary meanings whose expression is obligatory in the constructions to which they apply. > > Dmitry > > > 20.06.2020, 15:12, "Kasper Boye" >: > > Dear Dmitry and all, > > > > First a comment on obligatoriness, then one closed classes. > > > > J?rgen Bohnemeyer pointed out that obligatoriness is too restrictive as a definiens of grammatical status. Another problem is that it is also too inclusive. Consider a language like German where indicative verbs are inflected for past and present tense. The intuition (which is backed up by the ?encoded secondariness? definition; Boye & Harder 2012) is that the tense inflections are grammatical. But neither the past nor the present tense inflection is of course obligatory in itself: instead of past we can choose present, and vice versa. So, instead we have to say that the tense paradigm ? or the choice between tenses ? is obligatory: whenever you select an indicative verb, you also have to select a tense inflection. Now comes the problem. Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else ? and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion. Of course, there are many ways in which obligatoriness can be saved as a definiens, but they all require that this notion is combined with something else. > > > > Dan Slobin pointed to the fact that items that are intuitively (and by the ?encoded secondariness? definition) lexical, may form closed classes. I would like to add that closed classes may comprise both lexical and grammatical members. Within the classes of prepositions and pronouns, for instance, distinctions have occasionally been made between lexical and grammatical prepositions. Just as closed class membership seems to have a processing impact, so does the contrast between grammatical and lexical. For instance, Ishkhanyan et al. (2017) showed that the production of French pronouns identified as grammatical based on Boye & Harder (2017) is more severely impaired in agrammatic aphasia than the production of pronouns classified as lexical, and Messerschmidt et al. (2019) showed that Danish prepositions classified as grammatical attract less attention than prepositions classified as lexical. > > > > Best wishes, > > Kasper > > > > Boye, K. & P. Harder. 2012. "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization". Language 88.1. 1-44. > > > > Ishkhanyan, B., H. Sahraoui, P. Harder, J. Mogensen & K. Boye. 2017. "Grammatical and lexical pronoun dissociation in French speakers with agrammatic aphasia: A usage-based account and REF-based hypothesis". Journal of Neurolinguistics 44. 1-16. > > > > Messerschmidt, M., K. Boye, M.M. Overmark, S.T. Kristensen & P. Harder. 2018. "Sondringen mellem grammatiske og leksikalske pr?positioner" [?The distinction between grammatical and lexical prepositions?]. Ny forskning i grammatik 25. 89-106. > > > > > > > > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp > P? vegne af Dan I. SLOBIN > Sendt: 19. juni 2020 23:59 > Til: Idiatov Dmitry > > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > > > Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency?all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as ?grammatical? elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb?entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. > > > > Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, > > Dan > > > > On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: > > Dear Juergen, > > > > I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. > > > > The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of ?optionality? possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. > > > > However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. > > > > The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. > > > > Best, > > Dmitry > > > > > > 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" >: > > Dear Dmitry ? I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. > > A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. > > My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ?inflection? that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It?s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. > > So what I?m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. > > (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ?functional expressions? (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ?syncategoremata?. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) > > Best ? Juergen > > > On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: > > I would like to react to Kasper Boye?s summary of the ?solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market?. > > There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson ?Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey? (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)?s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining ?grammatical?, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)?s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. > > Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case ?grammatical meaning?, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of ?grammatical meaning?, for example because it?s easier to apply consistently. > > Best wishes, > Dmitry > > -------- > Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151?169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. > (accessible at: https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 ; it?s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) > > > 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" >: > Dear all, > > I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas about the job grammatical items do. > > There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. > > Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. > > Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. > > If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. > > Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar?s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. > > With best wishes, > Kasper > > References > Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. > Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf > > Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. > > Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. > > Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 > > Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. > Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp > P? vegne af David Gil > Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 > Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Juergen and all, > > My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. > > Best, > > David > > > McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. > McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. > McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 > McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. > > > On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. > > Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) > > I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. > > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > > As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). > > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen > > -- > David Gil > > Senior Scientist (Associate) > 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 > Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 > , > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies > Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science > University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In > (Leonard Cohen) > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > > > -- > > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > > Dan I. Slobin > > Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics > > University of California, Berkeley > > email: slobin at berkeley.edu > > address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 > > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > > ------------------------------ > > Subject: Digest Footer > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > ------------------------------ > > End of Lingtyp Digest, Vol 69, Issue 25 > *************************************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From honohiiri at yandex.ru Sat Jun 20 17:31:47 2020 From: honohiiri at yandex.ru (Idiatov Dmitry) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 20:31:47 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> Message-ID: <18781592669882@mail.yandex.ru> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From slobin at berkeley.edu Sat Jun 20 20:20:03 2020 From: slobin at berkeley.edu (Dan I. SLOBIN) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 13:20:03 -0700 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <96098C7F-D7B9-4388-B297-5369CA7A68BA@uni-konstanz.de> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <96098C7F-D7B9-4388-B297-5369CA7A68BA@uni-konstanz.de> Message-ID: Interesting question, Frans ? From the viewpoint of processing (rather than definitions of linguistic terms), basic color terms are similar to basic path verbs: high frequency, short, broad range within a basic category (?blue? and not ?turquoise? or ?cerulean?, ?enter? and not ?penetrate? or ?invade?). Many semantic domains are characterized by a small, fixed class of basic verbs?e.g., basic gait verbs like ?walk,? run,? ?crawl?; basic speech-act verbs like ?ask,? ?answer?; and many more. As you note, manner verbs do not fit into such closed classes. From this point of view, there is a cline from morphosyntactic to lexical expression of the same basic semantic classes (echoing Jan Rijkhoff?s point that functions of grammatical elements can also be expressed lexically and by other means). A question for a broader discussion might be why it is that some domains, like color and gait, do not show up toward the grammatical end of the cline (or do they ever?). (Sorry to miss seeing you in Berkeley. I?m doing well in a sedentary state and hope you are too.) Regards, Dan On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 3:58 AM Uni KN wrote: > What about basic colour terms, Dan? They are a class (if you believe in > ?basicness? as class-delimiting), they are supposedly synchronically closed > (max 11/12 or so), and they seem to be internally structured. So, do basic > colour terms (in any lg) share something ? other than being a closed class > ? with case markers (in, let?s say, Turkish) that they don?t share with, > say, manner-of-speaking verbs (in, say, English: growl, grunt, whisper, > shriek, yell, moan, tut-tut ?)? > > Good to hear from you. We were already booked to come to Berkeley a > couple of months ago, for the Germanic Roundtable of indefatigable > Irmengard, but then we?ve suddenly had to become sedentary, not a bad state > to be in, in principle ... > > Yours > Frans > > On 19. Jun 2020, at 23:58, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: > > Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The > plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is > important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec > speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed > classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high > frequency?all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in > my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as ?grammatical? > elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a > small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the > Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not > innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb > prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the > relevant verb?entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- > or u- as the relevant verb prefix. > > Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, > Dan > > On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: > >> Dear Juergen, >> >> I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two >> issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the >> end of your message. >> >> The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the >> distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may >> appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of >> ?optionality? possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by >> others) in my (2008) paper. >> >> However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality >> may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is >> that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific >> language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. >> Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical >> much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described >> as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the >> same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely >> optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact >> it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, >> as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in >> many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same >> about English. >> >> The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with >> being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, >> not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that >> derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the >> defining criterion, does not mean that *grammatical *is the same as >> *inflectional*, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine >> (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of >> inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as >> much as possible. >> >> Best, >> Dmitry >> >> >> 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : >> >> Dear Dmitry ? I think the typological literature on functional >> expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate >> ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural >> marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix >> bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only >> differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, >> obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a >> functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather >> suboptimal move to me. >> >> A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if >> a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past >> tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the >> language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. >> >> My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a >> larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a >> notion of ?inflection? that was developed on the basis and for the >> treatment of Indo-European languages. It?s a concept that seems >> unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that >> package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of >> strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you >> begin to run into all kinds of problems. >> >> So what I?m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very >> real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just >> one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection >> that is typologically woefully inadequate. >> >> (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ?functional >> expressions? (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label >> expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional >> ?syncategoremata?. But, I also believe that we should worry about the >> concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize >> that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) >> >> Best ? Juergen >> >> >> On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry >> wrote: >> >> I would like to react to Kasper Boye?s summary of the ?solutions to the >> problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market?. >> >> There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these >> purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the >> well-known quote by Jakobson ?Languages differ essentially in what they >> _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey? (see >> https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of >> obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being >> categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)?s criterion >> of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes >> the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss >> obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining ?grammatical?, but >> dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would >> exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around >> long before Boye & Harder (2012)?s paper, it so happened that I discussed >> why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts >> of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. >> >> Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case >> ?grammatical meaning?, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using >> one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical >> terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of >> ?grammatical meaning?, for example because it?s easier to apply >> consistently. >> >> Best wishes, >> Dmitry >> >> -------- >> Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and >> the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couso & (in >> collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues >> in grammaticalization, 151?169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: >> 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. >> (accessible at: >> https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 >> ; it?s also available from my website, but the server has been down for >> some time, hence this temporary link) >> >> >> 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : >> Dear all, >> >> I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems of >> defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas about >> the job grammatical items do. >> >> There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? >> on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural definition in >> terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own functional and >> usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his >> initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse >> prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). >> Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of >> being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, >> being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being >> dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. >> >> Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the >> same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison >> d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, >> which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster >> than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations >> (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap >> shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather >> superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. >> >> Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is >> clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. >> Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than >> not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are >> in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et >> al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their >> dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider >> which host expression to attach it to. >> >> If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer >> perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human >> communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the >> notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production >> resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. >> >> Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical >> morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and >> we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably >> did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are >> quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are >> not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar?s >> schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are >> conventionalized as carriers of background info. >> >> With best wishes, >> Kasper >> >> References >> Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status >> and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. >> Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf >> >> Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of >> evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. >> >> Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. >> Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. >> >> Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. >> (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in >> multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. >> https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 >> >> Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The >> production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. >> Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. >> Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 >> >> >> >> >> Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af >> David Gil >> Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 >> Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories >> >> Dear Juergen and all, >> >> My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes >> from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For >> the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional >> categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in >> Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language >> has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex >> rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also >> complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier >> discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase >> final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it >> takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace >> the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of >> a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of >> erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological >> attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). >> Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and >> since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form >> the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the >> absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated >> development of a functional category. >> >> Best, >> >> David >> >> >> McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci >> Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. >> McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object >> agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. >> McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From >> Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. >> B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of >> Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural >> Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/ >> 978-3-319-90710-9_22 >> McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) >> "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", >> Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. >> >> >> On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: >> Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional >> categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? >> of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I >> propose a more technical definition below. >> >> Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in >> which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one >> or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) >> the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former >> languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no >> obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in >> question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based >> innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of >> functional categories in the absence of contact models.) >> >> I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if >> not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of >> definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the >> ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation >> event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some >> of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors >> of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what >> role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as >> Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to >> be unclear. >> >> It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of >> innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest >> here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not >> present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. >> >> As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a >> superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might >> be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical >> category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional >> combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very >> broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of >> great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform >> in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of >> the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every >> single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of >> quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for >> languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential >> predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for >> universal quantification). >> >> Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m >> particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, >> definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only >> between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that >> report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability >> correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions >> such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of >> utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s >> communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable >> in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions >> apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. >> >> This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining >> feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t >> translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively >> advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as >> negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in >> turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in >> question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, >> and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. >> >> I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) >> >> Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a >> sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen >> >> -- >> David Gil >> >> Senior Scientist (Associate) >> 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 >> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 >> , >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> >> -- >> Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) >> Professor and Director of Graduate Studies >> Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science >> University at Buffalo >> >> >> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus >> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 >> Phone: (716) 645 0127 >> Fax: (716) 645 3825 >> Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu >> Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ >> >> Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. >> Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu >> 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. >> >> There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In >> (Leonard Cohen) >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> > > > -- > *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * > *Dan I. Slobin * > *Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics* > *University of California, Berkeley* > *email: slobin at berkeley.edu * > *address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708* > *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > -- *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * *Dan I. Slobin * *Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics* *University of California, Berkeley* *email: slobin at berkeley.edu * *address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708* *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From slobin at berkeley.edu Sat Jun 20 21:59:26 2020 From: slobin at berkeley.edu (Dan I. SLOBIN) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 14:59:26 -0700 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <96098C7F-D7B9-4388-B297-5369CA7A68BA@uni-konstanz.de> Message-ID: Thanks Daniel - Of course - direction of motion is typically grammaticalized as verbal particles of one sort or another (Talmy's "satellites") or as path verbs. Deixis is an additional dimension, as is associated motion. I'd be interested in more information from your work. Dan On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 1:33 PM Daniel Ross wrote: > Hi Dan, > > Just a quick comment: I'm not sure about color terms grammaticalizing, but > basic motion verbs can grammaticalize as Associated Motion markers (or > Directionals). They rarely display anything like the range of variation > even in a small set of motion verbs, but they do often express direction of > motion ("go" vs. "come") as well as timing of that motion ("go and do" vs > "do while going" or "do and go"), plus in a few languages 'adverbial' > properties like 'go quickly and do', but that's very rare. (I'm > contributing to an edited volume on this topic, to be published soon. More > information on request.) > > Daniel > > On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 1:21 PM Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: > >> Interesting question, Frans ? From the viewpoint of processing (rather >> than definitions of linguistic terms), basic color terms are similar to >> basic path verbs: high frequency, short, broad range within a basic >> category (?blue? and not ?turquoise? or ?cerulean?, ?enter? and not >> ?penetrate? or ?invade?). Many semantic domains are characterized by a >> small, fixed class of basic verbs?e.g., basic gait verbs like ?walk,? run,? >> ?crawl?; basic speech-act verbs like ?ask,? ?answer?; and many more. As >> you note, manner verbs do not fit into such closed classes. From this >> point of view, there is a cline from morphosyntactic to lexical expression >> of the same basic semantic classes (echoing Jan Rijkhoff?s point that >> functions of grammatical elements can also be expressed lexically and by >> other means). >> >> >> >> A question for a broader discussion might be why it is that some domains, >> like color and gait, do not show up toward the grammatical end of the cline >> (or do they ever?). >> >> >> >> (Sorry to miss seeing you in Berkeley. I?m doing well in a sedentary >> state and hope you are too.) >> >> >> >> Regards, >> >> Dan >> >> On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 3:58 AM Uni KN >> wrote: >> >>> What about basic colour terms, Dan? They are a class (if you believe in >>> ?basicness? as class-delimiting), they are supposedly synchronically closed >>> (max 11/12 or so), and they seem to be internally structured. So, do basic >>> colour terms (in any lg) share something ? other than being a closed class >>> ? with case markers (in, let?s say, Turkish) that they don?t share with, >>> say, manner-of-speaking verbs (in, say, English: growl, grunt, whisper, >>> shriek, yell, moan, tut-tut ?)? >>> >>> Good to hear from you. We were already booked to come to Berkeley a >>> couple of months ago, for the Germanic Roundtable of indefatigable >>> Irmengard, but then we?ve suddenly had to become sedentary, not a bad state >>> to be in, in principle ... >>> >>> Yours >>> Frans >>> >>> On 19. Jun 2020, at 23:58, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: >>> >>> Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. >>> The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor >>> is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec >>> speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed >>> classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high >>> frequency?all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in >>> my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as ?grammatical? >>> elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a >>> small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the >>> Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not >>> innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb >>> prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the >>> relevant verb?entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- >>> or u- as the relevant verb prefix. >>> >>> Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, >>> Dan >>> >>> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry >>> wrote: >>> >>>> Dear Juergen, >>>> >>>> I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two >>>> issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the >>>> end of your message. >>>> >>>> The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of >>>> the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may >>>> appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of >>>> ?optionality? possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by >>>> others) in my (2008) paper. >>>> >>>> However interesting the study of these various gradations of >>>> optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is >>>> fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system >>>> of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, >>>> universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be >>>> grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus >>>> be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical >>>> is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is >>>> completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, >>>> despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other >>>> languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a >>>> grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would >>>> not wish to say the same about English. >>>> >>>> The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with >>>> being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, >>>> not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that >>>> derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the >>>> defining criterion, does not mean that *grammatical *is the same as >>>> *inflectional*, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine >>>> (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of >>>> inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as >>>> much as possible. >>>> >>>> Best, >>>> Dmitry >>>> >>>> >>>> 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : >>>> >>>> Dear Dmitry ? I think the typological literature on functional >>>> expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate >>>> ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural >>>> marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix >>>> bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only >>>> differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, >>>> obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a >>>> functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather >>>> suboptimal move to me. >>>> >>>> A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: >>>> if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English >>>> past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider >>>> the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. >>>> >>>> My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a >>>> larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a >>>> notion of ?inflection? that was developed on the basis and for the >>>> treatment of Indo-European languages. It?s a concept that seems >>>> unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that >>>> package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of >>>> strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you >>>> begin to run into all kinds of problems. >>>> >>>> So what I?m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very >>>> real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just >>>> one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection >>>> that is typologically woefully inadequate. >>>> >>>> (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ?functional >>>> expressions? (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label >>>> expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional >>>> ?syncategoremata?. But, I also believe that we should worry about the >>>> concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize >>>> that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) >>>> >>>> Best ? Juergen >>>> >>>> >>>> On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry >>>> wrote: >>>> >>>> I would like to react to Kasper Boye?s summary of the ?solutions to >>>> the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market?. >>>> >>>> There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these >>>> purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the >>>> well-known quote by Jakobson ?Languages differ essentially in what they >>>> _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey? (see >>>> https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of >>>> obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being >>>> categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)?s criterion >>>> of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes >>>> the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss >>>> obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining ?grammatical?, but >>>> dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would >>>> exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around >>>> long before Boye & Harder (2012)?s paper, it so happened that I discussed >>>> why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts >>>> of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. >>>> >>>> Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case >>>> ?grammatical meaning?, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using >>>> one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical >>>> terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of >>>> ?grammatical meaning?, for example because it?s easier to apply >>>> consistently. >>>> >>>> Best wishes, >>>> Dmitry >>>> >>>> -------- >>>> Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization >>>> and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couso & (in >>>> collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues >>>> in grammaticalization, 151?169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: >>>> 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. >>>> (accessible at: >>>> https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 >>>> ; it?s also available from my website, but the server has been down for >>>> some time, hence this temporary link) >>>> >>>> >>>> 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : >>>> Dear all, >>>> >>>> I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems >>>> of defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas >>>> about the job grammatical items do. >>>> >>>> There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining >>>> ?grammatical? on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural >>>> definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own >>>> functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was >>>> referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary >>>> discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references >>>> below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic >>>> properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention >>>> backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background >>>> meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background >>>> requires a foreground. >>>> >>>> Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the >>>> same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison >>>> d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, >>>> which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster >>>> than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations >>>> (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap >>>> shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather >>>> superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. >>>> >>>> Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is >>>> clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. >>>> Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than >>>> not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are >>>> in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et >>>> al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their >>>> dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider >>>> which host expression to attach it to. >>>> >>>> If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer >>>> perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human >>>> communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the >>>> notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production >>>> resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. >>>> >>>> Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of >>>> grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but >>>> satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our >>>> forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on >>>> inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically >>>> concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also >>>> construction grammar?s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical >>>> items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. >>>> >>>> With best wishes, >>>> Kasper >>>> >>>> References >>>> Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical >>>> status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. >>>> Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf >>>> >>>> Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of >>>> evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. >>>> >>>> Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. >>>> Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. >>>> >>>> Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. >>>> (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in >>>> multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. >>>> https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 >>>> >>>> Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The >>>> production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. >>>> Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019. >>>> 1616104. >>>> Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af >>>> David Gil >>>> Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 >>>> Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>>> Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories >>>> >>>> Dear Juergen and all, >>>> >>>> My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes >>>> from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For >>>> the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional >>>> categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in >>>> Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language >>>> has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex >>>> rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also >>>> complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier >>>> discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase >>>> final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it >>>> takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace >>>> the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of >>>> a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of >>>> erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological >>>> attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). >>>> Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and >>>> since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form >>>> the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the >>>> absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated >>>> development of a functional category. >>>> >>>> Best, >>>> >>>> David >>>> >>>> >>>> McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of >>>> Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, >>>> Newark. >>>> McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object >>>> agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. >>>> McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From >>>> Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. >>>> B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of >>>> Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural >>>> Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/ >>>> 978-3-319-90710-9_22 >>>> McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) >>>> "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", >>>> Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. >>>> >>>> >>>> On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: >>>> Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of >>>> functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical >>>> categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, >>>> case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. >>>> >>>> Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in >>>> which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one >>>> or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) >>>> the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former >>>> languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no >>>> obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in >>>> question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based >>>> innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of >>>> functional categories in the absence of contact models.) >>>> >>>> I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if >>>> not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of >>>> definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the >>>> ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation >>>> event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some >>>> of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors >>>> of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what >>>> role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as >>>> Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to >>>> be unclear. >>>> >>>> It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of >>>> innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest >>>> here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not >>>> present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. >>>> >>>> As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a >>>> superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might >>>> be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical >>>> category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional >>>> combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very >>>> broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of >>>> great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform >>>> in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of >>>> the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every >>>> single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of >>>> quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for >>>> languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential >>>> predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for >>>> universal quantification). >>>> >>>> Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m >>>> particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, >>>> definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only >>>> between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that >>>> report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability >>>> correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions >>>> such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of >>>> utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s >>>> communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable >>>> in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions >>>> apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. >>>> >>>> This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining >>>> feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t >>>> translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively >>>> advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as >>>> negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in >>>> turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in >>>> question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, >>>> and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. >>>> >>>> I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) >>>> >>>> Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive >>>> a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen >>>> >>>> -- >>>> David Gil >>>> >>>> Senior Scientist (Associate) >>>> 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 >>>> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 >>>> , >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Lingtyp mailing list >>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Lingtyp mailing list >>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> -- >>>> Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) >>>> Professor and Director of Graduate Studies >>>> Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science >>>> University at Buffalo >>>> >>>> >>>> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus >>>> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 >>>> Phone: (716) 645 0127 >>>> Fax: (716) 645 3825 >>>> Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu >>>> Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ >>>> >>>> Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further >>>> notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu >>>> 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. >>>> >>>> There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In >>>> (Leonard Cohen) >>>> >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Lingtyp mailing list >>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * >>> *Dan I. Slobin * >>> *Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics* >>> *University of California, Berkeley* >>> *email: slobin at berkeley.edu * >>> *address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708* >>> *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >>> >>> >> >> -- >> >> *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * >> >> *Dan I. Slobin * >> >> *Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics* >> >> *University of California, Berkeley* >> >> *email: slobin at berkeley.edu * >> >> *address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708* >> >> *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> > -- *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * *Dan I. Slobin * *Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics* *University of California, Berkeley* *email: slobin at berkeley.edu * *address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708* *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jb77 at buffalo.edu Sun Jun 21 05:04:55 2020 From: jb77 at buffalo.edu (Bohnemeyer, Juergen) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2020 05:04:55 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <96098C7F-D7B9-4388-B297-5369CA7A68BA@uni-konstanz.de> Message-ID: Dear Dan et al. ? A couple of points here: 1. The view that the meanings of functional elements can also be expressed by lexical elements is often at best imprecise. A great example of this is the old canard according to which tenseless languages use adverbials that express the semantic contributions of tense markers. Having studied tenselessness up close and personal for a quarter century, I can assure you they do no such thing. If anything, Yucatec speakers use temporal adverbials less frequently, not more frequently, than English speakers. Also, there is no lexical item in English or Yucatec that expresses the meaning of the English past tense. Consider the following mini-discourse: (1) Sally got out of her car. She put on her mask. Try inserting _in the past_ or _formerly_ in either clause and the meaning changes drastically. The same is true for the Yucatec equivalent. The reason this doesn?t work: lexical items such as _in the past_ and _formerly_ express part of the speaker?s intended message, whereas tense markers do not, they are just a coherence device. 2. Which brings me to the question why no language appears to have inflections for color. As it happens, I?m currently working on a book that tries to answer precisely that question, or more generally, the question why the languages of the world have the functional categories they do. The answer, I argue, is parallel evolution driven by functional selection. There are certain kinds of meanings that lend themselves to facilitating communication by reducing the hearer?s inference load while in their grammaticalized form increasing the speaker?s production effort only minimally. Why does tense lend itself so much more to this kind of thing than color? Because with almost every utterance she encounters (every one except for generics), the hearer has to decide whether the speaker is talking about something that happened in the past, is presently unfolding, or may yet happen in the future. Even the most color-obsessed people in the world do not talk about color with any more than a tiny fraction of that frequency. Best ? Juergen > On Jun 20, 2020, at 4:20 PM, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: > > Interesting question, Frans ? From the viewpoint of processing (rather than definitions of linguistic terms), basic color terms are similar to basic path verbs: high frequency, short, broad range within a basic category (?blue? and not ?turquoise? or ?cerulean?, ?enter? and not ?penetrate? or ?invade?). Many semantic domains are characterized by a small, fixed class of basic verbs?e.g., basic gait verbs like ?walk,? run,? ?crawl?; basic speech-act verbs like ?ask,? ?answer?; and many more. As you note, manner verbs do not fit into such closed classes. From this point of view, there is a cline from morphosyntactic to lexical expression of the same basic semantic classes (echoing Jan Rijkhoff?s point that functions of grammatical elements can also be expressed lexically and by other means). > > A question for a broader discussion might be why it is that some domains, like color and gait, do not show up toward the grammatical end of the cline (or do they ever?). > > (Sorry to miss seeing you in Berkeley. I?m doing well in a sedentary state and hope you are too.) > > Regards, > Dan > > On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 3:58 AM Uni KN wrote: > What about basic colour terms, Dan? They are a class (if you believe in ?basicness? as class-delimiting), they are supposedly synchronically closed (max 11/12 or so), and they seem to be internally structured. So, do basic colour terms (in any lg) share something ? other than being a closed class ? with case markers (in, let?s say, Turkish) that they don?t share with, say, manner-of-speaking verbs (in, say, English: growl, grunt, whisper, shriek, yell, moan, tut-tut ?)? > > Good to hear from you. We were already booked to come to Berkeley a couple of months ago, for the Germanic Roundtable of indefatigable Irmengard, but then we?ve suddenly had to become sedentary, not a bad state to be in, in principle ... > > Yours > Frans > >> On 19. Jun 2020, at 23:58, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: >> >> Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency?all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as ?grammatical? elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb?entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. >> >> Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, >> Dan >> >> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry wrote: >> Dear Juergen, >> >> I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. >> >> The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of ?optionality? possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. >> >> However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. >> >> The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. >> >> Best, >> Dmitry >> >> >> 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : >> Dear Dmitry ? I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. >> >> A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. >> >> My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ?inflection? that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It?s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. >> >> So what I?m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. >> >> (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ?functional expressions? (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ?syncategoremata?. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) >> >> Best ? Juergen >> >> >> On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: >> >> I would like to react to Kasper Boye?s summary of the ?solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market?. >> >> There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson ?Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey? (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)?s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining ?grammatical?, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)?s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. >> >> Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case ?grammatical meaning?, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of ?grammatical meaning?, for example because it?s easier to apply consistently. >> >> Best wishes, >> Dmitry >> >> -------- >> Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151?169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. >> (accessible at: https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 ; it?s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) >> >> >> 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : >> Dear all, >> >> I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas about the job grammatical items do. >> >> There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. >> >> Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. >> >> Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. >> >> If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. >> >> Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar?s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. >> >> With best wishes, >> Kasper >> >> References >> Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. >> Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf >> >> Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. >> >> Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. >> >> Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 >> >> Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. >> Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 >> >> >> >> >> Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af David Gil >> Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 >> Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories >> >> Dear Juergen and all, >> >> My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. >> >> Best, >> >> David >> >> >> McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. >> McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. >> McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 >> McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. >> >> >> On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: >> Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. >> >> Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) >> >> I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. >> >> It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. >> >> As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). >> >> Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. >> >> This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. >> >> I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) >> >> Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen >> >> -- >> David Gil >> >> Senior Scientist (Associate) >> 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 >> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 >> , >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> >> -- >> Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) >> Professor and Director of Graduate Studies >> Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science >> University at Buffalo >> >> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus >> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 >> Phone: (716) 645 0127 >> Fax: (716) 645 3825 >> Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu >> Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ >> >> Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. >> >> There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In >> (Leonard Cohen) >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> -- >> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> >> Dan I. Slobin >> Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics >> University of California, Berkeley >> email: slobin at berkeley.edu >> address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 >> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > Dan I. Slobin > Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics > University of California, Berkeley > email: slobin at berkeley.edu > address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) From slobin at berkeley.edu Sun Jun 21 05:42:46 2020 From: slobin at berkeley.edu (Dan I. SLOBIN) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 22:42:46 -0700 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <96098C7F-D7B9-4388-B297-5369CA7A68BA@uni-konstanz.de> Message-ID: Exactly, Juergen, I quite agree. I formulated a similar position in a long paper about acquisition and grammaticizable notions (Slobin, D. I. (2001). Form function relations: how do children find out what they are? In M. Bowerman & S. C. Levinson (Eds.), *Language acquisition and conceptual development* (pp. 406-449). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.). Here is a portion of that paper that is relevant to the current discussion (attached). Appreciating our parallel evolution, as ever, Dan On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 10:05 PM Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > Dear Dan et al. ? A couple of points here: > > 1. The view that the meanings of functional elements can also be expressed > by lexical elements is often at best imprecise. A great example of this is > the old canard according to which tenseless languages use adverbials that > express the semantic contributions of tense markers. Having studied > tenselessness up close and personal for a quarter century, I can assure you > they do no such thing. If anything, Yucatec speakers use temporal > adverbials less frequently, not more frequently, than English speakers. > > Also, there is no lexical item in English or Yucatec that expresses the > meaning of the English past tense. Consider the following mini-discourse: > > (1) Sally got out of her car. She put on her mask. > > Try inserting _in the past_ or _formerly_ in either clause and the meaning > changes drastically. The same is true for the Yucatec equivalent. > > The reason this doesn?t work: lexical items such as _in the past_ and > _formerly_ express part of the speaker?s intended message, whereas tense > markers do not, they are just a coherence device. > > 2. Which brings me to the question why no language appears to have > inflections for color. As it happens, I?m currently working on a book that > tries to answer precisely that question, or more generally, the question > why the languages of the world have the functional categories they do. > > The answer, I argue, is parallel evolution driven by functional selection. > There are certain kinds of meanings that lend themselves to facilitating > communication by reducing the hearer?s inference load while in their > grammaticalized form increasing the speaker?s production effort only > minimally. > > Why does tense lend itself so much more to this kind of thing than color? > Because with almost every utterance she encounters (every one except for > generics), the hearer has to decide whether the speaker is talking about > something that happened in the past, is presently unfolding, or may yet > happen in the future. > > Even the most color-obsessed people in the world do not talk about color > with any more than a tiny fraction of that frequency. > > Best ? Juergen > > > > On Jun 20, 2020, at 4:20 PM, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: > > > > Interesting question, Frans ? From the viewpoint of processing (rather > than definitions of linguistic terms), basic color terms are similar to > basic path verbs: high frequency, short, broad range within a basic > category (?blue? and not ?turquoise? or ?cerulean?, ?enter? and not > ?penetrate? or ?invade?). Many semantic domains are characterized by a > small, fixed class of basic verbs?e.g., basic gait verbs like ?walk,? run,? > ?crawl?; basic speech-act verbs like ?ask,? ?answer?; and many more. As > you note, manner verbs do not fit into such closed classes. From this > point of view, there is a cline from morphosyntactic to lexical expression > of the same basic semantic classes (echoing Jan Rijkhoff?s point that > functions of grammatical elements can also be expressed lexically and by > other means). > > > > A question for a broader discussion might be why it is that some > domains, like color and gait, do not show up toward the grammatical end of > the cline (or do they ever?). > > > > (Sorry to miss seeing you in Berkeley. I?m doing well in a sedentary > state and hope you are too.) > > > > Regards, > > Dan > > > > On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 3:58 AM Uni KN > wrote: > > What about basic colour terms, Dan? They are a class (if you believe in > ?basicness? as class-delimiting), they are supposedly synchronically closed > (max 11/12 or so), and they seem to be internally structured. So, do basic > colour terms (in any lg) share something ? other than being a closed class > ? with case markers (in, let?s say, Turkish) that they don?t share with, > say, manner-of-speaking verbs (in, say, English: growl, grunt, whisper, > shriek, yell, moan, tut-tut ?)? > > > > Good to hear from you. We were already booked to come to Berkeley a > couple of months ago, for the Germanic Roundtable of indefatigable > Irmengard, but then we?ve suddenly had to become sedentary, not a bad state > to be in, in principle ... > > > > Yours > > Frans > > > >> On 19. Jun 2020, at 23:58, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: > >> > >> Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. > The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor > is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec > speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed > classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high > frequency?all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in > my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as ?grammatical? > elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a > small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the > Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not > innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb > prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the > relevant verb?entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- > or u- as the relevant verb prefix. > >> > >> Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, > >> Dan > >> > >> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: > >> Dear Juergen, > >> > >> I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two > issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the > end of your message. > >> > >> The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of > the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may > appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of > ?optionality? possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by > others) in my (2008) paper. > >> > >> However interesting the study of these various gradations of > optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is > fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system > of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, > universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be > grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus > be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical > is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is > completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, > despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other > languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a > grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would > not wish to say the same about English. > >> > >> The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with > being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, > not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that > derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the > defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as > inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By > the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather > flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. > >> > >> Best, > >> Dmitry > >> > >> > >> 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : > >> Dear Dmitry ? I think the typological literature on functional > expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate > ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural > marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix > bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only > differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, > obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a > functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather > suboptimal move to me. > >> > >> A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: > if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English > past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider > the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. > >> > >> My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a > larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a > notion of ?inflection? that was developed on the basis and for the > treatment of Indo-European languages. It?s a concept that seems > unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that > package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of > strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you > begin to run into all kinds of problems. > >> > >> So what I?m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very > real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just > one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection > that is typologically woefully inadequate. > >> > >> (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ?functional > expressions? (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label > expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional > ?syncategoremata?. But, I also believe that we should worry about the > concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize > that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) > >> > >> Best ? Juergen > >> > >> > >> On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: > >> > >> I would like to react to Kasper Boye?s summary of the ?solutions to > the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market?. > >> > >> There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these > purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the > well-known quote by Jakobson ?Languages differ essentially in what they > _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey? (see > https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of > obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being > categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)?s criterion > of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes > the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss > obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining ?grammatical?, but > dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would > exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around > long before Boye & Harder (2012)?s paper, it so happened that I discussed > why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts > of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. > >> > >> Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case > ?grammatical meaning?, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using > one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical > terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of > ?grammatical meaning?, for example because it?s easier to apply > consistently. > >> > >> Best wishes, > >> Dmitry > >> > >> -------- > >> Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization > and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couso & (in > collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues > in grammaticalization, 151?169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: > 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. > >> (accessible at: > https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 > ; it?s also available from my website, but the server has been down for > some time, hence this temporary link) > >> > >> > >> 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : > >> Dear all, > >> > >> I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems > of defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas > about the job grammatical items do. > >> > >> There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining > ?grammatical? on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural > definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own > functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was > referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary > discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references > below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic > properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention > backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background > meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background > requires a foreground. > >> > >> Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the > same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison > d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, > which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster > than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations > (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap > shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather > superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. > >> > >> Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is > clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. > Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than > not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are > in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et > al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their > dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider > which host expression to attach it to. > >> > >> If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer > perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human > communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the > notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production > resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. > >> > >> Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of > grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but > satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our > forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on > inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically > concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also > construction grammar?s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical > items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. > >> > >> With best wishes, > >> Kasper > >> > >> References > >> Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical > status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. > >> Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf > >> > >> Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of > evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. > >> > >> Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. > Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. > >> > >> Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. > (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in > multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. > https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 > >> > >> Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The > production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. > Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. > >> Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af > David Gil > >> Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 > >> Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >> Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > >> > >> Dear Juergen and all, > >> > >> My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes > from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For > the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional > categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in > Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language > has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex > rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also > complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier > discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase > final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it > takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace > the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of > a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of > erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological > attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). > Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and > since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form > the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the > absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated > development of a functional category. > >> > >> Best, > >> > >> David > >> > >> > >> McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of > Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, > Newark. > >> McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object > agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. > >> McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From > Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. > B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of > Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural > Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: > 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 > >> McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) > "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", > Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. > >> > >> > >> On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > >> Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of > functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical > categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, > case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. > >> > >> Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in > which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one > or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) > the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former > languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no > obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in > question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based > innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of > functional categories in the absence of contact models.) > >> > >> I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if > not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of > definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the > ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation > event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some > of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors > of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what > role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as > Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to > be unclear. > >> > >> It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of > innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest > here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not > present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > >> > >> As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a > superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might > be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical > category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional > combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very > broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of > great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform > in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of > the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every > single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of > quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for > languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential > predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for > universal quantification). > >> > >> Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m > particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, > definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only > between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that > report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability > correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions > such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of > utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s > communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable > in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions > apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. > >> > >> This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining > feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t > translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively > advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as > negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in > turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in > question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, > and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > >> > >> I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) > >> > >> Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive > a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen > >> > >> -- > >> David Gil > >> > >> Senior Scientist (Associate) > >> 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 > >> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 > >> , > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Lingtyp mailing list > >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Lingtyp mailing list > >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > >> > >> > >> > >> -- > >> Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > >> Professor and Director of Graduate Studies > >> Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science > >> University at Buffalo > >> > >> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > >> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > >> Phone: (716) 645 0127 > >> Fax: (716) 645 3825 > >> Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > >> Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > >> > >> Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further > notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu > 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > >> > >> There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In > >> (Leonard Cohen) > >> > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Lingtyp mailing list > >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > >> > >> > >> -- > >> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > >> Dan I. Slobin > >> Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics > >> University of California, Berkeley > >> email: slobin at berkeley.edu > >> address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 > >> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Lingtyp mailing list > >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > > > > > -- > > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > > Dan I. Slobin > > Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics > > University of California, Berkeley > > email: slobin at berkeley.edu > > address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 > > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > > _______________________________________________ > > Lingtyp mailing list > > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies > Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science > University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. > Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu > 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In > (Leonard Cohen) > > -- *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * *Dan I. Slobin * *Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics* *University of California, Berkeley* *email: slobin at berkeley.edu * *address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708* *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Doc2.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 54480 bytes Desc: not available URL: From oesten at ling.su.se Sun Jun 21 06:24:59 2020 From: oesten at ling.su.se (=?utf-8?B?w5ZzdGVuIERhaGw=?=) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2020 06:24:59 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <3180F818-F44B-43FF-A3C9-7053002AFBBF@buffalo.edu> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED341@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> <3180F818-F44B-43FF-A3C9-7053002AFBBF@buffalo.edu> Message-ID: <60a48ca1bd344e6ebbbfcba3476bbf69@ling.su.se> The section "Accidence categories and Gricean principles" (p. 11-15) in my 1985 book "Tense and Aspect Systems" argues for the view that the semantic features involved in what I called "accidence categories", which would include tense/aspect and other similar phenomena, "typically do not belong to the 'intended message'". The book can be downloaded from https://www2.ling.su.se/staff/oesten/recycled/Tense&aspectsystems.pdf ?sten -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Fr?n: Lingtyp F?r Bohnemeyer, Juergen Skickat: den 20 juni 2020 17:46 Till: TALLMAN Adam Kopia: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org ?mne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Adam ? The notion of ?at-issue content? is defined in models of information structure that assume that utterances in their discourse contexts introduce or answer explicit or implicit ?questions under discussion? (QuDs). Craige Robert?s work is probably the most widely known exponent of this approach (Roberts 1996, 2012). Others include B?ring (1997, 2003), Carlson (1982), Klein & von Stutterheim (1987, 2002), and van Kuppevelt (1995, 1996). The at-issue content of an utterance (if any) is that part of its content that provides a (complete or partial) answer to the QuD of the utterance context. I do indeed assume that there is no categorical boundary between lexicon and grammar. Any assumption to the contrary would seem to be inconsistent with both grammaticalization theory and most versions of Construction Grammar. Is there a problem with that? I wonder whether the source of your confusion regarding the variable status of adjectives stems from a failure to distinguish between an expression?s actual information status as a token in a given utterance and the expression?s inherent capability as a type of expressing at-issue content. Only the latter, not the former, is part of the proposed definition of restrictors (which I?ll remind you is merely a subtype of functional expressions - I?m *not* actually claiming that *all* functional expressions are inherently backgrounded. That is where I part company with Boye & Harder 2012, to whom I otherwise owe a debt of gratitude, as Kasper pointed out). Adjectives *can* express at-issue content, restrictors cannot. Adjectives do not become restrictors just because they are used in a backgrounded position in a given utterance. It?s type properties not matter, not token properties. What you say about adjectives and classifiers in Chacobo is of great interest to me. There is a similar phenomenon in Mayan languages: so-called ?positionals? (I prefer ?dispositionals?, since the great majority of the roots lexicalize properties of inanimate referents, not postures) constitute a lexical category in their own right in Mayan. They surface as both verbs and stative predicates (traditionally, but arguably misleadingly, the latter are considered participles), but subsets of them require derivational morphology in both cases. Mayan languages have hundreds of such roots. Crucially for present purposes, many if not most of these roots can also be used as numeral classifiers. And when they are, I treat them as functional expressions. I consider this polysemy - that is to say, I assume that there is a single lexicon entry that licenses both the dispositional predicate uses and the classifier uses. In other words, I put less distance between these two uses of dispositional morphemes than I put between, say, _have_ used as a possessive predicators vs. auxiliary. That?s because it seems to me that speakers draft dispositional roots into classifier duty on the fly creatively. In other words, I see the relation between the two kinds of uses as more dynamic than static. Bottomline: we should definitely not assume that we can sort the morphemes of a language (and here I mean strings of sound used as one or multiple signs in the speech community) neatly into two buckets, one labeled ?lexicon?, the other ?grammar?. That is just really not how natural languages work. I?m surprised that this seems controversial? Best ? Juergen Berlin, B. (1968). Tzeltal numeral classifiers: A study in ethnographic semantics. The Hague: Mouton. Bu?ring, Daniel (1997). The 59th Street Bridge Accent. London: Routledge. Bu?ring, Daniel (2003). On D-trees, beans, and B-accents. Linguistics and Philosophy 26: 511-545. Carlson, Lauri. 1982. Dialogue games: an approach to discourse analysis (Synthese Language Library 17). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel. Klein, W., & Von Stutterheim, C. (1987). Quaestio und referenzielle Bewegung in Erz?hlungen [Quaestio and referential shift in narratives]. Linguistische Berichte 109: 163-183. --- (2002). Quaestio and L-perspectivation. In C. F. Graumann, & W. Kallmeyer (Eds.), Perspective and perspectivation in discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 59-88. Roberts, C. (1996). Information Structure in Discourse: Towards an Integrated Formal Theory of Pragmatics. In Jae Hak Yoon and Andreas Kathol (eds.), Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 49. Roberts, C. (2012). Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. Semantics & Pragmatics 5 (Article 6): 1-69. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1995). Discourse structure, topicality and questioning. Linguistics 31, 109?147. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1996). Inferring from topics. Linguistics and Philosophy 19, 393?443. > On Jun 20, 2020, at 10:19 AM, TALLMAN Adam wrote: > > Dear all, > > A few of you have elaborated on my question about the meaning of "functional" and and then critiqued Juergen's terminological choices. I wonder if my question about adjectives was interpreted facetiously (like "wouldn't it be absurd if adjectives were considered functional?!"). > > Actually, it was not meant as a facetious question at all as I was attempting to understand Juergen's research question in its own terms to discern whether there was anything in the languages I was familiar with that would count as functional, but diachronically lexical without contact. > > Juergen, you answered my question, in the sense, that I think I have a better idea of how one might go about operationalizing a distinction between lexical and functional. But now I am less sure about what your original question to the listserve was. Allow me to elaborate. > > Here is your new definition: > > "a ?lexical category? is a class of expressions defined in terms of shared morphosyntactic properties. The members of lexical categories are inherently suitable for expressing ?at-issue? content and are backgrounded only when they appear in certain syntactic positions (e.g., attributive as opposed to predicative adjectives). Their combinatorial types (e.g., in a Categorial Grammar framework) are relatively simple. They express concepts of basic ontological categories." > > I think this points in the right* direction and makes me understand where you are coming from (I assume at-issue just means anything that is not presuppositional nor just implicates some meaning). But crucially the concept is now scalar or gradient (depending on how we operationalize the notion). Saying that it concerns at-issue meaning in "certain syntactic positions" (I would prefer "morphosyntactic" positions) means that for some set of morphemes / constructs / categories or whatever a, b, c, d ? we could rank them in terms of the number of positions they can occur in where they express (or tend to express?) at-issue content a>b>c>d ?. Or we could formulate this in terms of tokens in discourse rather than constructions abstracted from their use, but you get my point. And indeed you state. > > > "It might be best to treat this list of properties as defining the notion of ?lexical category? as a cluster/radio/prototype concept." > > > But now there is no nonarbitrary cut-off point between lexical and grammatical. If there is a boundary it will refer to quantal shifts in the distribution of elements along the lexical-grammatical scale: or stated another way, we know there is some sort of boundary because the distribution of elements along the scale is bimodal and elements in between the modes are statistically marginal. > > To make this more concrete, in Ch?cobo there are some adjectives / > adverbials that express small size or small amount of time. In certain > syntactic positions they are more likely to express backgrounded > information and in a classifier like manner appear "redundantly", but > plausibly help to track referents (referring to someone as honi yoi > 'poor man' throughout the discourse). If I scan around related > languages (I haven't done this, but let's just say hypothetically) and > I find that in these other languages they more typically display > at-issue notions (perhaps they more commonly appear in a predicative > function), have I found a case of a "functional element" that has > grammaticalized? Certainly, it expresses at-issue content less often > than others ? > > I think there are *a lot* of morphemes like this in Amazonia. In my description of Chacobo I actually called them "semi-functional" (it includes associated motion morphemes, time of day adverbials, temporal distance markers) and I try to make the explicit argument that temporal distance morphemes mix and match properties of temporal adverbials with those of tense. It would be hard for me to make the case that these were not a result of contact (in fact, myself and Pattie Epps have a paper where we argue that such liminal cases might be an areal property of Southwestern Amazonia), but the point is that I find a performative contradiction in your attempt to exclude (certain types of?) adjectives and adverbs and the definition you supply. Seems like if you really wanted to test the idea that languages grammaticalize functional notions for the specific reasons you claim, you would need to actually include all of these liminal cases and explain why they do not all disappear under communicative pressure or else drop off of the grammaticalization cline and become lexical / primarily at-issue expressing elements. > > So the upshot is that I was actually wondering whether you would consider adjectives, adverbs etc. but not because they are lexical or functional, but rather because, according to your own definition they awkwardly sit in between. I was interested in what you would say about them, not whether they should be classified discretely as lexical versus functional. > > Adam > > *By "right direction" I mean interesting direction in that it could lead to developing testable hypotheses with an operationalizable set of variables that define the domain of lexical versus functional categories. I am not making the essentialist claim that it is the best definition regardless of the problem context, research question, or audience. > > > > > > > > Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin) ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant > CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, > Lyon (07) Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867 De : Lingtyp > [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] de la part de Idiatov > Dmitry [honohiiri at yandex.ru] Envoy? : samedi 20 juin 2020 15:23 ? : > Kasper Boye; Dan I.SLOBIN Cc : lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; > Peter Harder Objet : Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Kasper, a quick reaction to this passage: > > ?Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else ? and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion.? > > While the application of the criterion of obligatoriness is surely a > delicate matter, nobody is obliged to say anything? > > To avoid the kind of logical figures that you bring up, let?s say that grammatical categories are those sets of mutually exclusive discourse prominence secondary meanings whose expression is obligatory in the constructions to which they apply. > > Dmitry > > > 20.06.2020, 15:12, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear Dmitry and all, > > First a comment on obligatoriness, then one closed classes. > > J?rgen Bohnemeyer pointed out that obligatoriness is too restrictive as a definiens of grammatical status. Another problem is that it is also too inclusive. Consider a language like German where indicative verbs are inflected for past and present tense. The intuition (which is backed up by the ?encoded secondariness? definition; Boye & Harder 2012) is that the tense inflections are grammatical. But neither the past nor the present tense inflection is of course obligatory in itself: instead of past we can choose present, and vice versa. So, instead we have to say that the tense paradigm ? or the choice between tenses ? is obligatory: whenever you select an indicative verb, you also have to select a tense inflection. Now comes the problem. Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else ? and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion. Of course, there are many ways in which obligatoriness can be saved as a definiens, but they all require that this notion is combined with something else. > > Dan Slobin pointed to the fact that items that are intuitively (and by the ?encoded secondariness? definition) lexical, may form closed classes. I would like to add that closed classes may comprise both lexical and grammatical members. Within the classes of prepositions and pronouns, for instance, distinctions have occasionally been made between lexical and grammatical prepositions. Just as closed class membership seems to have a processing impact, so does the contrast between grammatical and lexical. For instance, Ishkhanyan et al. (2017) showed that the production of French pronouns identified as grammatical based on Boye & Harder (2017) is more severely impaired in agrammatic aphasia than the production of pronouns classified as lexical, and Messerschmidt et al. (2019) showed that Danish prepositions classified as grammatical attract less attention than prepositions classified as lexical. > > Best wishes, > Kasper > > Boye, K. & P. Harder. 2012. "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization". Language 88.1. 1-44. > > Ishkhanyan, B., H. Sahraoui, P. Harder, J. Mogensen & K. Boye. 2017. "Grammatical and lexical pronoun dissociation in French speakers with agrammatic aphasia: A usage-based account and REF-based hypothesis". Journal of Neurolinguistics 44. 1-16. > > Messerschmidt, M., K. Boye, M.M. Overmark, S.T. Kristensen & P. Harder. 2018. "Sondringen mellem grammatiske og leksikalske pr?positioner" [?The distinction between grammatical and lexical prepositions?]. Ny forskning i grammatik 25. 89-106. > > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af > Dan I. SLOBIN > Sendt: 19. juni 2020 23:59 > Til: Idiatov Dmitry > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency?all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as ?grammatical? elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb?entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. > > Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, Dan > > On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > Dear Juergen, > > I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. > > The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of ?optionality? possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. > > However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. > > The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. > > Best, > Dmitry > > > 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : > Dear Dmitry ? I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. > > A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. > > My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ?inflection? that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It?s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. > > So what I?m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. > > (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ?functional > expressions? (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label > expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional > ?syncategoremata?. But, I also believe that we should worry about the > concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I > realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) > Whorfian :-)) > > Best ? Juergen > > > On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > > I would like to react to Kasper Boye?s summary of the ?solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market?. > > There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson ?Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey? (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)?s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining ?grammatical?, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)?s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. > > Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case ?grammatical meaning?, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of ?grammatical meaning?, for example because it?s easier to apply consistently. > > Best wishes, > Dmitry > > -------- > Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151?169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. > (accessible at: > https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da > 0-bd739bd16d95 ; it?s also available from my website, but the server > has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) > > > 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear all, > > I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas about the job grammatical items do. > > There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. > > Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. > > Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. > > If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. > > Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar?s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. > > With best wishes, > Kasper > > References > Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. > Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf > > Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. > > Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. > > Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. > Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs > in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. > https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 > > Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. > Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af > David Gil > Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 > Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Juergen and all, > > My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. > > Best, > > David > > > McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. > McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. > McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) > "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. > > > On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. > > Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in > which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in > one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, > with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the > former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) > there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of > the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to > include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically > interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of > contact models.) > > I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. > > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > > As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). > > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I > receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen > > -- > David Gil > > Senior Scientist (Associate) > 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): > +62-81344082091 , _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics > and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy > Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard > Cohen) > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > -- > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > Dan I. Slobin > Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics University of > California, Berkeley > email: slobin at berkeley.edu > address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp From frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de Sun Jun 21 07:38:03 2020 From: frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de (Frans Plank) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2020 09:38:03 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Message-ID: ?Growing up among Runyankore cowboys and cowgirls and being exposed to a lot of cattle talk, as Larry?s consultant appears to have been, or being apprenticed to a painter along with other young enthusiasts, I might be tempted to grammaticalise colour as a classifier category, no? If frequency is all that counts for grammaticalisation, that is ? rather than whether the classifying category, if it has a perceptual basis, is about what you cannot only see but also touch. Frans Sent from my iPad > On 21. Jun 2020, at 07:05, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > > ?Dear Dan et al. ? A couple of points here: > > 1. The view that the meanings of functional elements can also be expressed by lexical elements is often at best imprecise. A great example of this is the old canard according to which tenseless languages use adverbials that express the semantic contributions of tense markers. Having studied tenselessness up close and personal for a quarter century, I can assure you they do no such thing. If anything, Yucatec speakers use temporal adverbials less frequently, not more frequently, than English speakers. > > Also, there is no lexical item in English or Yucatec that expresses the meaning of the English past tense. Consider the following mini-discourse: > > (1) Sally got out of her car. She put on her mask. > > Try inserting _in the past_ or _formerly_ in either clause and the meaning changes drastically. The same is true for the Yucatec equivalent. > > The reason this doesn?t work: lexical items such as _in the past_ and _formerly_ express part of the speaker?s intended message, whereas tense markers do not, they are just a coherence device. > > 2. Which brings me to the question why no language appears to have inflections for color. As it happens, I?m currently working on a book that tries to answer precisely that question, or more generally, the question why the languages of the world have the functional categories they do. > > The answer, I argue, is parallel evolution driven by functional selection. There are certain kinds of meanings that lend themselves to facilitating communication by reducing the hearer?s inference load while in their grammaticalized form increasing the speaker?s production effort only minimally. > > Why does tense lend itself so much more to this kind of thing than color? Because with almost every utterance she encounters (every one except for generics), the hearer has to decide whether the speaker is talking about something that happened in the past, is presently unfolding, or may yet happen in the future. > > Even the most color-obsessed people in the world do not talk about color with any more than a tiny fraction of that frequency. > > Best ? Juergen > > >>>> On Jun 20, 2020, at 4:20 PM, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: >> Interesting question, Frans ? From the viewpoint of processing (rather than definitions of linguistic terms), basic color terms are similar to basic path verbs: high frequency, short, broad range within a basic category (?blue? and not ?turquoise? or ?cerulean?, ?enter? and not ?penetrate? or ?invade?). Many semantic domains are characterized by a small, fixed class of basic verbs?e.g., basic gait verbs like ?walk,? run,? ?crawl?; basic speech-act verbs like ?ask,? ?answer?; and many more. As you note, manner verbs do not fit into such closed classes. From this point of view, there is a cline from morphosyntactic to lexical expression of the same basic semantic classes (echoing Jan Rijkhoff?s point that functions of grammatical elements can also be expressed lexically and by other means). >> A question for a broader discussion might be why it is that some domains, like color and gait, do not show up toward the grammatical end of the cline (or do they ever?). >> (Sorry to miss seeing you in Berkeley. I?m doing well in a sedentary state and hope you are too.) >> Regards, >> Dan >>>> On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 3:58 AM Uni KN wrote: >> What about basic colour terms, Dan? They are a class (if you believe in ?basicness? as class-delimiting), they are supposedly synchronically closed (max 11/12 or so), and they seem to be internally structured. So, do basic colour terms (in any lg) share something ? other than being a closed class ? with case markers (in, let?s say, Turkish) that they don?t share with, say, manner-of-speaking verbs (in, say, English: growl, grunt, whisper, shriek, yell, moan, tut-tut ?)? >> Good to hear from you. We were already booked to come to Berkeley a couple of months ago, for the Germanic Roundtable of indefatigable Irmengard, but then we?ve suddenly had to become sedentary, not a bad state to be in, in principle ... >> Yours >> Frans >>>> On 19. Jun 2020, at 23:58, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: >>> Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency?all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as ?grammatical? elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb?entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. >>> Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, >>> Dan >>>> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry wrote: >>> Dear Juergen, >>> I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. >>> The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of ?optionality? possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. >>> However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. >>> The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. >>> Best, >>> Dmitry >>> 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : >>> Dear Dmitry ? I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. >>> A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. >>> My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ?inflection? that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It?s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. >>> So what I?m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. >>> (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ?functional expressions? (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ?syncategoremata?. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) >>> Best ? Juergen >>>> On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: >>> I would like to react to Kasper Boye?s summary of the ?solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market?. >>> There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson ?Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey? (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)?s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining ?grammatical?, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)?s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. >>> Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case ?grammatical meaning?, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of ?grammatical meaning?, for example because it?s easier to apply consistently. >>> Best wishes, >>> Dmitry >>> -------- >>> Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151?169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. >>> (accessible at: https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 ; it?s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) >>> 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : >>> Dear all, >>> I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas about the job grammatical items do. >>> There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. >>> Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. >>> Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. >>> If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. >>> Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar?s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. >>> With best wishes, >>> Kasper >>> References >>> Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. >>> Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf >>> Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. >>> Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. >>> Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 >>> Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. >>> Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 >>> Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af David Gil >>> Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 >>> Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories >>> Dear Juergen and all, >>> My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. >>> Best, >>> David >>> McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. >>> McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. >>> McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 >>> McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. >>>> On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: >>> Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. >>> Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) >>> I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. >>> It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. >>> As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). >>> Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. >>> This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. >>> I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) >>> Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen >>> -- >>> David Gil >>> Senior Scientist (Associate) >>> 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 >>> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 >>> , >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> -- >>> Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) >>> Professor and Director of Graduate Studies >>> Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science >>> University at Buffalo >>> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus >>> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 >>> Phone: (716) 645 0127 >>> Fax: (716) 645 3825 >>> Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu >>> Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ >>> Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. >>> There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In >>> (Leonard Cohen) >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> -- >>> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> >>> Dan I. Slobin >>> Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics >>> University of California, Berkeley >>> email: slobin at berkeley.edu >>> address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 >>> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> -- >> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> >> Dan I. Slobin >> Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics >> University of California, Berkeley >> email: slobin at berkeley.edu >> address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 >> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies > Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science > University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In > (Leonard Cohen) From linjr at cc.au.dk Sun Jun 21 11:12:33 2020 From: linjr at cc.au.dk (Jan Rijkhoff) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2020 11:12:33 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <96098C7F-D7B9-4388-B297-5369CA7A68BA@uni-konstanz.de> , Message-ID: J?rgen wrote: ?The view that the meanings of functional elements can also be expressed by lexical elements is often at best imprecise. ? (etc)?. (J?rgen?s first point). Indeed, but as long as we (i) confuse meaning, form and function and (ii) don?t agree on a list of functions or functional categories (and how they are defined) problems in the analysis of linguistic units will remain. In your example (under 1.) you argue that functional elements (tense markers) do not have the same semantic properties as certain lexical forms (time adverb(ial)s), which is uncontroversial. But that does not mean that tense markers and time adverb(ial)s cannot have the same (communicative, interpersonal) function. ?Meaning? is not same as ?function?. I still haven?t seen a list of functions or functional categories (and their definitions) in this discussion of ?functional categories?. When you consider the (communicative, interpersonal) function of tense markers and time adverb(ial)s, it is not difficult to see what they have in common: Location in time. Both tense markers and time adverb(ial)s are ?localizing modifiers? (one of at least five functional categories; see below), which speakers use to locate a first or second order entity in space or time. The semantic or formal properties (bound vs. free; lexical vs. grammatical; compulsory vs. optional, high vs. low frequency - etc.) of these elements are also important for a complete grammatical investigation, of course, but irrelevant at this (functional) level of analysis. At mentioned above, at least five functional modifier categories (classifying, qualifying, quantifying, localizing or ?anchoring?, and discourse-referential modifiers) are attested in both NPs and clauses. They are discussed in e.g. (also mentioned in an earlier message): Rijkhoff, Jan. 2014. Modification as a propositional act. In Mar?a de los ?ngeles G?mez Gonz?lez et al. (eds.), Theory and Practice in Functional-Cognitive Space, 129-150. Amsterdam: Benjamins. https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/sfsl.68/main https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/sfsl.68.06rij/details I can send a copy of the chapter if you don?t have access to the volume. Jan J. Rijkhoff - Associate Professor, Linguistics School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University Jens Chr. Skous Vej 2, Building 1485-621 DK-8000 Aarhus C, DENMARK Phone: (+45) 87162143 URL: http://pure.au.dk/portal/en/linjr at cc.au.dk ________________________________________ From: Lingtyp on behalf of Bohnemeyer, Juergen Sent: Sunday, June 21, 2020 7:04 AM To: Dan I. SLOBIN Cc: Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Dan et al. ? A couple of points here: 1. The view that the meanings of functional elements can also be expressed by lexical elements is often at best imprecise. A great example of this is the old canard according to which tenseless languages use adverbials that express the semantic contributions of tense markers. Having studied tenselessness up close and personal for a quarter century, I can assure you they do no such thing. If anything, Yucatec speakers use temporal adverbials less frequently, not more frequently, than English speakers. Also, there is no lexical item in English or Yucatec that expresses the meaning of the English past tense. Consider the following mini-discourse: (1) Sally got out of her car. She put on her mask. Try inserting _in the past_ or _formerly_ in either clause and the meaning changes drastically. The same is true for the Yucatec equivalent. The reason this doesn?t work: lexical items such as _in the past_ and _formerly_ express part of the speaker?s intended message, whereas tense markers do not, they are just a coherence device. 2. Which brings me to the question why no language appears to have inflections for color. As it happens, I?m currently working on a book that tries to answer precisely that question, or more generally, the question why the languages of the world have the functional categories they do. The answer, I argue, is parallel evolution driven by functional selection. There are certain kinds of meanings that lend themselves to facilitating communication by reducing the hearer?s inference load while in their grammaticalized form increasing the speaker?s production effort only minimally. Why does tense lend itself so much more to this kind of thing than color? Because with almost every utterance she encounters (every one except for generics), the hearer has to decide whether the speaker is talking about something that happened in the past, is presently unfolding, or may yet happen in the future. Even the most color-obsessed people in the world do not talk about color with any more than a tiny fraction of that frequency. Best ? Juergen > On Jun 20, 2020, at 4:20 PM, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: > > Interesting question, Frans ? From the viewpoint of processing (rather than definitions of linguistic terms), basic color terms are similar to basic path verbs: high frequency, short, broad range within a basic category (?blue? and not ?turquoise? or ?cerulean?, ?enter? and not ?penetrate? or ?invade?). Many semantic domains are characterized by a small, fixed class of basic verbs?e.g., basic gait verbs like ?walk,? run,? ?crawl?; basic speech-act verbs like ?ask,? ?answer?; and many more. As you note, manner verbs do not fit into such closed classes. From this point of view, there is a cline from morphosyntactic to lexical expression of the same basic semantic classes (echoing Jan Rijkhoff?s point that functions of grammatical elements can also be expressed lexically and by other means). > > A question for a broader discussion might be why it is that some domains, like color and gait, do not show up toward the grammatical end of the cline (or do they ever?). > > (Sorry to miss seeing you in Berkeley. I?m doing well in a sedentary state and hope you are too.) > > Regards, > Dan > > On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 3:58 AM Uni KN wrote: > What about basic colour terms, Dan? They are a class (if you believe in ?basicness? as class-delimiting), they are supposedly synchronically closed (max 11/12 or so), and they seem to be internally structured. So, do basic colour terms (in any lg) share something ? other than being a closed class ? with case markers (in, let?s say, Turkish) that they don?t share with, say, manner-of-speaking verbs (in, say, English: growl, grunt, whisper, shriek, yell, moan, tut-tut ?)? > > Good to hear from you. We were already booked to come to Berkeley a couple of months ago, for the Germanic Roundtable of indefatigable Irmengard, but then we?ve suddenly had to become sedentary, not a bad state to be in, in principle ... > > Yours > Frans > >> On 19. Jun 2020, at 23:58, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: >> >> Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency?all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as ?grammatical? elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb?entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. >> >> Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, >> Dan >> >> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry wrote: >> Dear Juergen, >> >> I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. >> >> The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of ?optionality? possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. >> >> However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. >> >> The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. >> >> Best, >> Dmitry >> >> >> 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : >> Dear Dmitry ? I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. >> >> A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. >> >> My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ?inflection? that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It?s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. >> >> So what I?m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. >> >> (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ?functional expressions? (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ?syncategoremata?. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) >> >> Best ? Juergen >> >> >> On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: >> >> I would like to react to Kasper Boye?s summary of the ?solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market?. >> >> There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson ?Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey? (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)?s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining ?grammatical?, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)?s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. >> >> Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case ?grammatical meaning?, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of ?grammatical meaning?, for example because it?s easier to apply consistently. >> >> Best wishes, >> Dmitry >> >> -------- >> Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151?169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. >> (accessible at: https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 ; it?s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) >> >> >> 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : >> Dear all, >> >> I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas about the job grammatical items do. >> >> There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. >> >> Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. >> >> Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. >> >> If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. >> >> Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar?s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. >> >> With best wishes, >> Kasper >> >> References >> Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. >> Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf >> >> Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. >> >> Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. >> >> Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 >> >> Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. >> Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 >> >> >> >> >> Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af David Gil >> Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 >> Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories >> >> Dear Juergen and all, >> >> My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. >> >> Best, >> >> David >> >> >> McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. >> McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. >> McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 >> McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. >> >> >> On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: >> Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. >> >> Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) >> >> I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. >> >> It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. >> >> As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). >> >> Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. >> >> This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. >> >> I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) >> >> Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen >> >> -- >> David Gil >> >> Senior Scientist (Associate) >> 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 >> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 >> , >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> >> -- >> Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) >> Professor and Director of Graduate Studies >> Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science >> University at Buffalo >> >> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus >> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 >> Phone: (716) 645 0127 >> Fax: (716) 645 3825 >> Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu >> Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ >> >> Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. >> >> There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In >> (Leonard Cohen) >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> -- >> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> >> Dan I. Slobin >> Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics >> University of California, Berkeley >> email: slobin at berkeley.edu >> address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 >> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > Dan I. Slobin > Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics > University of California, Berkeley > email: slobin at berkeley.edu > address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp From wcroft at unm.edu Sun Jun 21 14:21:14 2020 From: wcroft at unm.edu (William Croft) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2020 14:21:14 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <96098C7F-D7B9-4388-B297-5369CA7A68BA@uni-konstanz.de> , , Message-ID: Defining "lexical" vs "grammatical" meaning is difficult, if possible at all. I have tried four times (listed below, in the order that they were conceived). I am pretty content with the last time I went at it, using an elaborated version of Chafe's theory of verbalization. Of course, many other opinions have been offered here which shed light on the distinction. Bill Croft Croft, William. 1990. ?A conceptual framework for grammatical categories (or, a taxonomy of propositional acts).? Journal of Semantics 7:245-279. Croft, William. 2000. ?Grammatical and lexical semantics.? Morphology: A Handbook on Inflection and Word Formation, ed. Geert Booij, Christian Lehmann and Joachim Mugdan, 257-63. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Clausner , Timothy C. and William Croft. 1999. ?Domains, image-schemas and construal.? Cognitive Linguistics 10.1-31. Croft, William. 2007. ?The origins of grammar in the verbalization of experience.? Cognitive Linguistics 18.339-82. ________________________________ From: Lingtyp on behalf of Jan Rijkhoff Sent: Sunday, June 21, 2020 5:12 AM To: Bohnemeyer, Juergen Cc: Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories [EXTERNAL] J?rgen wrote: ?The view that the meanings of functional elements can also be expressed by lexical elements is often at best imprecise. ? (etc)?. (J?rgen?s first point). Indeed, but as long as we (i) confuse meaning, form and function and (ii) don?t agree on a list of functions or functional categories (and how they are defined) problems in the analysis of linguistic units will remain. In your example (under 1.) you argue that functional elements (tense markers) do not have the same semantic properties as certain lexical forms (time adverb(ial)s), which is uncontroversial. But that does not mean that tense markers and time adverb(ial)s cannot have the same (communicative, interpersonal) function. ?Meaning? is not same as ?function?. I still haven?t seen a list of functions or functional categories (and their definitions) in this discussion of ?functional categories?. When you consider the (communicative, interpersonal) function of tense markers and time adverb(ial)s, it is not difficult to see what they have in common: Location in time. Both tense markers and time adverb(ial)s are ?localizing modifiers? (one of at least five functional categories; see below), which speakers use to locate a first or second order entity in space or time. The semantic or formal properties (bound vs. free; lexical vs. grammatical; compulsory vs. optional, high vs. low frequency - etc.) of these elements are also important for a complete grammatical investigation, of course, but irrelevant at this (functional) level of analysis. At mentioned above, at least five functional modifier categories (classifying, qualifying, quantifying, localizing or ?anchoring?, and discourse-referential modifiers) are attested in both NPs and clauses. They are discussed in e.g. (also mentioned in an earlier message): Rijkhoff, Jan. 2014. Modification as a propositional act. In Mar?a de los ?ngeles G?mez Gonz?lez et al. (eds.), Theory and Practice in Functional-Cognitive Space, 129-150. Amsterdam: Benjamins. https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/sfsl.68/main https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/sfsl.68.06rij/details I can send a copy of the chapter if you don?t have access to the volume. Jan J. Rijkhoff - Associate Professor, Linguistics School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University Jens Chr. Skous Vej 2, Building 1485-621 DK-8000 Aarhus C, DENMARK Phone: (+45) 87162143 URL: http://pure.au.dk/portal/en/linjr at cc.au.dk ________________________________________ From: Lingtyp on behalf of Bohnemeyer, Juergen Sent: Sunday, June 21, 2020 7:04 AM To: Dan I. SLOBIN Cc: Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Dan et al. ? A couple of points here: 1. The view that the meanings of functional elements can also be expressed by lexical elements is often at best imprecise. A great example of this is the old canard according to which tenseless languages use adverbials that express the semantic contributions of tense markers. Having studied tenselessness up close and personal for a quarter century, I can assure you they do no such thing. If anything, Yucatec speakers use temporal adverbials less frequently, not more frequently, than English speakers. Also, there is no lexical item in English or Yucatec that expresses the meaning of the English past tense. Consider the following mini-discourse: (1) Sally got out of her car. She put on her mask. Try inserting _in the past_ or _formerly_ in either clause and the meaning changes drastically. The same is true for the Yucatec equivalent. The reason this doesn?t work: lexical items such as _in the past_ and _formerly_ express part of the speaker?s intended message, whereas tense markers do not, they are just a coherence device. 2. Which brings me to the question why no language appears to have inflections for color. As it happens, I?m currently working on a book that tries to answer precisely that question, or more generally, the question why the languages of the world have the functional categories they do. The answer, I argue, is parallel evolution driven by functional selection. There are certain kinds of meanings that lend themselves to facilitating communication by reducing the hearer?s inference load while in their grammaticalized form increasing the speaker?s production effort only minimally. Why does tense lend itself so much more to this kind of thing than color? Because with almost every utterance she encounters (every one except for generics), the hearer has to decide whether the speaker is talking about something that happened in the past, is presently unfolding, or may yet happen in the future. Even the most color-obsessed people in the world do not talk about color with any more than a tiny fraction of that frequency. Best ? Juergen > On Jun 20, 2020, at 4:20 PM, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: > > Interesting question, Frans ? From the viewpoint of processing (rather than definitions of linguistic terms), basic color terms are similar to basic path verbs: high frequency, short, broad range within a basic category (?blue? and not ?turquoise? or ?cerulean?, ?enter? and not ?penetrate? or ?invade?). Many semantic domains are characterized by a small, fixed class of basic verbs?e.g., basic gait verbs like ?walk,? run,? ?crawl?; basic speech-act verbs like ?ask,? ?answer?; and many more. As you note, manner verbs do not fit into such closed classes. From this point of view, there is a cline from morphosyntactic to lexical expression of the same basic semantic classes (echoing Jan Rijkhoff?s point that functions of grammatical elements can also be expressed lexically and by other means). > > A question for a broader discussion might be why it is that some domains, like color and gait, do not show up toward the grammatical end of the cline (or do they ever?). > > (Sorry to miss seeing you in Berkeley. I?m doing well in a sedentary state and hope you are too.) > > Regards, > Dan > > On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 3:58 AM Uni KN wrote: > What about basic colour terms, Dan? They are a class (if you believe in ?basicness? as class-delimiting), they are supposedly synchronically closed (max 11/12 or so), and they seem to be internally structured. So, do basic colour terms (in any lg) share something ? other than being a closed class ? with case markers (in, let?s say, Turkish) that they don?t share with, say, manner-of-speaking verbs (in, say, English: growl, grunt, whisper, shriek, yell, moan, tut-tut ?)? > > Good to hear from you. We were already booked to come to Berkeley a couple of months ago, for the Germanic Roundtable of indefatigable Irmengard, but then we?ve suddenly had to become sedentary, not a bad state to be in, in principle ... > > Yours > Frans > >> On 19. Jun 2020, at 23:58, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote: >> >> Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency?all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as ?grammatical? elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb?entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. >> >> Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, >> Dan >> >> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry wrote: >> Dear Juergen, >> >> I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. >> >> The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of ?optionality? possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. >> >> However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. >> >> The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. >> >> Best, >> Dmitry >> >> >> 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : >> Dear Dmitry ? I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. >> >> A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. >> >> My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ?inflection? that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It?s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. >> >> So what I?m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. >> >> (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ?functional expressions? (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ?syncategoremata?. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) >> >> Best ? Juergen >> >> >> On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: >> >> I would like to react to Kasper Boye?s summary of the ?solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market?. >> >> There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson ?Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey? (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)?s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining ?grammatical?, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)?s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. >> >> Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case ?grammatical meaning?, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of ?grammatical meaning?, for example because it?s easier to apply consistently. >> >> Best wishes, >> Dmitry >> >> -------- >> Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151?169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. >> (accessible at: https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95 ; it?s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) >> >> >> 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : >> Dear all, >> >> I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas about the job grammatical items do. >> >> There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. >> >> Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. >> >> Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. >> >> If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. >> >> Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar?s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. >> >> With best wishes, >> Kasper >> >> References >> Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. >> Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf >> >> Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. >> >> Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. >> >> Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 >> >> Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. >> Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 >> >> >> >> >> Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af David Gil >> Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 >> Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories >> >> Dear Juergen and all, >> >> My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. >> >> Best, >> >> David >> >> >> McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. >> McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. >> McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 >> McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. >> >> >> On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: >> Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. >> >> Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) >> >> I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. >> >> It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. >> >> As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). >> >> Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. >> >> This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. >> >> I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) >> >> Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen >> >> -- >> David Gil >> >> Senior Scientist (Associate) >> 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 >> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 >> , >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> >> -- >> Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) >> Professor and Director of Graduate Studies >> Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science >> University at Buffalo >> >> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus >> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 >> Phone: (716) 645 0127 >> Fax: (716) 645 3825 >> Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu >> Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ >> >> Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. >> >> There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In >> (Leonard Cohen) >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> -- >> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> >> Dan I. Slobin >> Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics >> University of California, Berkeley >> email: slobin at berkeley.edu >> address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 >> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > Dan I. Slobin > Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics > University of California, Berkeley > email: slobin at berkeley.edu > address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Adam.TALLMAN at cnrs.fr Sun Jun 21 19:39:06 2020 From: Adam.TALLMAN at cnrs.fr (TALLMAN Adam) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2020 19:39:06 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic structure In-Reply-To: References: , Message-ID: <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED52E@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> Thanks Natalie - works like your diss are what I was looking for. I was just fishing for sources not trying to imply that I had some hidden standard of what the morphosyntactic evidence should be. Generally (perhaps your thesis is a special exception), works in prosodic phonology provide no evidence for their syntactic parses - and that's true of all the sources you cited apart from your dissertation. Perhaps with Nespor and Vogel its not so bad because everyone agreed [!?] what the correct formal syntactic analysis of Italian, Greek etc. should be at the time of writing. For Selkirk's analysis of Xitsonga, I'm less sure - syntactic parses of sentences are given, but it would have been nice to have some account of how clause boundaries, words etc. are defined or identified (a few years ago there was a long unresolved discussion on lingtyp about how to define a word / X0). Any source that defines something like an X0 (a la Bruening for example) would have been what I was looking for (but more precise definitions would obviously be preferable). best, Adam best, Adam Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin) ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, Lyon (07) Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867 ________________________________ De : Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] de la part de Larry M. HYMAN [hyman at berkeley.edu] Envoy? : samedi 20 juin 2020 17:48 ? : Natalie Weber Cc : LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG Objet : Re: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic structure Thanks for your comments on prosodic phonology and syntax (and for the link to your Blackfoot!). I wonder if you see one of your first two parts as prior to the other, either logically, temporally, or practically? * 1. Independent phonological evidence for prosodic constituents * 2. Independent syntactic evidence for syntactic constituents The reason I ask is that I find that the interface is best studied by language specialists who let the phonological facts of the language drive the "interface", rather than starting with preconceived notions of abstract syntax (which can/should come in later, once you have a handle on the complexities). Having worked extensively on the syntax-phonology interface in a number of Bantu languages, I can tell you that none of them have prosodic facts that provide a perfect correlation to pre-existing views of abstract syntax. In current work I am doing on Runyankore and related Rutara Bantu languages, there are distinct differences between the prosodic effects on the head noun vs. on the verb, despite X-bar theory, which appear to follow their own "logic". Digging into the details to discover the wide range of surprising facts that speakers/languages exploit has been very rewarding, if not producing quite a bit of humility. I find myself in agreement with some wise remarks made by Akinlabi & Liberman (2000) several years ago: "Whether formal modeling is treated simply as programming for some practical purpose, or as a method of investigating the properties of the cognitive systems involved, it can and should be separated in most cases from the problem of determining the facts and the descriptive generalizations." (p.60) "The documentation of... descriptive generalizations is sometimes clearer and more accessible when expressed in terms of a detailed formal reconstruction, but only in the rare and happy case that the formalism fits the data so well that the resulting account is clearer and easier to understand than the list of categories of facts that it encodes...." (p.54) While I cannot argue against the wisdom of phonologists and syntacticians working together, which is happening, and linguists knowing both phonology and syntax, the main problem in the syntax-phonology interface area is that there are still so few exhaustive studies of "the facts". Linguists on both "persuasions" have been too content to stop short. Akinlabi, Akinbiyi & Mark Liberman. 2000. The tonal phonology of Yoruba clitics. In B. Gerlach & J. Grizjenhout (eds), Clitics in phonology, morphology, and syntax, 31-62. Amsterdam: Benjamins. PS If anyone is interested I have a recent paper that I could send that will give a hint of the complexities and non-isomorphisms I refer to above: "Prosodic asymmetries in nominal vs. verbal phrases in Bantu". On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 8:09 AM Natalie Weber > wrote: I agree. This is a failing of a lot of prosodic phonology literature, although perhaps for good reason. Ideally, a study of the correspondence between prosodic and syntactic structure would have three parts: 1. Independent phonological evidence for prosodic constituents 2. Independent syntactic evidence for syntactic constituents 3. Explicit characterization of the mapping between the two But in practice you will often only see 2 out 3 of those, because it's uncommon for phonologists to be well-versed in syntax enough to study the syntax side of things, and vice versa. Personally, I'm hoping to encourage more cross-subfield collaborations. My dissertation discusses correspondences between syntactic, prosodic, and metrical constituents in Blackfoot (Algonquian), and I address each of the three points above. I discuss independent syntactic evidence for the CP and vP constituents, independent phonological evidence for the PPh and PWd constituents, and then discuss some of the implications for mapping between them. It was a huge undertaking (hence why I think we need co-authored studies), but it's also one of the only studies of prosodic phonology I know of that attempts to address all three points. You can download it at http://hdl.handle.net/2429/74075 if you are interested. Regarding some of the recent and seminal papers in prosodic phonology: The mentions of syntactic 'words' (X0) and 'phrases' (XP) have increased since Selkirk's (2011) "The syntax-phonology interface" paper on Match Theory. In her earlier work, she was more explicit about relating the syntactic definitions to X-bar theory. In my interpretation, that means that X0 is a minimal phrase (not a syntactic "word", which is not a primitive type). In theory, then, these papers could use typical tests for phrasal constituency, such as movement, uninterruptibility, etc. Like you, I've found that they don't, but it's good to remember that it should in principle be possible to show this. There is also work like Nespor and Vogel (1986/2007) which has explicit mapping algorithms that rely on morphological units like the "stem", or "affix". Much of the time, these constituents are also not defined with a universal morphosyntactic definition, but at least they are usually well-supported on language internal facts. There's other recent work that does pretty decently though, depending on what you'll count as sufficient empirical evidence... maybe if you give us an idea of the sorts of papers you've already considered and rejected, we could fill in the gaps? (Basically, I started typing a lot more, but I wasn't sure if it was the kind of thing you are looking for.) I'd be super happy to start a shared list of prosodic phonology literature (a reading group?), if you're interested! It would be pretty useful to tag papers for how well they address the syntax side of things via empirical generalizations. Best, --Natalie ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Adam James Ross Tallman > Date: Wed, Jun 3, 2020, 6:07 AM Subject: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic structure To: > Hello all, I've been doing a lit. review (again) in prosodic phonology. Advocates of the prosodic hierarchy claim that prosodic levels map from specific morphosyntactic constituents like 'words' or 'phrases' or X0 and XP etc. However, I have been unable to find a single example of a paper that relates its analysis to the prosodic hierarchy that actually provides evidence for or defines the morphosyntactic categories that the prosodic domains relate to in the language under study. Of course, the fact that no evidence or definitions for X0 / XP and the like are provided does not mean there is no evidence - but the "phonology evidence only please" character of the literature makes it very difficult to come up with global assessment of how the quest for mapping rules has faired (the discussion in Scheer 2010 suggests it has been a total failure) or to distill some sort of testable hypothesis from the literature. I'm wondering if anyone has any examples at hand where such categories are provided with explicit empirical definitions. Perhaps this is just an oversight on my part. best, Adam -- Adam J.R. Tallman PhD, University of Texas at Austin Investigador del Museo de Etnograf?a y Folklore, la Paz ELDP -- Postdoctorante CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Natalie Weber (pronouns: they/them) Assistant Professor Department of Linguistics, Yale University _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Larry M. Hyman, Professor of Linguistics & Executive Director, France-Berkeley Fund Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/person_detail.php?person=19 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Liberman_McLemore_Woodbury-1991_Utrecht slides.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 57657 bytes Desc: Liberman_McLemore_Woodbury-1991_Utrecht slides.pdf URL: From mithun at linguistics.ucsb.edu Sun Jun 21 19:52:27 2020 From: mithun at linguistics.ucsb.edu (Marianne Mithun) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2020 12:52:27 -0700 Subject: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic structure In-Reply-To: <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED52E@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> References: <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED52E@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> Message-ID: We just had an Abralin round table on prosody and corpora. My contribution compared prosodic and syntactic constituent structure. Marianne Mithun [image: image.png] On Sun, Jun 21, 2020 at 12:39 PM TALLMAN Adam wrote: > Thanks Natalie - works like your diss are what I was looking for. I was > just fishing for sources not trying to imply that I had some hidden > standard of what the morphosyntactic evidence should be. Generally (perhaps > your thesis is a special exception), works in prosodic phonology provide no > evidence for their syntactic parses - and that's true of all the sources > you cited apart from your dissertation. Perhaps with Nespor and Vogel its > not so bad because everyone agreed [!?] what the correct formal syntactic > analysis of Italian, Greek etc. should be at the time of writing. For > Selkirk's analysis of Xitsonga, I'm less sure - syntactic parses of > sentences are given, but it would have been nice to have some account of > how clause boundaries, words etc. are defined or identified (a few years > ago there was a long unresolved discussion on lingtyp about how to define a > word / X0). > > Any source that defines something like an X0 (a la Bruening for example) > would have been what I was looking for (but more precise definitions would > obviously be preferable). > > best, > > Adam > > > > best, > > Adam > > > > > > Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin) > ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant > CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) > Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, Lyon (07) > Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867 > ------------------------------ > *De :* Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] de la part de > Larry M. HYMAN [hyman at berkeley.edu] > *Envoy? :* samedi 20 juin 2020 17:48 > *? :* Natalie Weber > *Cc :* LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG > *Objet :* Re: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and > morphosyntactic structure > > Thanks for your comments on prosodic phonology and syntax (and for the > link to your Blackfoot!). I wonder if you see one of your first two parts > as prior to the other, either logically, temporally, or practically? > > > - 1. Independent phonological evidence for prosodic constituents > - 2. Independent syntactic evidence for syntactic constituents > > > The reason I ask is that I find that the interface is best studied by > language specialists who let the phonological facts of the language drive > the "interface", rather than starting with preconceived notions of abstract > syntax (which can/should come in later, once you have a handle on the > complexities). Having worked extensively on the syntax-phonology interface > in a number of Bantu languages, I can tell you that none of them have > prosodic facts that provide a perfect correlation to pre-existing views of > abstract syntax. In current work I am doing on Runyankore and related > Rutara Bantu languages, there are distinct differences between the prosodic > effects on the head noun vs. on the verb, despite X-bar theory, which > appear to follow their own "logic". Digging into the details to discover > the wide range of surprising facts that speakers/languages exploit has been > very rewarding, if not producing quite a bit of humility. I find myself in > agreement with some wise remarks made by Akinlabi & Liberman (2000) several > years ago: > > "Whether formal modeling is treated simply as programming for some > practical purpose, or as a method of investigating the properties of the > cognitive systems involved, it can and should be separated in most cases > from the problem of determining the facts and the descriptive > generalizations." (p.60) > > "The documentation of... descriptive generalizations is sometimes clearer > and more accessible when expressed in terms of a detailed formal > reconstruction, but only in the rare and happy case that the formalism fits > the data so well that the resulting account is clearer and easier to > understand than the list of categories of facts that it encodes...." (p.54) > > While I cannot argue against the wisdom of phonologists and syntacticians > working together, which is happening, and linguists knowing both phonology > and syntax, the main problem in the syntax-phonology interface area is that > there are still so few exhaustive studies of "the facts". Linguists on both > "persuasions" have been too content to stop short. > > Akinlabi, Akinbiyi & Mark Liberman. 2000. The tonal phonology of Yoruba > clitics. In B. Gerlach & J. Grizjenhout (eds), *Clitics in phonology, > morphology, and syntax*, 31-62. Amsterdam: Benjamins. > > PS If anyone is interested I have a recent paper that I could send that > will give a hint of the complexities and non-isomorphisms I refer to above: > "Prosodic asymmetries in nominal vs. verbal phrases in Bantu". > > On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 8:09 AM Natalie Weber > wrote: > >> I agree. This is a failing of a lot of prosodic phonology literature, >> although perhaps for good reason. Ideally, a study of the correspondence >> between prosodic and syntactic structure would have three parts: >> >> 1. Independent phonological evidence for prosodic constituents >> 2. Independent syntactic evidence for syntactic constituents >> 3. Explicit characterization of the mapping between the two >> >> But in practice you will often only see 2 out 3 of those, because it's >> uncommon for phonologists to be well-versed in syntax enough to study the >> syntax side of things, and vice versa. Personally, I'm hoping to encourage >> more cross-subfield collaborations. >> >> My dissertation discusses correspondences between syntactic, prosodic, >> and metrical constituents in Blackfoot (Algonquian), and I address each of >> the three points above. I discuss independent syntactic evidence for the CP >> and *v*P constituents, independent phonological evidence for the PPh and >> PWd constituents, and then discuss some of the implications for mapping >> between them. It was a huge undertaking (hence why I think we need >> co-authored studies), but it's also one of the only studies of prosodic >> phonology I know of that attempts to address all three points. You can >> download it at http://hdl.handle.net/2429/74075 if you are interested. >> >> Regarding some of the recent and seminal papers in prosodic phonology: >> >> The mentions of syntactic 'words' (X0) and 'phrases' (XP) have increased >> since Selkirk's (2011) "The syntax-phonology interface" paper on Match >> Theory. In her earlier work, she was more explicit about relating the >> syntactic definitions to X-bar theory. In my interpretation, that means >> that X0 is a minimal phrase (not a syntactic "word", which is not a >> primitive type). In theory, then, these papers *could* use typical tests >> for phrasal constituency, such as movement, uninterruptibility, etc. >> Like you, I've found that they don't, but it's good to remember that it >> should in principle be possible to show this. >> >> There is also work like Nespor and Vogel (1986/2007) which has explicit >> mapping algorithms that rely on morphological units like the "stem", or >> "affix". Much of the time, these constituents are also not defined with a >> universal morphosyntactic definition, but at least they are usually >> well-supported on language internal facts. >> >> There's other recent work that does pretty decently though, depending on >> what you'll count as sufficient empirical evidence... maybe if you give us >> an idea of the sorts of papers you've already considered and rejected, we >> could fill in the gaps? (Basically, I started typing a lot more, but I >> wasn't sure if it was the kind of thing you are looking for.) >> >> I'd be super happy to start a shared list of prosodic phonology >> literature (a reading group?), if you're interested! It would be pretty >> useful to tag papers for how well they address the syntax side of things >> via empirical generalizations. >> >> Best, >> --Natalie >> >> >> ---------- Forwarded message --------- >> From: *Adam James Ross Tallman* >> Date: Wed, Jun 3, 2020, 6:07 AM >> Subject: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic >> structure >> To: >> >> Hello all, >> >> I've been doing a lit. review (again) in prosodic phonology. Advocates of >> the prosodic hierarchy claim that prosodic levels map from specific >> morphosyntactic constituents like 'words' or 'phrases' or X0 and XP etc. >> >> However, I have been unable to find a single example of a paper that >> relates its analysis to the prosodic hierarchy that actually provides >> evidence for or defines the morphosyntactic categories that the prosodic >> domains relate to in the language under study. >> >> Of course, the fact that no evidence or definitions for X0 / XP and the >> like are provided does not mean there is no evidence - but the "phonology >> evidence only please" character of the literature makes it very difficult >> to come up with global assessment of how the quest for mapping rules has >> faired (the discussion in Scheer 2010 suggests it has been a total failure) >> or to distill some sort of testable hypothesis from the literature. I'm >> wondering if anyone has any examples at hand where such categories are >> provided with explicit empirical definitions. Perhaps this is just an >> oversight on my part. >> >> best, >> >> Adam >> >> -- >> Adam J.R. Tallman >> PhD, University of Texas at Austin >> Investigador del Museo de Etnograf?a y Folklore, la Paz >> ELDP -- Postdoctorante >> CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> -- >> >> Natalie Weber >> (pronouns: *they/them*) >> >> Assistant Professor >> Department of Linguistics, Yale University >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> > > > -- > Larry M. Hyman, Professor of Linguistics & Executive Director, > France-Berkeley Fund > Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley > http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/person_detail.php?person=19 > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.png Type: image/png Size: 16562 bytes Desc: not available URL: From boye at hum.ku.dk Mon Jun 22 10:03:24 2020 From: boye at hum.ku.dk (Kasper Boye) Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2020 10:03:24 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <3180F818-F44B-43FF-A3C9-7053002AFBBF@buffalo.edu> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED341@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> <3180F818-F44B-43FF-A3C9-7053002AFBBF@buffalo.edu> Message-ID: Dear J?rgen, I am not sure I understand what you mean is the difference between your approach and Peter's and mine. We define grammatical items as those that are coded (= conventionalized) as backgrounded/secondary/'not at issue', and lexical items as those that have the potential to be foregrounded/etc. in usage. That is, we make a clear distinction between language potential and language usage, and define grammatical status as applying to language potential. How does this differ from yours? Just to make sure: all adjectives I can think of just now in the languages I know of are lexical by our definition - they can be focalized, addressed and modified. But whether adjectives are lexical or grammatical is really an empirical question. As for the issue of whether you can divide all items of a given language into two buckets, one lexical and one grammatical, I fully agree that it cannot be done neatly. The issue is complicated by e.g. polyselmy, layering and the gradualness of conventionalization. If you distinguish meanings or variants of the same items, it gets less complicated. Obviously, full verbal "have" ('I have a book') is lexical, while perfect auxiliary 'have' is grammatical, for instance. As for the question whether lexical and grammatical items can have the same inherent-semantic meaning, at least they can be very close, cf. harmonic combination. What is important, however, is that some meaning domains can be expressed both lexically and grammatically. This means that grammatical status cannot be defined in terms of inherent-semantic meaning (some grammaticalizable notions can be expressed also lexically). As for grammatical meaning, it can be defined in analogy with grammatical items. Grammatical meaning is meaning that is coded as backgrounded/secondary/not at issue. According to this definition, the past tense meaning of the English suffix "-ed" is grammatical, but so is the past tense meaning of "went". "Went" also has lexical meaning ('go'), and it is by virtue of this meaning that the item as a whole is lexical. Best wishes, Kasper -----Oprindelig meddelelse----- Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af Bohnemeyer, Juergen Sendt: 20. juni 2020 17:46 Til: TALLMAN Adam Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Adam ? The notion of ?at-issue content? is defined in models of information structure that assume that utterances in their discourse contexts introduce or answer explicit or implicit ?questions under discussion? (QuDs). Craige Robert?s work is probably the most widely known exponent of this approach (Roberts 1996, 2012). Others include B?ring (1997, 2003), Carlson (1982), Klein & von Stutterheim (1987, 2002), and van Kuppevelt (1995, 1996). The at-issue content of an utterance (if any) is that part of its content that provides a (complete or partial) answer to the QuD of the utterance context. I do indeed assume that there is no categorical boundary between lexicon and grammar. Any assumption to the contrary would seem to be inconsistent with both grammaticalization theory and most versions of Construction Grammar. Is there a problem with that? I wonder whether the source of your confusion regarding the variable status of adjectives stems from a failure to distinguish between an expression?s actual information status as a token in a given utterance and the expression?s inherent capability as a type of expressing at-issue content. Only the latter, not the former, is part of the proposed definition of restrictors (which I?ll remind you is merely a subtype of functional expressions - I?m *not* actually claiming that *all* functional expressions are inherently backgrounded. That is where I part company with Boye & Harder 2012, to whom I otherwise owe a debt of gratitude, as Kasper pointed out). Adjectives *can* express at-issue content, restrictors cannot. Adjectives do not become restrictors just because they are used in a backgrounded position in a given utterance. It?s type properties not matter, not token properties. What you say about adjectives and classifiers in Chacobo is of great interest to me. There is a similar phenomenon in Mayan languages: so-called ?positionals? (I prefer ?dispositionals?, since the great majority of the roots lexicalize properties of inanimate referents, not postures) constitute a lexical category in their own right in Mayan. They surface as both verbs and stative predicates (traditionally, but arguably misleadingly, the latter are considered participles), but subsets of them require derivational morphology in both cases. Mayan languages have hundreds of such roots. Crucially for present purposes, many if not most of these roots can also be used as numeral classifiers. And when they are, I treat them as functional expressions. I consider this polysemy - that is to say, I assume that there is a single lexicon entry that licenses both the dispositional predicate uses and the classifier uses. In other words, I put less distance between these two uses of dispositional morphemes than I put between, say, _have_ used as a possessive predicators vs. auxiliary. That?s because it seems to me that speakers draft dispositional roots into classifier duty on the fly creatively. In other words, I see the relation between the two kinds of uses as more dynamic than static. Bottomline: we should definitely not assume that we can sort the morphemes of a language (and here I mean strings of sound used as one or multiple signs in the speech community) neatly into two buckets, one labeled ?lexicon?, the other ?grammar?. That is just really not how natural languages work. I?m surprised that this seems controversial? Best ? Juergen Berlin, B. (1968). Tzeltal numeral classifiers: A study in ethnographic semantics. The Hague: Mouton. Bu?ring, Daniel (1997). The 59th Street Bridge Accent. London: Routledge. Bu?ring, Daniel (2003). On D-trees, beans, and B-accents. Linguistics and Philosophy 26: 511-545. Carlson, Lauri. 1982. Dialogue games: an approach to discourse analysis (Synthese Language Library 17). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel. Klein, W., & Von Stutterheim, C. (1987). Quaestio und referenzielle Bewegung in Erz?hlungen [Quaestio and referential shift in narratives]. Linguistische Berichte 109: 163-183. --- (2002). Quaestio and L-perspectivation. In C. F. Graumann, & W. Kallmeyer (Eds.), Perspective and perspectivation in discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 59-88. Roberts, C. (1996). Information Structure in Discourse: Towards an Integrated Formal Theory of Pragmatics. In Jae Hak Yoon and Andreas Kathol (eds.), Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 49. Roberts, C. (2012). Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. Semantics & Pragmatics 5 (Article 6): 1-69. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1995). Discourse structure, topicality and questioning. Linguistics 31, 109?147. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1996). Inferring from topics. Linguistics and Philosophy 19, 393?443. > On Jun 20, 2020, at 10:19 AM, TALLMAN Adam wrote: > > Dear all, > > A few of you have elaborated on my question about the meaning of "functional" and and then critiqued Juergen's terminological choices. I wonder if my question about adjectives was interpreted facetiously (like "wouldn't it be absurd if adjectives were considered functional?!"). > > Actually, it was not meant as a facetious question at all as I was attempting to understand Juergen's research question in its own terms to discern whether there was anything in the languages I was familiar with that would count as functional, but diachronically lexical without contact. > > Juergen, you answered my question, in the sense, that I think I have a better idea of how one might go about operationalizing a distinction between lexical and functional. But now I am less sure about what your original question to the listserve was. Allow me to elaborate. > > Here is your new definition: > > "a ?lexical category? is a class of expressions defined in terms of shared morphosyntactic properties. The members of lexical categories are inherently suitable for expressing ?at-issue? content and are backgrounded only when they appear in certain syntactic positions (e.g., attributive as opposed to predicative adjectives). Their combinatorial types (e.g., in a Categorial Grammar framework) are relatively simple. They express concepts of basic ontological categories." > > I think this points in the right* direction and makes me understand where you are coming from (I assume at-issue just means anything that is not presuppositional nor just implicates some meaning). But crucially the concept is now scalar or gradient (depending on how we operationalize the notion). Saying that it concerns at-issue meaning in "certain syntactic positions" (I would prefer "morphosyntactic" positions) means that for some set of morphemes / constructs / categories or whatever a, b, c, d ? we could rank them in terms of the number of positions they can occur in where they express (or tend to express?) at-issue content a>b>c>d ?. Or we could formulate this in terms of tokens in discourse rather than constructions abstracted from their use, but you get my point. And indeed you state. > > > "It might be best to treat this list of properties as defining the notion of ?lexical category? as a cluster/radio/prototype concept." > > > But now there is no nonarbitrary cut-off point between lexical and grammatical. If there is a boundary it will refer to quantal shifts in the distribution of elements along the lexical-grammatical scale: or stated another way, we know there is some sort of boundary because the distribution of elements along the scale is bimodal and elements in between the modes are statistically marginal. > > To make this more concrete, in Ch?cobo there are some adjectives / > adverbials that express small size or small amount of time. In certain > syntactic positions they are more likely to express backgrounded > information and in a classifier like manner appear "redundantly", but > plausibly help to track referents (referring to someone as honi yoi > 'poor man' throughout the discourse). If I scan around related > languages (I haven't done this, but let's just say hypothetically) and > I find that in these other languages they more typically display > at-issue notions (perhaps they more commonly appear in a predicative > function), have I found a case of a "functional element" that has > grammaticalized? Certainly, it expresses at-issue content less often > than others ? > > I think there are *a lot* of morphemes like this in Amazonia. In my description of Chacobo I actually called them "semi-functional" (it includes associated motion morphemes, time of day adverbials, temporal distance markers) and I try to make the explicit argument that temporal distance morphemes mix and match properties of temporal adverbials with those of tense. It would be hard for me to make the case that these were not a result of contact (in fact, myself and Pattie Epps have a paper where we argue that such liminal cases might be an areal property of Southwestern Amazonia), but the point is that I find a performative contradiction in your attempt to exclude (certain types of?) adjectives and adverbs and the definition you supply. Seems like if you really wanted to test the idea that languages grammaticalize functional notions for the specific reasons you claim, you would need to actually include all of these liminal cases and explain why they do not all disappear under communicative pressure or else drop off of the grammaticalization cline and become lexical / primarily at-issue expressing elements. > > So the upshot is that I was actually wondering whether you would consider adjectives, adverbs etc. but not because they are lexical or functional, but rather because, according to your own definition they awkwardly sit in between. I was interested in what you would say about them, not whether they should be classified discretely as lexical versus functional. > > Adam > > *By "right direction" I mean interesting direction in that it could lead to developing testable hypotheses with an operationalizable set of variables that define the domain of lexical versus functional categories. I am not making the essentialist claim that it is the best definition regardless of the problem context, research question, or audience. > > > > > > > > Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin) ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant > CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, > Lyon (07) Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867 De : Lingtyp > [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] de la part de Idiatov > Dmitry [honohiiri at yandex.ru] Envoy? : samedi 20 juin 2020 15:23 ? : > Kasper Boye; Dan I.SLOBIN Cc : lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; > Peter Harder Objet : Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Kasper, a quick reaction to this passage: > > ?Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else ? and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion.? > > While the application of the criterion of obligatoriness is surely a > delicate matter, nobody is obliged to say anything? > > To avoid the kind of logical figures that you bring up, let?s say that grammatical categories are those sets of mutually exclusive discourse prominence secondary meanings whose expression is obligatory in the constructions to which they apply. > > Dmitry > > > 20.06.2020, 15:12, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear Dmitry and all, > > First a comment on obligatoriness, then one closed classes. > > J?rgen Bohnemeyer pointed out that obligatoriness is too restrictive as a definiens of grammatical status. Another problem is that it is also too inclusive. Consider a language like German where indicative verbs are inflected for past and present tense. The intuition (which is backed up by the ?encoded secondariness? definition; Boye & Harder 2012) is that the tense inflections are grammatical. But neither the past nor the present tense inflection is of course obligatory in itself: instead of past we can choose present, and vice versa. So, instead we have to say that the tense paradigm ? or the choice between tenses ? is obligatory: whenever you select an indicative verb, you also have to select a tense inflection. Now comes the problem. Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else ? and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion. Of course, there are many ways in which obligatoriness can be saved as a definiens, but they all require that this notion is combined with something else. > > Dan Slobin pointed to the fact that items that are intuitively (and by the ?encoded secondariness? definition) lexical, may form closed classes. I would like to add that closed classes may comprise both lexical and grammatical members. Within the classes of prepositions and pronouns, for instance, distinctions have occasionally been made between lexical and grammatical prepositions. Just as closed class membership seems to have a processing impact, so does the contrast between grammatical and lexical. For instance, Ishkhanyan et al. (2017) showed that the production of French pronouns identified as grammatical based on Boye & Harder (2017) is more severely impaired in agrammatic aphasia than the production of pronouns classified as lexical, and Messerschmidt et al. (2019) showed that Danish prepositions classified as grammatical attract less attention than prepositions classified as lexical. > > Best wishes, > Kasper > > Boye, K. & P. Harder. 2012. "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization". Language 88.1. 1-44. > > Ishkhanyan, B., H. Sahraoui, P. Harder, J. Mogensen & K. Boye. 2017. "Grammatical and lexical pronoun dissociation in French speakers with agrammatic aphasia: A usage-based account and REF-based hypothesis". Journal of Neurolinguistics 44. 1-16. > > Messerschmidt, M., K. Boye, M.M. Overmark, S.T. Kristensen & P. Harder. 2018. "Sondringen mellem grammatiske og leksikalske pr?positioner" [?The distinction between grammatical and lexical prepositions?]. Ny forskning i grammatik 25. 89-106. > > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af > Dan I. SLOBIN > Sendt: 19. juni 2020 23:59 > Til: Idiatov Dmitry > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency?all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as ?grammatical? elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb?entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. > > Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, Dan > > On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > Dear Juergen, > > I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. > > The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of ?optionality? possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. > > However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. > > The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. > > Best, > Dmitry > > > 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : > Dear Dmitry ? I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. > > A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. > > My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ?inflection? that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It?s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. > > So what I?m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. > > (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ?functional > expressions? (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label > expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional > ?syncategoremata?. But, I also believe that we should worry about the > concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I > realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) > Whorfian :-)) > > Best ? Juergen > > > On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > > I would like to react to Kasper Boye?s summary of the ?solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market?. > > There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson ?Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey? (see https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flinguistlist.org%2Fissues%2F6%2F6-411.html&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668709238&sdata=2oApFblvdWuo%2Fh6Az6pMUZl%2BH4NE0BZSt%2FrPwZetsxU%3D&reserved=0). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)?s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining ?grammatical?, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)?s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. > > Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case ?grammatical meaning?, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of ?grammatical meaning?, for example because it?s easier to apply consistently. > > Best wishes, > Dmitry > > -------- > Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151?169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. > (accessible at: > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffile > sender.renater.fr%2F%3Fs%3Ddownload%26token%3D24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0- > bd739bd16d95&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904f > e36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282 > 648668719231&sdata=O0qLFjyJn3jUGIFdbd8M9L90FTzOL2EJ72eaF3pnnng%3D& > amp;reserved=0 ; it?s also available from my website, but the server > has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) > > > 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear all, > > I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas about the job grammatical items do. > > There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. > > Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. > > Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. > > If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. > > Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar?s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. > > With best wishes, > Kasper > > References > Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. > Link: > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww. > jstor.org%2Fstable%2Fpdf%2F41348882.pdf&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%4 > 0hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c > 9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=%2FOW1%2BzYhXVfMlfsy > 7r8SPkQH3iQGKvwjpUHII5QUmzk%3D&reserved=0 > > Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. > > Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. > > Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. > Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs > in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi. > org%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0186685&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hu > m.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1 > ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=fsFk32aQ4ZHDCQ8QfJEec1N > ipSIJa0HDCv39YGpJoCE%3D&reserved=0 > > Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. > Link: > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi. > org%2F10.1080%2F23273798.2019.1616104&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40h > um.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f > 1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=pbAdP0mwCENSzfjLjzPAnC > pWF2mgHYOSinCIgz9zFJc%3D&reserved=0 > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af > David Gil > Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 > Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Juergen and all, > > My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. > > Best, > > David > > > McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. > McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. > McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) > "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. > > > On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. > > Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in > which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in > one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, > with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the > former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) > there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of > the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to > include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically > interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of > contact models.) > > I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. > > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > > As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). > > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I > receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen > > -- > David Gil > > Senior Scientist (Associate) > 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): > +62-81344082091 , _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists > erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 > Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd > a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL > u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists > erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 > Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd > a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL > u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 > > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics > and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy > Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http:%2F%2Fwww.acs > u.buffalo.edu%2F~jb77%2F&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7e > c0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0% > 7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=CiDmvMRipRj7%2FqbWgbkzsNeeGn2nSZB6W > jB4fiUeJJs%3D&reserved=0 > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard > Cohen) > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists > erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 > Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd > a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL > u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 > > > -- > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > Dan I. Slobin > Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics University of > California, Berkeley > email: slobin at berkeley.edu > address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists > erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 > Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd > a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL > u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http:%2F%2Fwww.acsu.buffalo.edu%2F~jb77%2F&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668729225&sdata=meBLy8QTd8n01rsw6NFWAOMWUe8TeLg6VJKNaMaYoeA%3D&reserved=0 Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flistserv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668729225&sdata=wwgzwTj%2BdwW80HsR3BKkHf3yZDGFFG0vi4bm9qliMxo%3D&reserved=0 From jb77 at buffalo.edu Wed Jun 24 03:09:28 2020 From: jb77 at buffalo.edu (Bohnemeyer, Juergen) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2020 03:09:28 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED341@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> <3180F818-F44B-43FF-A3C9-7053002AFBBF@buffalo.edu> Message-ID: <1A010095-9961-4B8A-AA7D-61EF65057CFD@buffalo.edu> Dear Kasper ? There are many kinds of functional expressions that are not inherently backgrounded, such as negation, quantificational determiners, modals, demonstratives, emphatic pronouns, and so on. If I remember Boyer & Harder (2012) correctly (apologies if I don?t!), you treat these as not grammaticalized. I consider them weakly grammaticalized. But more to the point, I consider them functional expressions, i.e., part of the grammatical = combinatorial system of language. At the moment, I?m working with a classification of six subtypes of functional expressions. Here are some informal characterizations: Placeholders such as pronominal elements are indexical representations of referents. Their referents may be at-issue content, but their lexical meanings are not, as they merely specify search domains for the referents. Functors such as negation, numerals, adnominal or adverbial quantificational expressions, and modal operators express monovalent conceptual operators that are part of the speaker?s intended message and thus may be at-issue content. Relators such as adpositions, connectives, and ?semantic?/?lexical? case-markers, express conceptual relations that are part of the speaker?s intended message. Social deictics, or ?honorifics? in a technical sense of that term, cannot be at-issue content and do not contribute to the truth-conditions of an utterance. Their presence in an utterance satisfies pragmatic felicity conditions that arise from societal norms of interpersonal relation management. Restrictors, such as markers of tense, viewpoint aspect, mood, gender/noun class, number, or structural case, as well as complementizers, are redundant expressions of parts of the speaker?s communicative intention that cannot be at-issue content. Their presence in an utterance, which may or may not be morphosyntactically required, is motivated by a reduction of the hearer?s inference load. Restrictors are at the heart of the book. The theory employs a continuous probabilistic notion of redundancy/informativeness according to which an expression is the more redundant/less informative in a given context the more predictable its occurrence in the context is. A possible sixths class is formed by facilitators, which like restrictors are metalinguistic expressions that help clarify the speaker?s communicative intention rather than to be themselves ?essential? (non-redundant) expressions of part of the communicative intent. Facilitators differ from restrictors in that, rather than to clarify the lexical content of the utterance, they serve to facilitate the coordination between the interlocutors. Examples include illocutionary expressions, but also some interjections and discourse particles. (It is at present not clear to me whether it is necessary for an evolutionary theory of functional categories to distinguish between restrictors and facilitators.) As you can see, the lower half of these are inherently backgrounded = non-at-issue, whereas the upper half are not. But I?m primarily interested in restrictors, and as far as those are concerned, our approaches appear to be in agreement. Best ? Juergen On Jun 22, 2020, at 6:03 AM, Kasper Boye > wrote: Dear J?rgen, I am not sure I understand what you mean is the difference between your approach and Peter's and mine. We define grammatical items as those that are coded (= conventionalized) as backgrounded/secondary/'not at issue', and lexical items as those that have the potential to be foregrounded/etc. in usage. That is, we make a clear distinction between language potential and language usage, and define grammatical status as applying to language potential. How does this differ from yours? Just to make sure: all adjectives I can think of just now in the languages I know of are lexical by our definition - they can be focalized, addressed and modified. But whether adjectives are lexical or grammatical is really an empirical question. As for the issue of whether you can divide all items of a given language into two buckets, one lexical and one grammatical, I fully agree that it cannot be done neatly. The issue is complicated by e.g. polyselmy, layering and the gradualness of conventionalization. If you distinguish meanings or variants of the same items, it gets less complicated. Obviously, full verbal "have" ('I have a book') is lexical, while perfect auxiliary 'have' is grammatical, for instance. As for the question whether lexical and grammatical items can have the same inherent-semantic meaning, at least they can be very close, cf. harmonic combination. What is important, however, is that some meaning domains can be expressed both lexically and grammatically. This means that grammatical status cannot be defined in terms of inherent-semantic meaning (some grammaticalizable notions can be expressed also lexically). As for grammatical meaning, it can be defined in analogy with grammatical items. Grammatical meaning is meaning that is coded as backgrounded/secondary/not at issue. According to this definition, the past tense meaning of the English suffix "-ed" is grammatical, but so is the past tense meaning of "went". "Went" also has lexical meaning ('go'), and it is by virtue of this meaning that the item as a whole is lexical. Best wishes, Kasper -----Oprindelig meddelelse----- Fra: Lingtyp > P? vegne af Bohnemeyer, Juergen Sendt: 20. juni 2020 17:46 Til: TALLMAN Adam > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Adam ? The notion of ?at-issue content? is defined in models of information structure that assume that utterances in their discourse contexts introduce or answer explicit or implicit ?questions under discussion? (QuDs). Craige Robert?s work is probably the most widely known exponent of this approach (Roberts 1996, 2012). Others include B?ring (1997, 2003), Carlson (1982), Klein & von Stutterheim (1987, 2002), and van Kuppevelt (1995, 1996). The at-issue content of an utterance (if any) is that part of its content that provides a (complete or partial) answer to the QuD of the utterance context. I do indeed assume that there is no categorical boundary between lexicon and grammar. Any assumption to the contrary would seem to be inconsistent with both grammaticalization theory and most versions of Construction Grammar. Is there a problem with that? I wonder whether the source of your confusion regarding the variable status of adjectives stems from a failure to distinguish between an expression?s actual information status as a token in a given utterance and the expression?s inherent capability as a type of expressing at-issue content. Only the latter, not the former, is part of the proposed definition of restrictors (which I?ll remind you is merely a subtype of functional expressions - I?m *not* actually claiming that *all* functional expressions are inherently backgrounded. That is where I part company with Boye & Harder 2012, to whom I otherwise owe a debt of gratitude, as Kasper pointed out). Adjectives *can* express at-issue content, restrictors cannot. Adjectives do not become restrictors just because they are used in a backgrounded position in a given utterance. It?s type properties not matter, not token properties. What you say about adjectives and classifiers in Chacobo is of great interest to me. There is a similar phenomenon in Mayan languages: so-called ?positionals? (I prefer ?dispositionals?, since the great majority of the roots lexicalize properties of inanimate referents, not postures) constitute a lexical category in their own right in Mayan. They surface as both verbs and stative predicates (traditionally, but arguably misleadingly, the latter are considered participles), but subsets of them require derivational morphology in both cases. Mayan languages have hundreds of such roots. Crucially for present purposes, many if not most of these roots can also be used as numeral classifiers. And when they are, I treat them as functional expressions. I consider this polysemy - that is to say, I assume that there is a single lexicon entry that licenses both the dispositional predicate uses and the classifier uses. In other words, I put less distance between these two uses of dispositional morphemes than I put between, say, _have_ used as a possessive predicators vs. auxiliary. That?s because it seems to me that speakers draft dispositional roots into classifier duty on the fly creatively. In other words, I see the relation between the two kinds of uses as more dynamic than static. Bottomline: we should definitely not assume that we can sort the morphemes of a language (and here I mean strings of sound used as one or multiple signs in the speech community) neatly into two buckets, one labeled ?lexicon?, the other ?grammar?. That is just really not how natural languages work. I?m surprised that this seems controversial? Best ? Juergen Berlin, B. (1968). Tzeltal numeral classifiers: A study in ethnographic semantics. The Hague: Mouton. Bu?ring, Daniel (1997). The 59th Street Bridge Accent. London: Routledge. Bu?ring, Daniel (2003). On D-trees, beans, and B-accents. Linguistics and Philosophy 26: 511-545. Carlson, Lauri. 1982. Dialogue games: an approach to discourse analysis (Synthese Language Library 17). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel. Klein, W., & Von Stutterheim, C. (1987). Quaestio und referenzielle Bewegung in Erz?hlungen [Quaestio and referential shift in narratives]. Linguistische Berichte 109: 163-183. --- (2002). Quaestio and L-perspectivation. In C. F. Graumann, & W. Kallmeyer (Eds.), Perspective and perspectivation in discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 59-88. Roberts, C. (1996). Information Structure in Discourse: Towards an Integrated Formal Theory of Pragmatics. In Jae Hak Yoon and Andreas Kathol (eds.), Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 49. Roberts, C. (2012). Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. Semantics & Pragmatics 5 (Article 6): 1-69. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1995). Discourse structure, topicality and questioning. Linguistics 31, 109?147. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1996). Inferring from topics. Linguistics and Philosophy 19, 393?443. On Jun 20, 2020, at 10:19 AM, TALLMAN Adam > wrote: Dear all, A few of you have elaborated on my question about the meaning of "functional" and and then critiqued Juergen's terminological choices. I wonder if my question about adjectives was interpreted facetiously (like "wouldn't it be absurd if adjectives were considered functional?!"). Actually, it was not meant as a facetious question at all as I was attempting to understand Juergen's research question in its own terms to discern whether there was anything in the languages I was familiar with that would count as functional, but diachronically lexical without contact. Juergen, you answered my question, in the sense, that I think I have a better idea of how one might go about operationalizing a distinction between lexical and functional. But now I am less sure about what your original question to the listserve was. Allow me to elaborate. Here is your new definition: "a ?lexical category? is a class of expressions defined in terms of shared morphosyntactic properties. The members of lexical categories are inherently suitable for expressing ?at-issue? content and are backgrounded only when they appear in certain syntactic positions (e.g., attributive as opposed to predicative adjectives). Their combinatorial types (e.g., in a Categorial Grammar framework) are relatively simple. They express concepts of basic ontological categories." I think this points in the right* direction and makes me understand where you are coming from (I assume at-issue just means anything that is not presuppositional nor just implicates some meaning). But crucially the concept is now scalar or gradient (depending on how we operationalize the notion). Saying that it concerns at-issue meaning in "certain syntactic positions" (I would prefer "morphosyntactic" positions) means that for some set of morphemes / constructs / categories or whatever a, b, c, d ? we could rank them in terms of the number of positions they can occur in where they express (or tend to express?) at-issue content a>b>c>d ?. Or we could formulate this in terms of tokens in discourse rather than constructions abstracted from their use, but you get my point. And indeed you state. "It might be best to treat this list of properties as defining the notion of ?lexical category? as a cluster/radio/prototype concept." But now there is no nonarbitrary cut-off point between lexical and grammatical. If there is a boundary it will refer to quantal shifts in the distribution of elements along the lexical-grammatical scale: or stated another way, we know there is some sort of boundary because the distribution of elements along the scale is bimodal and elements in between the modes are statistically marginal. To make this more concrete, in Ch?cobo there are some adjectives / adverbials that express small size or small amount of time. In certain syntactic positions they are more likely to express backgrounded information and in a classifier like manner appear "redundantly", but plausibly help to track referents (referring to someone as honi yoi 'poor man' throughout the discourse). If I scan around related languages (I haven't done this, but let's just say hypothetically) and I find that in these other languages they more typically display at-issue notions (perhaps they more commonly appear in a predicative function), have I found a case of a "functional element" that has grammaticalized? Certainly, it expresses at-issue content less often than others ? I think there are *a lot* of morphemes like this in Amazonia. In my description of Chacobo I actually called them "semi-functional" (it includes associated motion morphemes, time of day adverbials, temporal distance markers) and I try to make the explicit argument that temporal distance morphemes mix and match properties of temporal adverbials with those of tense. It would be hard for me to make the case that these were not a result of contact (in fact, myself and Pattie Epps have a paper where we argue that such liminal cases might be an areal property of Southwestern Amazonia), but the point is that I find a performative contradiction in your attempt to exclude (certain types of?) adjectives and adverbs and the definition you supply. Seems like if you really wanted to test the idea that languages grammaticalize functional notions for the specific reasons you claim, you would need to actually include all of these liminal cases and explain why they do not all disappear under communicative pressure or else drop off of the grammaticalization cline and become lexical / primarily at-issue expressing elements. So the upshot is that I was actually wondering whether you would consider adjectives, adverbs etc. but not because they are lexical or functional, but rather because, according to your own definition they awkwardly sit in between. I was interested in what you would say about them, not whether they should be classified discretely as lexical versus functional. Adam *By "right direction" I mean interesting direction in that it could lead to developing testable hypotheses with an operationalizable set of variables that define the domain of lexical versus functional categories. I am not making the essentialist claim that it is the best definition regardless of the problem context, research question, or audience. Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin) ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, Lyon (07) Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867 De : Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] de la part de Idiatov Dmitry [honohiiri at yandex.ru] Envoy? : samedi 20 juin 2020 15:23 ? : Kasper Boye; Dan I.SLOBIN Cc : lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder Objet : Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Kasper, a quick reaction to this passage: ?Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else ? and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion.? While the application of the criterion of obligatoriness is surely a delicate matter, nobody is obliged to say anything? To avoid the kind of logical figures that you bring up, let?s say that grammatical categories are those sets of mutually exclusive discourse prominence secondary meanings whose expression is obligatory in the constructions to which they apply. Dmitry 20.06.2020, 15:12, "Kasper Boye" >: Dear Dmitry and all, First a comment on obligatoriness, then one closed classes. J?rgen Bohnemeyer pointed out that obligatoriness is too restrictive as a definiens of grammatical status. Another problem is that it is also too inclusive. Consider a language like German where indicative verbs are inflected for past and present tense. The intuition (which is backed up by the ?encoded secondariness? definition; Boye & Harder 2012) is that the tense inflections are grammatical. But neither the past nor the present tense inflection is of course obligatory in itself: instead of past we can choose present, and vice versa. So, instead we have to say that the tense paradigm ? or the choice between tenses ? is obligatory: whenever you select an indicative verb, you also have to select a tense inflection. Now comes the problem. Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else ? and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion. Of course, there are many ways in which obligatoriness can be saved as a definiens, but they all require that this notion is combined with something else. Dan Slobin pointed to the fact that items that are intuitively (and by the ?encoded secondariness? definition) lexical, may form closed classes. I would like to add that closed classes may comprise both lexical and grammatical members. Within the classes of prepositions and pronouns, for instance, distinctions have occasionally been made between lexical and grammatical prepositions. Just as closed class membership seems to have a processing impact, so does the contrast between grammatical and lexical. For instance, Ishkhanyan et al. (2017) showed that the production of French pronouns identified as grammatical based on Boye & Harder (2017) is more severely impaired in agrammatic aphasia than the production of pronouns classified as lexical, and Messerschmidt et al. (2019) showed that Danish prepositions classified as grammatical attract less attention than prepositions classified as lexical. Best wishes, Kasper Boye, K. & P. Harder. 2012. "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization". Language 88.1. 1-44. Ishkhanyan, B., H. Sahraoui, P. Harder, J. Mogensen & K. Boye. 2017. "Grammatical and lexical pronoun dissociation in French speakers with agrammatic aphasia: A usage-based account and REF-based hypothesis". Journal of Neurolinguistics 44. 1-16. Messerschmidt, M., K. Boye, M.M. Overmark, S.T. Kristensen & P. Harder. 2018. "Sondringen mellem grammatiske og leksikalske pr?positioner" [?The distinction between grammatical and lexical prepositions?]. Ny forskning i grammatik 25. 89-106. Fra: Lingtyp > P? vegne af Dan I. SLOBIN Sendt: 19. juni 2020 23:59 Til: Idiatov Dmitry > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency?all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as ?grammatical? elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb?entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, Dan On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: Dear Juergen, I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of ?optionality? possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. Best, Dmitry 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" >: Dear Dmitry ? I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ?inflection? that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It?s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. So what I?m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ?functional expressions? (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ?syncategoremata?. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) Best ? Juergen On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: I would like to react to Kasper Boye?s summary of the ?solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market?. There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson ?Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey? (see https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flinguistlist.org%2Fissues%2F6%2F6-411.html&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668709238&sdata=2oApFblvdWuo%2Fh6Az6pMUZl%2BH4NE0BZSt%2FrPwZetsxU%3D&reserved=0). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)?s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining ?grammatical?, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)?s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case ?grammatical meaning?, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of ?grammatical meaning?, for example because it?s easier to apply consistently. Best wishes, Dmitry -------- Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151?169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. (accessible at: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffile sender.renater.fr%2F%3Fs%3Ddownload%26token%3D24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0- bd739bd16d95&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904f e36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282 648668719231&sdata=O0qLFjyJn3jUGIFdbd8M9L90FTzOL2EJ72eaF3pnnng%3D& amp;reserved=0 ; it?s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : Dear all, I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas about the job grammatical items do. There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar?s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. With best wishes, Kasper References Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. Link: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww. jstor.org%2Fstable%2Fpdf%2F41348882.pdf&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%4 0hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c 9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=%2FOW1%2BzYhXVfMlfsy 7r8SPkQH3iQGKvwjpUHII5QUmzk%3D&reserved=0 Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi. org%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0186685&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hu m.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1 ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=fsFk32aQ4ZHDCQ8QfJEec1N ipSIJa0HDCv39YGpJoCE%3D&reserved=0 Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. Link: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi. org%2F10.1080%2F23273798.2019.1616104&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40h um.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f 1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=pbAdP0mwCENSzfjLjzPAnC pWF2mgHYOSinCIgz9zFJc%3D&reserved=0 Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af David Gil Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Juergen and all, My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. Best, David McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 , _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http:%2F%2Fwww.acs u.buffalo.edu%2F~jb77%2F&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7e c0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0% 7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=CiDmvMRipRj7%2FqbWgbkzsNeeGn2nSZB6W jB4fiUeJJs%3D&reserved=0 Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 -- <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Dan I. Slobin Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics University of California, Berkeley email: slobin at berkeley.edu address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http:%2F%2Fwww.acsu.buffalo.edu%2F~jb77%2F&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668729225&sdata=meBLy8QTd8n01rsw6NFWAOMWUe8TeLg6VJKNaMaYoeA%3D&reserved=0 Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flistserv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668729225&sdata=wwgzwTj%2BdwW80HsR3BKkHf3yZDGFFG0vi4bm9qliMxo%3D&reserved=0 -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From boye at hum.ku.dk Wed Jun 24 08:56:38 2020 From: boye at hum.ku.dk (Kasper Boye) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2020 08:56:38 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <1A010095-9961-4B8A-AA7D-61EF65057CFD@buffalo.edu> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED341@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> <3180F818-F44B-43FF-A3C9-7053002AFBBF@buffalo.edu> <1A010095-9961-4B8A-AA7D-61EF65057CFD@buffalo.edu> Message-ID: Dear J?rgen, Thank you very much for the clarification! Yes, if they are not conventionalized as carriers of background information, we would treat them as not grammaticalized. For some of the classes you distinguish, we would claim that they may have both lexical and grammatical members (this is a language-specific and empirical issue, however). For instance, some adpositions and pronouns (e.g. English off, that) are lexical, others grammatical (e.g. of, it). The former can be modified (it went straight off the road; I hate exactly that), the latter cannot (*they live within 10 miles straight of the city; *I hate exactly it). I look forward to following your work. Over and out ? with best wishes, Kasper Fra: Bohnemeyer, Juergen Sendt: 24. juni 2020 05:09 Til: Kasper Boye Cc: TALLMAN Adam ; lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Kasper ? There are many kinds of functional expressions that are not inherently backgrounded, such as negation, quantificational determiners, modals, demonstratives, emphatic pronouns, and so on. If I remember Boyer & Harder (2012) correctly (apologies if I don?t!), you treat these as not grammaticalized. I consider them weakly grammaticalized. But more to the point, I consider them functional expressions, i.e., part of the grammatical = combinatorial system of language. At the moment, I?m working with a classification of six subtypes of functional expressions. Here are some informal characterizations: Placeholders such as pronominal elements are indexical representations of referents. Their referents may be at-issue content, but their lexical meanings are not, as they merely specify search domains for the referents. Functors such as negation, numerals, adnominal or adverbial quantificational expressions, and modal operators express monovalent conceptual operators that are part of the speaker?s intended message and thus may be at-issue content. Relators such as adpositions, connectives, and ?semantic?/?lexical? case-markers, express conceptual relations that are part of the speaker?s intended message. Social deictics, or ?honorifics? in a technical sense of that term, cannot be at-issue content and do not contribute to the truth-conditions of an utterance. Their presence in an utterance satisfies pragmatic felicity conditions that arise from societal norms of interpersonal relation management. Restrictors, such as markers of tense, viewpoint aspect, mood, gender/noun class, number, or structural case, as well as complementizers, are redundant expressions of parts of the speaker?s communicative intention that cannot be at-issue content. Their presence in an utterance, which may or may not be morphosyntactically required, is motivated by a reduction of the hearer?s inference load. Restrictors are at the heart of the book. The theory employs a continuous probabilistic notion of redundancy/informativeness according to which an expression is the more redundant/less informative in a given context the more predictable its occurrence in the context is. A possible sixths class is formed by facilitators, which like restrictors are metalinguistic expressions that help clarify the speaker?s communicative intention rather than to be themselves ?essential? (non-redundant) expressions of part of the communicative intent. Facilitators differ from restrictors in that, rather than to clarify the lexical content of the utterance, they serve to facilitate the coordination between the interlocutors. Examples include illocutionary expressions, but also some interjections and discourse particles. (It is at present not clear to me whether it is necessary for an evolutionary theory of functional categories to distinguish between restrictors and facilitators.) As you can see, the lower half of these are inherently backgrounded = non-at-issue, whereas the upper half are not. But I?m primarily interested in restrictors, and as far as those are concerned, our approaches appear to be in agreement. Best ? Juergen On Jun 22, 2020, at 6:03 AM, Kasper Boye > wrote: Dear J?rgen, I am not sure I understand what you mean is the difference between your approach and Peter's and mine. We define grammatical items as those that are coded (= conventionalized) as backgrounded/secondary/'not at issue', and lexical items as those that have the potential to be foregrounded/etc. in usage. That is, we make a clear distinction between language potential and language usage, and define grammatical status as applying to language potential. How does this differ from yours? Just to make sure: all adjectives I can think of just now in the languages I know of are lexical by our definition - they can be focalized, addressed and modified. But whether adjectives are lexical or grammatical is really an empirical question. As for the issue of whether you can divide all items of a given language into two buckets, one lexical and one grammatical, I fully agree that it cannot be done neatly. The issue is complicated by e.g. polyselmy, layering and the gradualness of conventionalization. If you distinguish meanings or variants of the same items, it gets less complicated. Obviously, full verbal "have" ('I have a book') is lexical, while perfect auxiliary 'have' is grammatical, for instance. As for the question whether lexical and grammatical items can have the same inherent-semantic meaning, at least they can be very close, cf. harmonic combination. What is important, however, is that some meaning domains can be expressed both lexically and grammatically. This means that grammatical status cannot be defined in terms of inherent-semantic meaning (some grammaticalizable notions can be expressed also lexically). As for grammatical meaning, it can be defined in analogy with grammatical items. Grammatical meaning is meaning that is coded as backgrounded/secondary/not at issue. According to this definition, the past tense meaning of the English suffix "-ed" is grammatical, but so is the past tense meaning of "went". "Went" also has lexical meaning ('go'), and it is by virtue of this meaning that the item as a whole is lexical. Best wishes, Kasper -----Oprindelig meddelelse----- Fra: Lingtyp > P? vegne af Bohnemeyer, Juergen Sendt: 20. juni 2020 17:46 Til: TALLMAN Adam > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Adam ? The notion of ?at-issue content? is defined in models of information structure that assume that utterances in their discourse contexts introduce or answer explicit or implicit ?questions under discussion? (QuDs). Craige Robert?s work is probably the most widely known exponent of this approach (Roberts 1996, 2012). Others include B?ring (1997, 2003), Carlson (1982), Klein & von Stutterheim (1987, 2002), and van Kuppevelt (1995, 1996). The at-issue content of an utterance (if any) is that part of its content that provides a (complete or partial) answer to the QuD of the utterance context. I do indeed assume that there is no categorical boundary between lexicon and grammar. Any assumption to the contrary would seem to be inconsistent with both grammaticalization theory and most versions of Construction Grammar. Is there a problem with that? I wonder whether the source of your confusion regarding the variable status of adjectives stems from a failure to distinguish between an expression?s actual information status as a token in a given utterance and the expression?s inherent capability as a type of expressing at-issue content. Only the latter, not the former, is part of the proposed definition of restrictors (which I?ll remind you is merely a subtype of functional expressions - I?m *not* actually claiming that *all* functional expressions are inherently backgrounded. That is where I part company with Boye & Harder 2012, to whom I otherwise owe a debt of gratitude, as Kasper pointed out). Adjectives *can* express at-issue content, restrictors cannot. Adjectives do not become restrictors just because they are used in a backgrounded position in a given utterance. It?s type properties not matter, not token properties. What you say about adjectives and classifiers in Chacobo is of great interest to me. There is a similar phenomenon in Mayan languages: so-called ?positionals? (I prefer ?dispositionals?, since the great majority of the roots lexicalize properties of inanimate referents, not postures) constitute a lexical category in their own right in Mayan. They surface as both verbs and stative predicates (traditionally, but arguably misleadingly, the latter are considered participles), but subsets of them require derivational morphology in both cases. Mayan languages have hundreds of such roots. Crucially for present purposes, many if not most of these roots can also be used as numeral classifiers. And when they are, I treat them as functional expressions. I consider this polysemy - that is to say, I assume that there is a single lexicon entry that licenses both the dispositional predicate uses and the classifier uses. In other words, I put less distance between these two uses of dispositional morphemes than I put between, say, _have_ used as a possessive predicators vs. auxiliary. That?s because it seems to me that speakers draft dispositional roots into classifier duty on the fly creatively. In other words, I see the relation between the two kinds of uses as more dynamic than static. Bottomline: we should definitely not assume that we can sort the morphemes of a language (and here I mean strings of sound used as one or multiple signs in the speech community) neatly into two buckets, one labeled ?lexicon?, the other ?grammar?. That is just really not how natural languages work. I?m surprised that this seems controversial? Best ? Juergen Berlin, B. (1968). Tzeltal numeral classifiers: A study in ethnographic semantics. The Hague: Mouton. Bu?ring, Daniel (1997). The 59th Street Bridge Accent. London: Routledge. Bu?ring, Daniel (2003). On D-trees, beans, and B-accents. Linguistics and Philosophy 26: 511-545. Carlson, Lauri. 1982. Dialogue games: an approach to discourse analysis (Synthese Language Library 17). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel. Klein, W., & Von Stutterheim, C. (1987). Quaestio und referenzielle Bewegung in Erz?hlungen [Quaestio and referential shift in narratives]. Linguistische Berichte 109: 163-183. --- (2002). Quaestio and L-perspectivation. In C. F. Graumann, & W. Kallmeyer (Eds.), Perspective and perspectivation in discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 59-88. Roberts, C. (1996). Information Structure in Discourse: Towards an Integrated Formal Theory of Pragmatics. In Jae Hak Yoon and Andreas Kathol (eds.), Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 49. Roberts, C. (2012). Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. Semantics & Pragmatics 5 (Article 6): 1-69. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1995). Discourse structure, topicality and questioning. Linguistics 31, 109?147. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1996). Inferring from topics. Linguistics and Philosophy 19, 393?443. On Jun 20, 2020, at 10:19 AM, TALLMAN Adam > wrote: Dear all, A few of you have elaborated on my question about the meaning of "functional" and and then critiqued Juergen's terminological choices. I wonder if my question about adjectives was interpreted facetiously (like "wouldn't it be absurd if adjectives were considered functional?!"). Actually, it was not meant as a facetious question at all as I was attempting to understand Juergen's research question in its own terms to discern whether there was anything in the languages I was familiar with that would count as functional, but diachronically lexical without contact. Juergen, you answered my question, in the sense, that I think I have a better idea of how one might go about operationalizing a distinction between lexical and functional. But now I am less sure about what your original question to the listserve was. Allow me to elaborate. Here is your new definition: "a ?lexical category? is a class of expressions defined in terms of shared morphosyntactic properties. The members of lexical categories are inherently suitable for expressing ?at-issue? content and are backgrounded only when they appear in certain syntactic positions (e.g., attributive as opposed to predicative adjectives). Their combinatorial types (e.g., in a Categorial Grammar framework) are relatively simple. They express concepts of basic ontological categories." I think this points in the right* direction and makes me understand where you are coming from (I assume at-issue just means anything that is not presuppositional nor just implicates some meaning). But crucially the concept is now scalar or gradient (depending on how we operationalize the notion). Saying that it concerns at-issue meaning in "certain syntactic positions" (I would prefer "morphosyntactic" positions) means that for some set of morphemes / constructs / categories or whatever a, b, c, d ? we could rank them in terms of the number of positions they can occur in where they express (or tend to express?) at-issue content a>b>c>d ?. Or we could formulate this in terms of tokens in discourse rather than constructions abstracted from their use, but you get my point. And indeed you state. "It might be best to treat this list of properties as defining the notion of ?lexical category? as a cluster/radio/prototype concept." But now there is no nonarbitrary cut-off point between lexical and grammatical. If there is a boundary it will refer to quantal shifts in the distribution of elements along the lexical-grammatical scale: or stated another way, we know there is some sort of boundary because the distribution of elements along the scale is bimodal and elements in between the modes are statistically marginal. To make this more concrete, in Ch?cobo there are some adjectives / adverbials that express small size or small amount of time. In certain syntactic positions they are more likely to express backgrounded information and in a classifier like manner appear "redundantly", but plausibly help to track referents (referring to someone as honi yoi 'poor man' throughout the discourse). If I scan around related languages (I haven't done this, but let's just say hypothetically) and I find that in these other languages they more typically display at-issue notions (perhaps they more commonly appear in a predicative function), have I found a case of a "functional element" that has grammaticalized? Certainly, it expresses at-issue content less often than others ? I think there are *a lot* of morphemes like this in Amazonia. In my description of Chacobo I actually called them "semi-functional" (it includes associated motion morphemes, time of day adverbials, temporal distance markers) and I try to make the explicit argument that temporal distance morphemes mix and match properties of temporal adverbials with those of tense. It would be hard for me to make the case that these were not a result of contact (in fact, myself and Pattie Epps have a paper where we argue that such liminal cases might be an areal property of Southwestern Amazonia), but the point is that I find a performative contradiction in your attempt to exclude (certain types of?) adjectives and adverbs and the definition you supply. Seems like if you really wanted to test the idea that languages grammaticalize functional notions for the specific reasons you claim, you would need to actually include all of these liminal cases and explain why they do not all disappear under communicative pressure or else drop off of the grammaticalization cline and become lexical / primarily at-issue expressing elements. So the upshot is that I was actually wondering whether you would consider adjectives, adverbs etc. but not because they are lexical or functional, but rather because, according to your own definition they awkwardly sit in between. I was interested in what you would say about them, not whether they should be classified discretely as lexical versus functional. Adam *By "right direction" I mean interesting direction in that it could lead to developing testable hypotheses with an operationalizable set of variables that define the domain of lexical versus functional categories. I am not making the essentialist claim that it is the best definition regardless of the problem context, research question, or audience. Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin) ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, Lyon (07) Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867 De : Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] de la part de Idiatov Dmitry [honohiiri at yandex.ru] Envoy? : samedi 20 juin 2020 15:23 ? : Kasper Boye; Dan I.SLOBIN Cc : lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder Objet : Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Kasper, a quick reaction to this passage: ?Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else ? and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion.? While the application of the criterion of obligatoriness is surely a delicate matter, nobody is obliged to say anything? To avoid the kind of logical figures that you bring up, let?s say that grammatical categories are those sets of mutually exclusive discourse prominence secondary meanings whose expression is obligatory in the constructions to which they apply. Dmitry 20.06.2020, 15:12, "Kasper Boye" >: Dear Dmitry and all, First a comment on obligatoriness, then one closed classes. J?rgen Bohnemeyer pointed out that obligatoriness is too restrictive as a definiens of grammatical status. Another problem is that it is also too inclusive. Consider a language like German where indicative verbs are inflected for past and present tense. The intuition (which is backed up by the ?encoded secondariness? definition; Boye & Harder 2012) is that the tense inflections are grammatical. But neither the past nor the present tense inflection is of course obligatory in itself: instead of past we can choose present, and vice versa. So, instead we have to say that the tense paradigm ? or the choice between tenses ? is obligatory: whenever you select an indicative verb, you also have to select a tense inflection. Now comes the problem. Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else ? and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion. Of course, there are many ways in which obligatoriness can be saved as a definiens, but they all require that this notion is combined with something else. Dan Slobin pointed to the fact that items that are intuitively (and by the ?encoded secondariness? definition) lexical, may form closed classes. I would like to add that closed classes may comprise both lexical and grammatical members. Within the classes of prepositions and pronouns, for instance, distinctions have occasionally been made between lexical and grammatical prepositions. Just as closed class membership seems to have a processing impact, so does the contrast between grammatical and lexical. For instance, Ishkhanyan et al. (2017) showed that the production of French pronouns identified as grammatical based on Boye & Harder (2017) is more severely impaired in agrammatic aphasia than the production of pronouns classified as lexical, and Messerschmidt et al. (2019) showed that Danish prepositions classified as grammatical attract less attention than prepositions classified as lexical. Best wishes, Kasper Boye, K. & P. Harder. 2012. "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization". Language 88.1. 1-44. Ishkhanyan, B., H. Sahraoui, P. Harder, J. Mogensen & K. Boye. 2017. "Grammatical and lexical pronoun dissociation in French speakers with agrammatic aphasia: A usage-based account and REF-based hypothesis". Journal of Neurolinguistics 44. 1-16. Messerschmidt, M., K. Boye, M.M. Overmark, S.T. Kristensen & P. Harder. 2018. "Sondringen mellem grammatiske og leksikalske pr?positioner" [?The distinction between grammatical and lexical prepositions?]. Ny forskning i grammatik 25. 89-106. Fra: Lingtyp > P? vegne af Dan I. SLOBIN Sendt: 19. juni 2020 23:59 Til: Idiatov Dmitry > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency?all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as ?grammatical? elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb?entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, Dan On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: Dear Juergen, I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of ?optionality? possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. Best, Dmitry 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" >: Dear Dmitry ? I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ?inflection? that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It?s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. So what I?m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ?functional expressions? (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ?syncategoremata?. But, I also believe that we should worry about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-)) Best ? Juergen On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry > wrote: I would like to react to Kasper Boye?s summary of the ?solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market?. There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson ?Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey? (see https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flinguistlist.org%2Fissues%2F6%2F6-411.html&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668709238&sdata=2oApFblvdWuo%2Fh6Az6pMUZl%2BH4NE0BZSt%2FrPwZetsxU%3D&reserved=0). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)?s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining ?grammatical?, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)?s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case ?grammatical meaning?, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of ?grammatical meaning?, for example because it?s easier to apply consistently. Best wishes, Dmitry -------- Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151?169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. (accessible at: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffile sender.renater.fr%2F%3Fs%3Ddownload%26token%3D24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0- bd739bd16d95&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904f e36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282 648668719231&sdata=O0qLFjyJn3jUGIFdbd8M9L90FTzOL2EJ72eaF3pnnng%3D& amp;reserved=0 ; it?s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" >: Dear all, I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas about the job grammatical items do. There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar?s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. With best wishes, Kasper References Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. Link: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww. jstor.org%2Fstable%2Fpdf%2F41348882.pdf&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%4 0hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c 9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=%2FOW1%2BzYhXVfMlfsy 7r8SPkQH3iQGKvwjpUHII5QUmzk%3D&reserved=0 Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi. org%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0186685&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hu m.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1 ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=fsFk32aQ4ZHDCQ8QfJEec1N ipSIJa0HDCv39YGpJoCE%3D&reserved=0 Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. Link: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi. org%2F10.1080%2F23273798.2019.1616104&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40h um.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f 1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=pbAdP0mwCENSzfjLjzPAnC pWF2mgHYOSinCIgz9zFJc%3D&reserved=0 Fra: Lingtyp > P? vegne af David Gil Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Juergen and all, My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. Best, David McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.) I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 , _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http:%2F%2Fwww.acs u.buffalo.edu%2F~jb77%2F&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7e c0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0% 7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=CiDmvMRipRj7%2FqbWgbkzsNeeGn2nSZB6W jB4fiUeJJs%3D&reserved=0 Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 -- <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Dan I. Slobin Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics University of California, Berkeley email: slobin at berkeley.edu address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http:%2F%2Fwww.acsu.buffalo.edu%2F~jb77%2F&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668729225&sdata=meBLy8QTd8n01rsw6NFWAOMWUe8TeLg6VJKNaMaYoeA%3D&reserved=0 Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flistserv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668729225&sdata=wwgzwTj%2BdwW80HsR3BKkHf3yZDGFFG0vi4bm9qliMxo%3D&reserved=0 -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From peterarkadiev at yandex.ru Wed Jun 24 11:58:07 2020 From: peterarkadiev at yandex.ru (Peter Arkadiev) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2020 14:58:07 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <1A010095-9961-4B8A-AA7D-61EF65057CFD@buffalo.edu> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED341@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> <3180F818-F44B-43FF-A3C9-7053002AFBBF@buffalo.edu> <1A010095-9961-4B8A-AA7D-61EF65057CFD@buffalo.edu> Message-ID: <151811592999422@mail.yandex.ru> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From laura.emcpherson at gmail.com Thu Jun 25 02:19:46 2020 From: laura.emcpherson at gmail.com (Laura McPherson) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2020 22:19:46 -0400 Subject: [Lingtyp] CfP: "Surrogate languages and the grammar of language-based music" Message-ID: **Apologies for cross listing** Call for papers for a special issue in Frontiers in Communication: Language Sciences: "Surrogate Languages and the Grammar of Language-Based Music" Guest Editors: Dr. Yoad Winter, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands Dr. Laura McPherson, Dartmouth College, Hanover, United States Traditional usages of musical instruments as speech surrogates have been documented for centuries. This common practice is just one example of the tight connection between language and music. More generally, musical practices across cultures often rely on linguistic structures, demonstrating a closer contact between language and music than is familiar in most Western traditions. It is only recently that linguists have started to uncover the relevance of surrogate languages and language-based music to linguistic theory. While available data are still scarce, it has become clear that analyzing traditional speech surrogates and language-based music has exciting implications for all areas of linguistics. This enterprise promises to enhance our understanding of both musical and linguistic faculties in humans. As many language-based musical traditions are endangered, it has become urgent that linguists study the ways in which grammatical information is encoded in musical modalities. Questions about musical vehicles of languages appear at all levels of linguistic description and analysis. Phonologically, it is important to analyze how parameters like tone, vowel height, or syllable structure are represented in speech surrogates, and whether properties of the musical instrument have any effect on that representation. Morphologically, we need to understand whether lexical units are represented on instruments independently, or partially independently, of their phonetic and phonological properties in speech. Syntactically, it should be clarified to what extent musical expression of language can show grammatical properties that are not manifested in the linguistic grammar, and to what extent grammatical operations may be simplified when they are conveyed musically. Semantically, we are interested in the way in which the content of language-based music is formally distinguished from those of spoken language. Other, more specific questions, concern the possible structural distinctions between whistling and speech surrogacy on musical instruments, the distinctions between language-based musics with tonal and atonal languages, productivity of language encoding in music, and comprehensibility of speech surrogacy among native speakers (practitioners and non-practitioners). We also welcome contributions comparing musical surrogate languages to other kinds of language-based music. This Research Topic welcomes contributions on any of these aspects and related ones. Contributions from field linguistics, theoretical linguists and musicology are equally encouraged, especially ones that deal with structural aspects of speech surrogacy and language-based music. Contributions may be Original Research, Review, Perspective, Data Report or Brief Research Report. Abstract submission deadline August 15, 2020 For accepted abstracts, the manuscript submission deadline is December 13, 2020. Visit the collection homepage for the full description of the project: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/14801 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ As a contributing author, you will benefit from: ? High visibility with a freely downloadable e-book ? Rigorous, transparent and fast peer review ? Advanced impact metrics ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Publishing solutions: ? Manuscripts will be peer reviewed, and if accepted for publication, are subject to publishing fees ( https://www.frontiersin.org/about/publishing-fees ), which vary depending on the article type. A discount or waiver can be applied for ( https://frontiers.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_51IljifwFBXUzY1 ) and all applications are considered. ? We collaborate with many leading universities making the Open Access publishing process even more accessible for authors. Click ( https://www.frontiersin.org/about/institutional-membership ) to see whether your institution is collaborating with us. I look forward to your response. Kind Regards, Laura McPherson Topic Editor, Language Sciences Section, Frontiers in Communication On behalf of the Topic Editors. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jb77 at buffalo.edu Thu Jun 25 02:46:46 2020 From: jb77 at buffalo.edu (Bohnemeyer, Juergen) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2020 02:46:46 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <151811592999422@mail.yandex.ru> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED341@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> <3180F818-F44B-43FF-A3C9-7053002AFBBF@buffalo.edu> <1A010095-9961-4B8A-AA7D-61EF65057CFD@buffalo.edu> <151811592999422@mail.yandex.ru> Message-ID: Dear Peter ? Great question! At-issue content is semantically focal (I mean ?semantically? focal in the sense that it is focal even when no expressive device, not even stress, clearly marks it as such). What I mean by ?inherently backgrounded? is that the expressions in question are incapable of being in focus (other than in metalinguistic focus). Now, ?backgrounding? is more commonly used in a different, albeit related, sense, namely in that of presupposition or, more broadly, what e.g. Tonhauser et al. (2013) call ?projective content?. Strictly speaking, there is a series of inclusion relations here: non-at-issue ? ?projective" ? presupposed (I.e., every proposition that is presupposed is projective, but not vice versa, and every proposition that is projective is necessarily not at issue, but not vice versa.) (The difference between projective content and presupposition isn?t relevant to present matters. But the most commonly cited case in point are non-restrictive relatives: their content is not entailed by the matrix sentence, and creates a truth value gap for the matrix sentence when it isn?t true; but it?s not presupposed in the Stalnakerian sense since it?s neither in the common ground nor accommodated.) When I said that I consider restrictors inherently backgrounded, I meant that they are inherently non-at-issue, not that they are (necessarily) presuppositional or projective. Pronouns and demonstratives (which I treat as placeholders, not as restrictors) are often said to introduce metalinguistic presuppositions regarding the presence of suitable referents/antecedents in the discourse. One could treat definite articles in the same way, extending this type of behavior to a subset of restrictors, and some authors treat tenses in the same way. I?m actually not sure that I agree that these metalinguistic meanings should be treated as presuppositions. Meanwhile, there can be no doubt that restrictors contribute to the truth-conditional content of the utterances in which they occur. If I were to say ?I?ve written a book on the evolution of functional categories?, I would be using viewpoint aspect to dish out a lie, since I?m at present only working on such a book, and it?s (unfortunately) far from complete. I hope this clarifies it a bit! ? Best ? Juergen Tonhauser, J., D. Beaver, C. Roberts, & M. Simons. (2013). Toward a classification of projective content. Language 89(1): 66-109. > On Jun 24, 2020, at 7:58 AM, Peter Arkadiev wrote: > > Dear Juergen, dear colleagues, > > I have been following this discussion with great interest, but refrained from participating. However, I think I now have a question to Juergen and possibly to Kasper as well: what is, in your (plural distributive) view(s), the relation between "at issue content" / "part of the speaker's indended message" and "having truth-conditional content"? This is especially relevant for Juergen's "restrictors", since at least some of them, i.e. tense and aspect operators as well as number, have, to my knowledge, always been analysed as bearing on the truth-conditional content of utterances. Does this have any bearing on the issue under discussion? > > Thanks in advance and best regards, > > Peter > > > 24.06.2020, 06:11, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : > Dear Kasper ? There are many kinds of functional expressions that are not inherently backgrounded, such as negation, quantificational determiners, modals, demonstratives, emphatic pronouns, and so on. If I remember Boyer & Harder (2012) correctly (apologies if I don?t!), you treat these as not grammaticalized. I consider them weakly grammaticalized. But more to the point, I consider them functional expressions, i.e., part of the grammatical = combinatorial system of language. > > At the moment, I?m working with a classification of six subtypes of functional expressions. Here are some informal characterizations: > > Placeholders such as pronominal elements are indexical representations of referents. Their referents may be at-issue content, but their lexical meanings are not, as they merely specify search domains for the referents. > > Functors such as negation, numerals, adnominal or adverbial quantificational expressions, and modal operators express monovalent conceptual operators that are part of the speaker?s intended message and thus may be at-issue content. > > Relators such as adpositions, connectives, and ?semantic?/?lexical? case-markers, express conceptual relations that are part of the speaker?s intended message. > > Social deictics, or ?honorifics? in a technical sense of that term, cannot be at-issue content and do not contribute to the truth-conditions of an utterance. Their presence in an utterance satisfies pragmatic felicity conditions that arise from societal norms of interpersonal relation management. > > Restrictors, such as markers of tense, viewpoint aspect, mood, gender/noun class, number, or structural case, as well as complementizers, are redundant expressions of parts of the speaker?s communicative intention that cannot be at-issue content. Their presence in an utterance, which may or may not be morphosyntactically required, is motivated by a reduction of the hearer?s inference load. Restrictors are at the heart of the book. The theory employs a continuous probabilistic notion of redundancy/informativeness according to which an expression is the more redundant/less informative in a given context the more predictable its occurrence in the context is. > > A possible sixths class is formed by facilitators, which like restrictors are metalinguistic expressions that help clarify the speaker?s communicative intention rather than to be themselves ?essential? (non-redundant) expressions of part of the communicative intent. Facilitators differ from restrictors in that, rather than to clarify the lexical content of the utterance, they serve to facilitate the coordination between the interlocutors. Examples include illocutionary expressions, but also some interjections and discourse particles. (It is at present not clear to me whether it is necessary for an evolutionary theory of functional categories to distinguish between restrictors and facilitators.) > > As you can see, the lower half of these are inherently backgrounded = non-at-issue, whereas the upper half are not. > > But I?m primarily interested in restrictors, and as far as those are concerned, our approaches appear to be in agreement. > > Best ? Juergen > > On Jun 22, 2020, at 6:03 AM, Kasper Boye wrote: > > Dear J?rgen, > > I am not sure I understand what you mean is the difference between your approach and Peter's and mine. We define grammatical items as those that are coded (= conventionalized) as backgrounded/secondary/'not at issue', and lexical items as those that have the potential to be foregrounded/etc. in usage. That is, we make a clear distinction between language potential and language usage, and define grammatical status as applying to language potential. How does this differ from yours? > > Just to make sure: all adjectives I can think of just now in the languages I know of are lexical by our definition - they can be focalized, addressed and modified. But whether adjectives are lexical or grammatical is really an empirical question. > > As for the issue of whether you can divide all items of a given language into two buckets, one lexical and one grammatical, I fully agree that it cannot be done neatly. The issue is complicated by e.g. polyselmy, layering and the gradualness of conventionalization. If you distinguish meanings or variants of the same items, it gets less complicated. Obviously, full verbal "have" ('I have a book') is lexical, while perfect auxiliary 'have' is grammatical, for instance. > > As for the question whether lexical and grammatical items can have the same inherent-semantic meaning, at least they can be very close, cf. harmonic combination. What is important, however, is that some meaning domains can be expressed both lexically and grammatically. This means that grammatical status cannot be defined in terms of inherent-semantic meaning (some grammaticalizable notions can be expressed also lexically). > > As for grammatical meaning, it can be defined in analogy with grammatical items. Grammatical meaning is meaning that is coded as backgrounded/secondary/not at issue. According to this definition, the past tense meaning of the English suffix "-ed" is grammatical, but so is the past tense meaning of "went". "Went" also has lexical meaning ('go'), and it is by virtue of this meaning that the item as a whole is lexical. > > Best wishes, > Kasper > > > > > -----Oprindelig meddelelse----- > Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af Bohnemeyer, Juergen > Sendt: 20. juni 2020 17:46 > Til: TALLMAN Adam > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Adam ? The notion of ?at-issue content? is defined in models of information structure that assume that utterances in their discourse contexts introduce or answer explicit or implicit ?questions under discussion? (QuDs). Craige Robert?s work is probably the most widely known exponent of this approach (Roberts 1996, 2012). Others include B?ring (1997, 2003), Carlson (1982), Klein & von Stutterheim (1987, 2002), and van Kuppevelt (1995, 1996). The at-issue content of an utterance (if any) is that part of its content that provides a (complete or partial) answer to the QuD of the utterance context. > > I do indeed assume that there is no categorical boundary between lexicon and grammar. Any assumption to the contrary would seem to be inconsistent with both grammaticalization theory and most versions of Construction Grammar. Is there a problem with that? > > I wonder whether the source of your confusion regarding the variable status of adjectives stems from a failure to distinguish between an expression?s actual information status as a token in a given utterance and the expression?s inherent capability as a type of expressing at-issue content. Only the latter, not the former, is part of the proposed definition of restrictors (which I?ll remind you is merely a subtype of functional expressions - I?m *not* actually claiming that *all* functional expressions are inherently backgrounded. That is where I part company with Boye & Harder 2012, to whom I otherwise owe a debt of gratitude, as Kasper pointed out). Adjectives *can* express at-issue content, restrictors cannot. Adjectives do not become restrictors just because they are used in a backgrounded position in a given utterance. It?s type properties not matter, not token properties. > > What you say about adjectives and classifiers in Chacobo is of great interest to me. There is a similar phenomenon in Mayan languages: so-called ?positionals? (I prefer ?dispositionals?, since the great majority of the roots lexicalize properties of inanimate referents, not postures) constitute a lexical category in their own right in Mayan. They surface as both verbs and stative predicates (traditionally, but arguably misleadingly, the latter are considered participles), but subsets of them require derivational morphology in both cases. Mayan languages have hundreds of such roots. > > Crucially for present purposes, many if not most of these roots can also be used as numeral classifiers. And when they are, I treat them as functional expressions. I consider this polysemy - that is to say, I assume that there is a single lexicon entry that licenses both the dispositional predicate uses and the classifier uses. In other words, I put less distance between these two uses of dispositional morphemes than I put between, say, _have_ used as a possessive predicators vs. auxiliary. That?s because it seems to me that speakers draft dispositional roots into classifier duty on the fly creatively. In other words, I see the relation between the two kinds of uses as more dynamic than static. > > Bottomline: we should definitely not assume that we can sort the morphemes of a language (and here I mean strings of sound used as one or multiple signs in the speech community) neatly into two buckets, one labeled ?lexicon?, the other ?grammar?. That is just really not how natural languages work. I?m surprised that this seems controversial? > > Best ? Juergen > > Berlin, B. (1968). Tzeltal numeral classifiers: A study in ethnographic semantics. The Hague: Mouton. > Bu?ring, Daniel (1997). The 59th Street Bridge Accent. London: Routledge. > Bu?ring, Daniel (2003). On D-trees, beans, and B-accents. Linguistics and Philosophy 26: 511-545. > Carlson, Lauri. 1982. Dialogue games: an approach to discourse analysis (Synthese Language Library 17). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel. > Klein, W., & Von Stutterheim, C. (1987). Quaestio und referenzielle Bewegung in Erz?hlungen [Quaestio and referential shift in narratives]. Linguistische Berichte 109: 163-183. > --- (2002). Quaestio and L-perspectivation. In C. F. Graumann, & W. Kallmeyer (Eds.), Perspective and perspectivation in discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 59-88. > Roberts, C. (1996). Information Structure in Discourse: Towards an Integrated Formal Theory of Pragmatics. In Jae Hak Yoon and Andreas Kathol (eds.), Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 49. > Roberts, C. (2012). Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. Semantics & Pragmatics 5 (Article 6): 1-69. > van Kuppevelt, Jan (1995). Discourse structure, topicality and questioning. Linguistics 31, 109?147. > van Kuppevelt, Jan (1996). Inferring from topics. Linguistics and Philosophy 19, 393?443. > > > > On Jun 20, 2020, at 10:19 AM, TALLMAN Adam wrote: > > Dear all, > > A few of you have elaborated on my question about the meaning of "functional" and and then critiqued Juergen's terminological choices. I wonder if my question about adjectives was interpreted facetiously (like "wouldn't it be absurd if adjectives were considered functional?!"). > > Actually, it was not meant as a facetious question at all as I was attempting to understand Juergen's research question in its own terms to discern whether there was anything in the languages I was familiar with that would count as functional, but diachronically lexical without contact. > > Juergen, you answered my question, in the sense, that I think I have a better idea of how one might go about operationalizing a distinction between lexical and functional. But now I am less sure about what your original question to the listserve was. Allow me to elaborate. > > Here is your new definition: > > "a ?lexical category? is a class of expressions defined in terms of shared morphosyntactic properties. The members of lexical categories are inherently suitable for expressing ?at-issue? content and are backgrounded only when they appear in certain syntactic positions (e.g., attributive as opposed to predicative adjectives). Their combinatorial types (e.g., in a Categorial Grammar framework) are relatively simple. They express concepts of basic ontological categories." > > I think this points in the right* direction and makes me understand where you are coming from (I assume at-issue just means anything that is not presuppositional nor just implicates some meaning). But crucially the concept is now scalar or gradient (depending on how we operationalize the notion). Saying that it concerns at-issue meaning in "certain syntactic positions" (I would prefer "morphosyntactic" positions) means that for some set of morphemes / constructs / categories or whatever a, b, c, d ? we could rank them in terms of the number of positions they can occur in where they express (or tend to express?) at-issue content a>b>c>d ?. Or we could formulate this in terms of tokens in discourse rather than constructions abstracted from their use, but you get my point. And indeed you state. > > > "It might be best to treat this list of properties as defining the notion of ?lexical category? as a cluster/radio/prototype concept." > > > But now there is no nonarbitrary cut-off point between lexical and grammatical. If there is a boundary it will refer to quantal shifts in the distribution of elements along the lexical-grammatical scale: or stated another way, we know there is some sort of boundary because the distribution of elements along the scale is bimodal and elements in between the modes are statistically marginal. > > To make this more concrete, in Ch?cobo there are some adjectives / > adverbials that express small size or small amount of time. In certain > syntactic positions they are more likely to express backgrounded > information and in a classifier like manner appear "redundantly", but > plausibly help to track referents (referring to someone as honi yoi > 'poor man' throughout the discourse). If I scan around related > languages (I haven't done this, but let's just say hypothetically) and > I find that in these other languages they more typically display > at-issue notions (perhaps they more commonly appear in a predicative > function), have I found a case of a "functional element" that has > grammaticalized? Certainly, it expresses at-issue content less often > than others ? > > I think there are *a lot* of morphemes like this in Amazonia. In my description of Chacobo I actually called them "semi-functional" (it includes associated motion morphemes, time of day adverbials, temporal distance markers) and I try to make the explicit argument that temporal distance morphemes mix and match properties of temporal adverbials with those of tense. It would be hard for me to make the case that these were not a result of contact (in fact, myself and Pattie Epps have a paper where we argue that such liminal cases might be an areal property of Southwestern Amazonia), but the point is that I find a performative contradiction in your attempt to exclude (certain types of?) adjectives and adverbs and the definition you supply. Seems like if you really wanted to test the idea that languages grammaticalize functional notions for the specific reasons you claim, you would need to actually include all of these liminal cases and explain why they do not all disappear under communicative pressure or else drop off of the grammaticalization cline and become lexical / primarily at-issue expressing elements. > > So the upshot is that I was actually wondering whether you would consider adjectives, adverbs etc. but not because they are lexical or functional, but rather because, according to your own definition they awkwardly sit in between. I was interested in what you would say about them, not whether they should be classified discretely as lexical versus functional. > > Adam > > *By "right direction" I mean interesting direction in that it could lead to developing testable hypotheses with an operationalizable set of variables that define the domain of lexical versus functional categories. I am not making the essentialist claim that it is the best definition regardless of the problem context, research question, or audience. > > > > > > > > Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin) ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant > CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, > Lyon (07) Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867 De : Lingtyp > [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] de la part de Idiatov > Dmitry [honohiiri at yandex.ru] Envoy? : samedi 20 juin 2020 15:23 ? : > Kasper Boye; Dan I.SLOBIN Cc : lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; > Peter Harder Objet : Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Kasper, a quick reaction to this passage: > > ?Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else ? and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion.? > > While the application of the criterion of obligatoriness is surely a > delicate matter, nobody is obliged to say anything? > > To avoid the kind of logical figures that you bring up, let?s say that grammatical categories are those sets of mutually exclusive discourse prominence secondary meanings whose expression is obligatory in the constructions to which they apply. > > Dmitry > > > 20.06.2020, 15:12, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear Dmitry and all, > > First a comment on obligatoriness, then one closed classes. > > J?rgen Bohnemeyer pointed out that obligatoriness is too restrictive as a definiens of grammatical status. Another problem is that it is also too inclusive. Consider a language like German where indicative verbs are inflected for past and present tense. The intuition (which is backed up by the ?encoded secondariness? definition; Boye & Harder 2012) is that the tense inflections are grammatical. But neither the past nor the present tense inflection is of course obligatory in itself: instead of past we can choose present, and vice versa. So, instead we have to say that the tense paradigm ? or the choice between tenses ? is obligatory: whenever you select an indicative verb, you also have to select a tense inflection. Now comes the problem. Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else ? and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion. Of course, there are many ways in which obligatoriness can be saved as a definiens, but they all require that this notion is combined with something else. > > Dan Slobin pointed to the fact that items that are intuitively (and by the ?encoded secondariness? definition) lexical, may form closed classes. I would like to add that closed classes may comprise both lexical and grammatical members. Within the classes of prepositions and pronouns, for instance, distinctions have occasionally been made between lexical and grammatical prepositions. Just as closed class membership seems to have a processing impact, so does the contrast between grammatical and lexical. For instance, Ishkhanyan et al. (2017) showed that the production of French pronouns identified as grammatical based on Boye & Harder (2017) is more severely impaired in agrammatic aphasia than the production of pronouns classified as lexical, and Messerschmidt et al. (2019) showed that Danish prepositions classified as grammatical attract less attention than prepositions classified as lexical. > > Best wishes, > Kasper > > Boye, K. & P. Harder. 2012. "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization". Language 88.1. 1-44. > > Ishkhanyan, B., H. Sahraoui, P. Harder, J. Mogensen & K. Boye. 2017. "Grammatical and lexical pronoun dissociation in French speakers with agrammatic aphasia: A usage-based account and REF-based hypothesis". Journal of Neurolinguistics 44. 1-16. > > Messerschmidt, M., K. Boye, M.M. Overmark, S.T. Kristensen & P. Harder. 2018. "Sondringen mellem grammatiske og leksikalske pr?positioner" [?The distinction between grammatical and lexical prepositions?]. Ny forskning i grammatik 25. 89-106. > > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af > Dan I. SLOBIN > Sendt: 19. juni 2020 23:59 > Til: Idiatov Dmitry > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency?all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as ?grammatical? elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb?entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. > > Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, Dan > > On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > Dear Juergen, > > I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. > > The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of ?optionality? possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. > > However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. > > The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. > > Best, > Dmitry > > > 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : > Dear Dmitry ? I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. > > A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. > > My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ?inflection? that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It?s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. > > So what I?m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. > > (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ?functional > expressions? (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label > expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional > ?syncategoremata?. But, I also believe that we should worry about the > concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I > realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) > Whorfian :-)) > > Best ? Juergen > > > On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > > I would like to react to Kasper Boye?s summary of the ?solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market?. > > There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson ?Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey? (see https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flinguistlist.org%2Fissues%2F6%2F6-411.html&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668709238&sdata=2oApFblvdWuo%2Fh6Az6pMUZl%2BH4NE0BZSt%2FrPwZetsxU%3D&reserved=0). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)?s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining ?grammatical?, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)?s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. > > Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case ?grammatical meaning?, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of ?grammatical meaning?, for example because it?s easier to apply consistently. > > Best wishes, > Dmitry > > -------- > Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151?169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. > (accessible at: > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffile > sender.renater.fr%2F%3Fs%3Ddownload%26token%3D24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0- > bd739bd16d95&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904f > e36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282 > 648668719231&sdata=O0qLFjyJn3jUGIFdbd8M9L90FTzOL2EJ72eaF3pnnng%3D& > amp;reserved=0 ; it?s also available from my website, but the server > has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) > > > 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear all, > > I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas about the job grammatical items do. > > There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. > > Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. > > Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. > > If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. > > Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar?s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. > > With best wishes, > Kasper > > References > Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. > Link: > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww. > jstor.org%2Fstable%2Fpdf%2F41348882.pdf&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%4 > 0hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c > 9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=%2FOW1%2BzYhXVfMlfsy > 7r8SPkQH3iQGKvwjpUHII5QUmzk%3D&reserved=0 > > Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. > > Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. > > Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. > Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs > in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi. > org%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0186685&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hu > m.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1 > ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=fsFk32aQ4ZHDCQ8QfJEec1N > ipSIJa0HDCv39YGpJoCE%3D&reserved=0 > > Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. > Link: > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi. > org%2F10.1080%2F23273798.2019.1616104&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40h > um.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f > 1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=pbAdP0mwCENSzfjLjzPAnC > pWF2mgHYOSinCIgz9zFJc%3D&reserved=0 > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af > David Gil > Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 > Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Juergen and all, > > My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. > > Best, > > David > > > McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. > McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. > McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) > "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. > > > On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. > > Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in > which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in > one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, > with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the > former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) > there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of > the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to > include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically > interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of > contact models.) > > I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. > > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > > As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). > > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I > receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen > > -- > David Gil > > Senior Scientist (Associate) > 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): > +62-81344082091 , _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists > erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 > Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd > a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL > u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists > erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 > Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd > a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL > u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 > > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics > and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy > Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http:%2F%2Fwww.acs > u.buffalo.edu%2F~jb77%2F&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7e > c0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0% > 7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=CiDmvMRipRj7%2FqbWgbkzsNeeGn2nSZB6W > jB4fiUeJJs%3D&reserved=0 > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard > Cohen) > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists > erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 > Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd > a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL > u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 > > > -- > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > Dan I. Slobin > Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics University of > California, Berkeley > email: slobin at berkeley.edu > address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists > erv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7 > Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cd > a14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668719231&sdata=O1ejoeGL > u%2FA1tb%2Bq8yEtg6B4X6TT8Yw3X07CYwju2tA%3D&reserved=0 > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http:%2F%2Fwww.acsu.buffalo.edu%2F~jb77%2F&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668729225&sdata=meBLy8QTd8n01rsw6NFWAOMWUe8TeLg6VJKNaMaYoeA%3D&reserved=0 > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flistserv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7Ctrondhjem%40hum.ku.dk%7C7ec0bdd8ad904fe36aae08d815312966%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637282648668729225&sdata=wwgzwTj%2BdwW80HsR3BKkHf3yZDGFFG0vi4bm9qliMxo%3D&reserved=0 > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies > Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science > University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus > Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In > (Leonard Cohen) > , > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > Peter Arkadiev, PhD Hab. > Institute of Slavic Studies > Russian Academy of Sciences > Leninsky prospekt 32-A 119334 Moscow > peterarkadiev at yandex.ru > http://inslav.ru/people/arkadev-petr-mihaylovich-peter-arkadiev > -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) From hartmut at ruc.dk Thu Jun 25 16:25:02 2020 From: hartmut at ruc.dk (Hartmut Haberland) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2020 16:25:02 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories In-Reply-To: <60a48ca1bd344e6ebbbfcba3476bbf69@ling.su.se> References: <7e1a6a66-2261-56d9-41bf-ab141666b3c9@shh.mpg.de> <536721592581414@mail.yandex.ru> <833B4AA1-C23C-4669-951A-5647F9004C86@buffalo.edu> <242261592592933@mail.yandex.ru> <7171592658266@mail.yandex.ru> <61CC03E3918A004C9F811E488EE05C041A1ED341@CNREXCMBX04P.core-res.rootcore.local> <3180F818-F44B-43FF-A3C9-7053002AFBBF@buffalo.edu> <60a48ca1bd344e6ebbbfcba3476bbf69@ling.su.se> Message-ID: <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C81C6@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> Je suis contente -----Oprindelig meddelelse----- Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af ?sten Dahl Sendt: 21. juni 2020 08:25 Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories The section "Accidence categories and Gricean principles" (p. 11-15) in my 1985 book "Tense and Aspect Systems" argues for the view that the semantic features involved in what I called "accidence categories", which would include tense/aspect and other similar phenomena, "typically do not belong to the 'intended message'". The book can be downloaded from https://www2.ling.su.se/staff/oesten/recycled/Tense&aspectsystems.pdf ?sten -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Fr?n: Lingtyp F?r Bohnemeyer, Juergen Skickat: den 20 juni 2020 17:46 Till: TALLMAN Adam Kopia: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org ?mne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories Dear Adam ? The notion of ?at-issue content? is defined in models of information structure that assume that utterances in their discourse contexts introduce or answer explicit or implicit ?questions under discussion? (QuDs). Craige Robert?s work is probably the most widely known exponent of this approach (Roberts 1996, 2012). Others include B?ring (1997, 2003), Carlson (1982), Klein & von Stutterheim (1987, 2002), and van Kuppevelt (1995, 1996). The at-issue content of an utterance (if any) is that part of its content that provides a (complete or partial) answer to the QuD of the utterance context. I do indeed assume that there is no categorical boundary between lexicon and grammar. Any assumption to the contrary would seem to be inconsistent with both grammaticalization theory and most versions of Construction Grammar. Is there a problem with that? I wonder whether the source of your confusion regarding the variable status of adjectives stems from a failure to distinguish between an expression?s actual information status as a token in a given utterance and the expression?s inherent capability as a type of expressing at-issue content. Only the latter, not the former, is part of the proposed definition of restrictors (which I?ll remind you is merely a subtype of functional expressions - I?m *not* actually claiming that *all* functional expressions are inherently backgrounded. That is where I part company with Boye & Harder 2012, to whom I otherwise owe a debt of gratitude, as Kasper pointed out). Adjectives *can* express at-issue content, restrictors cannot. Adjectives do not become restrictors just because they are used in a backgrounded position in a given utterance. It?s type properties not matter, not token properties. What you say about adjectives and classifiers in Chacobo is of great interest to me. There is a similar phenomenon in Mayan languages: so-called ?positionals? (I prefer ?dispositionals?, since the great majority of the roots lexicalize properties of inanimate referents, not postures) constitute a lexical category in their own right in Mayan. They surface as both verbs and stative predicates (traditionally, but arguably misleadingly, the latter are considered participles), but subsets of them require derivational morphology in both cases. Mayan languages have hundreds of such roots. Crucially for present purposes, many if not most of these roots can also be used as numeral classifiers. And when they are, I treat them as functional expressions. I consider this polysemy - that is to say, I assume that there is a single lexicon entry that licenses both the dispositional predicate uses and the classifier uses. In other words, I put less distance between these two uses of dispositional morphemes than I put between, say, _have_ used as a possessive predicators vs. auxiliary. That?s because it seems to me that speakers draft dispositional roots into classifier duty on the fly creatively. In other words, I see the relation between the two kinds of uses as more dynamic than static. Bottomline: we should definitely not assume that we can sort the morphemes of a language (and here I mean strings of sound used as one or multiple signs in the speech community) neatly into two buckets, one labeled ?lexicon?, the other ?grammar?. That is just really not how natural languages work. I?m surprised that this seems controversial? Best ? Juergen Berlin, B. (1968). Tzeltal numeral classifiers: A study in ethnographic semantics. The Hague: Mouton. Bu?ring, Daniel (1997). The 59th Street Bridge Accent. London: Routledge. Bu?ring, Daniel (2003). On D-trees, beans, and B-accents. Linguistics and Philosophy 26: 511-545. Carlson, Lauri. 1982. Dialogue games: an approach to discourse analysis (Synthese Language Library 17). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel. Klein, W., & Von Stutterheim, C. (1987). Quaestio und referenzielle Bewegung in Erz?hlungen [Quaestio and referential shift in narratives]. Linguistische Berichte 109: 163-183. --- (2002). Quaestio and L-perspectivation. In C. F. Graumann, & W. Kallmeyer (Eds.), Perspective and perspectivation in discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 59-88. Roberts, C. (1996). Information Structure in Discourse: Towards an Integrated Formal Theory of Pragmatics. In Jae Hak Yoon and Andreas Kathol (eds.), Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 49. Roberts, C. (2012). Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. Semantics & Pragmatics 5 (Article 6): 1-69. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1995). Discourse structure, topicality and questioning. Linguistics 31, 109?147. van Kuppevelt, Jan (1996). Inferring from topics. Linguistics and Philosophy 19, 393?443. > On Jun 20, 2020, at 10:19 AM, TALLMAN Adam wrote: > > Dear all, > > A few of you have elaborated on my question about the meaning of "functional" and and then critiqued Juergen's terminological choices. I wonder if my question about adjectives was interpreted facetiously (like "wouldn't it be absurd if adjectives were considered functional?!"). > > Actually, it was not meant as a facetious question at all as I was attempting to understand Juergen's research question in its own terms to discern whether there was anything in the languages I was familiar with that would count as functional, but diachronically lexical without contact. > > Juergen, you answered my question, in the sense, that I think I have a better idea of how one might go about operationalizing a distinction between lexical and functional. But now I am less sure about what your original question to the listserve was. Allow me to elaborate. > > Here is your new definition: > > "a ?lexical category? is a class of expressions defined in terms of shared morphosyntactic properties. The members of lexical categories are inherently suitable for expressing ?at-issue? content and are backgrounded only when they appear in certain syntactic positions (e.g., attributive as opposed to predicative adjectives). Their combinatorial types (e.g., in a Categorial Grammar framework) are relatively simple. They express concepts of basic ontological categories." > > I think this points in the right* direction and makes me understand where you are coming from (I assume at-issue just means anything that is not presuppositional nor just implicates some meaning). But crucially the concept is now scalar or gradient (depending on how we operationalize the notion). Saying that it concerns at-issue meaning in "certain syntactic positions" (I would prefer "morphosyntactic" positions) means that for some set of morphemes / constructs / categories or whatever a, b, c, d ? we could rank them in terms of the number of positions they can occur in where they express (or tend to express?) at-issue content a>b>c>d ?. Or we could formulate this in terms of tokens in discourse rather than constructions abstracted from their use, but you get my point. And indeed you state. > > > "It might be best to treat this list of properties as defining the notion of ?lexical category? as a cluster/radio/prototype concept." > > > But now there is no nonarbitrary cut-off point between lexical and grammatical. If there is a boundary it will refer to quantal shifts in the distribution of elements along the lexical-grammatical scale: or stated another way, we know there is some sort of boundary because the distribution of elements along the scale is bimodal and elements in between the modes are statistically marginal. > > To make this more concrete, in Ch?cobo there are some adjectives / > adverbials that express small size or small amount of time. In certain > syntactic positions they are more likely to express backgrounded > information and in a classifier like manner appear "redundantly", but > plausibly help to track referents (referring to someone as honi yoi > 'poor man' throughout the discourse). If I scan around related > languages (I haven't done this, but let's just say hypothetically) and > I find that in these other languages they more typically display > at-issue notions (perhaps they more commonly appear in a predicative > function), have I found a case of a "functional element" that has > grammaticalized? Certainly, it expresses at-issue content less often > than others ? > > I think there are *a lot* of morphemes like this in Amazonia. In my description of Chacobo I actually called them "semi-functional" (it includes associated motion morphemes, time of day adverbials, temporal distance markers) and I try to make the explicit argument that temporal distance morphemes mix and match properties of temporal adverbials with those of tense. It would be hard for me to make the case that these were not a result of contact (in fact, myself and Pattie Epps have a paper where we argue that such liminal cases might be an areal property of Southwestern Amazonia), but the point is that I find a performative contradiction in your attempt to exclude (certain types of?) adjectives and adverbs and the definition you supply. Seems like if you really wanted to test the idea that languages grammaticalize functional notions for the specific reasons you claim, you would need to actually include all of these liminal cases and explain why they do not all disappear under communicative pressure or else drop off of the grammaticalization cline and become lexical / primarily at-issue expressing elements. > > So the upshot is that I was actually wondering whether you would consider adjectives, adverbs etc. but not because they are lexical or functional, but rather because, according to your own definition they awkwardly sit in between. I was interested in what you would say about them, not whether they should be classified discretely as lexical versus functional. > > Adam > > *By "right direction" I mean interesting direction in that it could lead to developing testable hypotheses with an operationalizable set of variables that define the domain of lexical versus functional categories. I am not making the essentialist claim that it is the best definition regardless of the problem context, research question, or audience. > > > > > > > > Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin) ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant > CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596) Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, > Lyon (07) Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867 De : Lingtyp > [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] de la part de Idiatov > Dmitry [honohiiri at yandex.ru] Envoy? : samedi 20 juin 2020 15:23 ? : > Kasper Boye; Dan I.SLOBIN Cc : lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; > Peter Harder Objet : Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Kasper, a quick reaction to this passage: > > ?Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else ? and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion.? > > While the application of the criterion of obligatoriness is surely a > delicate matter, nobody is obliged to say anything? > > To avoid the kind of logical figures that you bring up, let?s say that grammatical categories are those sets of mutually exclusive discourse prominence secondary meanings whose expression is obligatory in the constructions to which they apply. > > Dmitry > > > 20.06.2020, 15:12, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear Dmitry and all, > > First a comment on obligatoriness, then one closed classes. > > J?rgen Bohnemeyer pointed out that obligatoriness is too restrictive as a definiens of grammatical status. Another problem is that it is also too inclusive. Consider a language like German where indicative verbs are inflected for past and present tense. The intuition (which is backed up by the ?encoded secondariness? definition; Boye & Harder 2012) is that the tense inflections are grammatical. But neither the past nor the present tense inflection is of course obligatory in itself: instead of past we can choose present, and vice versa. So, instead we have to say that the tense paradigm ? or the choice between tenses ? is obligatory: whenever you select an indicative verb, you also have to select a tense inflection. Now comes the problem. Obligatoriness also works the other way around: Whenever you select a tense inflection you also have to select a verb. So, verbs are themselves obligatory in relation to something else ? and accordingly they come out as grammatical if you take obligatoriness as the only criterion. Of course, there are many ways in which obligatoriness can be saved as a definiens, but they all require that this notion is combined with something else. > > Dan Slobin pointed to the fact that items that are intuitively (and by the ?encoded secondariness? definition) lexical, may form closed classes. I would like to add that closed classes may comprise both lexical and grammatical members. Within the classes of prepositions and pronouns, for instance, distinctions have occasionally been made between lexical and grammatical prepositions. Just as closed class membership seems to have a processing impact, so does the contrast between grammatical and lexical. For instance, Ishkhanyan et al. (2017) showed that the production of French pronouns identified as grammatical based on Boye & Harder (2017) is more severely impaired in agrammatic aphasia than the production of pronouns classified as lexical, and Messerschmidt et al. (2019) showed that Danish prepositions classified as grammatical attract less attention than prepositions classified as lexical. > > Best wishes, > Kasper > > Boye, K. & P. Harder. 2012. "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization". Language 88.1. 1-44. > > Ishkhanyan, B., H. Sahraoui, P. Harder, J. Mogensen & K. Boye. 2017. "Grammatical and lexical pronoun dissociation in French speakers with agrammatic aphasia: A usage-based account and REF-based hypothesis". Journal of Neurolinguistics 44. 1-16. > > Messerschmidt, M., K. Boye, M.M. Overmark, S.T. Kristensen & P. Harder. 2018. "Sondringen mellem grammatiske og leksikalske pr?positioner" [?The distinction between grammatical and lexical prepositions?]. Ny forskning i grammatik 25. 89-106. > > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af > Dan I. SLOBIN > Sendt: 19. juni 2020 23:59 > Til: Idiatov Dmitry > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org; Peter Harder > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency?all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as ?grammatical? elements. For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb?entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix. > > Regards from an engaged psycholinguist, Dan > > On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > Dear Juergen, > > I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message. > > The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of ?optionality? possible. I mentioned some such cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper. > > However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English. > > The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical, if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible. > > Best, > Dmitry > > > 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" : > Dear Dmitry ? I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement. The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me. > > A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would seem a mistake to me. > > My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ?inflection? that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It?s a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into all kinds of problems. > > So what I?m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully inadequate. > > (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ?functional > expressions? (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label > expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional > ?syncategoremata?. But, I also believe that we should worry about the > concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I > realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) > Whorfian :-)) > > Best ? Juergen > > > On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry wrote: > > I would like to react to Kasper Boye?s summary of the ?solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market?. > > There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson ?Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey? (see https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder (2012)?s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining ?grammatical?, but dismiss it for a number of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)?s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization. > > Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case ?grammatical meaning?, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to have a more restrictive definition of ?grammatical meaning?, for example because it?s easier to apply consistently. > > Best wishes, > Dmitry > > -------- > Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151?169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi. > (accessible at: > https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da > 0-bd739bd16d95 ; it?s also available from my website, but the server > has been down for some time, hence this temporary link) > > > 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" : > Dear all, > > I would like to first respond to David Gil?s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on J?rgen Bohnemeyer?s ideas about the job grammatical items do. > > There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ?grammatical? on the market. One is Christian Lehmann?s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder?s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground. > > Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d??tre for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context: knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann?s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather superficially and thus quickly by the hearer. > > Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider which host expression to attach it to. > > If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ?audience design?: the speaker invests a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources. > > Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) ? it puts an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar?s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are conventionalized as carriers of background info. > > With best wishes, > Kasper > > References > Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44. > Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf > > Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. > > Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press. > > Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. > Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs > in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685. > https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685 > > Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca?s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104. > Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104 > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af > David Gil > Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14 > Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories > > Dear Juergen and all, > > My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra ? see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite. McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category. > > Best, > > David > > > McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark. > McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ?pro-drop? in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715?750. > McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) > "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. B?nreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22 McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19. > > > On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote: > Dear colleagues ? I?m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ?functional categories?, I mean the ?grammatical categories? of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition below. > > Here is what I mean by ?innovation?: language families or genera in > which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in > one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, > with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition in the > former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) > there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of > the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to > include contact-based innovation, but I happen to be specifically > interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of > contact models.) > > I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the ?Dark Ages?. In this case, we can be certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn?t. But when and where this innovation started, and what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear. > > It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. > > As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification). > > Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I?m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker?s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer?s inference load. > > This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn?t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express ?at issue? content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically. > > I hope that wasn?t too convoluted ;-) > > Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I > receive a sufficient number of responses. ? Best ? Juergen > > -- > David Gil > > Senior Scientist (Associate) > 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): > +62-81344082091 , _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) > Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics > and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo > > Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy > Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 > Phone: (716) 645 0127 > Fax: (716) 645 3825 > Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu > Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ > > Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. > > There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard > Cohen) > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > -- > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > Dan I. Slobin > Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics University of > California, Berkeley > email: slobin at berkeley.edu > address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708 > <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Phone: (716) 645 0127 Fax: (716) 645 3825 Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours. There?s A Crack In Everything - That?s How The Light Gets In (Leonard Cohen) _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp From joo at shh.mpg.de Fri Jun 26 03:56:30 2020 From: joo at shh.mpg.de (joo at shh.mpg.de) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 12:56:30 +0900 Subject: [Lingtyp] Citing text in European languages without translation References: Message-ID: <02c9571d-179a-484d-835d-54362e750f05@Spark> Dear all, In linguistics, it is common to see in-text citation of text written in different European languages without giving translation, such as an English paper quoting French text without additional translation, assuming that the reader is able to read these languages. I believe that this practice is problematic and we should not assume the readers to be able to read French, German, or other European languages (unless the topic of the paper is directly related to one of these languages). Why do we assume the reader to read a European language but not a non-European language such as Chinese or Turkish? Clearly the latter two are also languages used extensively in academic works, why should they almost always be given translation when European languages like French or German are very often exempted from translation? I would like to know your opinion on this. I?m writing this on this mailing list because I believe this happens more often in typology than in many other subfields. Regards, Ian Joo -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk Fri Jun 26 04:36:13 2020 From: nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk (Nigel Vincent) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 04:36:13 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] Citing text in European languages without translation In-Reply-To: <02c9571d-179a-484d-835d-54362e750f05@Spark> References: , <02c9571d-179a-484d-835d-54362e750f05@Spark> Message-ID: Does this still happen? It's certainly true that in older scholarship written in English one often finds passages in French or German untranslated or conversely scholarship written in French or German with untranslated English, but the journals I have worked with in recent years insist on translation in such circumstances. Nigel Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Lingtyp on behalf of joo at shh.mpg.de Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 5:56 AM To: LINGTYP Subject: [Lingtyp] Citing text in European languages without translation Dear all, In linguistics, it is common to see in-text citation of text written in different European languages without giving translation, such as an English paper quoting French text without additional translation, assuming that the reader is able to read these languages. I believe that this practice is problematic and we should not assume the readers to be able to read French, German, or other European languages (unless the topic of the paper is directly related to one of these languages). Why do we assume the reader to read a European language but not a non-European language such as Chinese or Turkish? Clearly the latter two are also languages used extensively in academic works, why should they almost always be given translation when European languages like French or German are very often exempted from translation? I would like to know your opinion on this. I?m writing this on this mailing list because I believe this happens more often in typology than in many other subfields. Regards, Ian Joo -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk Fri Jun 26 05:51:46 2020 From: nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk (Nigel Vincent) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 05:51:46 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Message-ID: A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? Nigel Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mattis.list at lingpy.org Fri Jun 26 06:03:58 2020 From: mattis.list at lingpy.org (Mattis List) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 08:03:58 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Citing text in European languages without translation In-Reply-To: <02c9571d-179a-484d-835d-54362e750f05@Spark> References: <02c9571d-179a-484d-835d-54362e750f05@Spark> Message-ID: <25e40d67-18f9-4ba2-2f1e-7b2b3f869079@lingpy.org> Dear Ian, I think the reason for this practice is the history of the field of linguistics (in Europe), where lots of the early linguistic work was written in French, German, and less so in English. French was one of the languages that were listed as basic conditions (or recommendations) for starting the study of Indo-European linguistics in Berlin, when I was a student, although this was never tested. Many people who grow up in an English academic context studying philosophy still consider it important to learn German. In German work, we rarely translate English texts, and some do the same with French texts, even in English journalism, some journalists consider it as okay to mix some German and French words or phrases here and there. Clearly, knowing French and German as a linguist can be an advantage, if one is interested in reading the classics in the original, such as Gabelentz (who wrote an excellent Chinese grammar that has not been translated yet) or Meillet (for his numerous contributions to methodology), and there are many others. But so are other languages with linguistic and philosophical traditions, and depending on the subfield, knowledge of them is almost obligatory. Ideally, all linguists would be able to read as many of the languages in which scholarly work is produced as possible. And ideally, all linguists would also write scientific work in their mother tongue, as this may encourage younger scholars and students. As to the practice of not translating: I followed this in my dissertation, since this was what I had learned: German and French should not be translated. Having been teaching a lot more in the meantime, however, and also having been giving courses in different contexts where this "Indo-Europeanist" tradition differs, I have dropped it now and provide translations for German and French, as I would do it for Chinese and Russian. But still, in some cases, journals don't even allow you to provide translations of the titles in the references (few style guides include recommendations for translated titles or for quoting a book you have read in translation along with the original). Interestingly, the ancient Europe, which we use to justify the mix of German, English, and French, was apparently not that multilingual as one tends to imagine it: August Schleicher did not write his famous comment on Darwin's Origin of Species until he was given a German translation. Nowadays, he'd probably would have written his comment in bad English, who knows. I find it difficult to say what is better: embracing multlingualism in scientific work or embracing English monolingualism, where all those who do not have English as a mothertongue are also in disadvantage. Maybe there's a way in the middle. But translations should always be given into the language in which you write your text (at least that's what I think now), including titles in the references. We do our scientific work not only to convince people, but also to give our colleagues a chance to learn more. By providing a translation, you provide insights into a work to those who are not able to read it directly, so one could say it is some kind of a scientific service, maybe even a duty. Best, Mattis On 26.06.20 05:56, joo at shh.mpg.de wrote: > Dear all, > > In linguistics, it is common to see in-text citation of text written in > different European languages without giving translation, such as an > English paper quoting French text without additional translation, > assuming that the reader is able to read these languages. > I believe that this practice is problematic and we should not assume the > readers to be able to read French, German, or other European languages > (unless the topic of the paper is directly related to one of these > languages). Why do we assume the reader to read a European language but > not a non-European language such as Chinese or Turkish? Clearly the > latter two are also languages used extensively in academic works, why > should they almost always be given translation when European languages > like French or German are very often exempted from translation? > I would like to know your opinion on this. I?m writing this on this > mailing list because I believe this happens more often in typology than > in many other subfields. > > Regards, > Ian Joo > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > From hyman at berkeley.edu Fri Jun 26 06:12:24 2020 From: hyman at berkeley.edu (Larry M. HYMAN) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2020 23:12:24 -0700 Subject: [Lingtyp] Citing text in European languages without translation In-Reply-To: <25e40d67-18f9-4ba2-2f1e-7b2b3f869079@lingpy.org> References: <02c9571d-179a-484d-835d-54362e750f05@Spark> <25e40d67-18f9-4ba2-2f1e-7b2b3f869079@lingpy.org> Message-ID: I wonder if I can add another issue: whether to translate the glosses of forms that one cites, e.g. from French when writing in English? I have found this difficult at times because sometimes you don't know which sense of word was meant. (I'm usually doing this to illustrate a phonological property.) When I submitted two papers on Yaka (Bantu, Democratic Republic of Congo), citing from the Ruttenberg Yaka-French dictionary, I left the French glosses. One journal (*Studies in African Linguistics* in 1995) allowed them to stand; the other journal (*Phonology* in 1998) required that the glosses all be translated into English. Nowadays I translate the glosses whenever I can--and hope I get them right! On Thu, Jun 25, 2020 at 11:04 PM Mattis List wrote: > Dear Ian, > > I think the reason for this practice is the history of the field of > linguistics (in Europe), where lots of the early linguistic work was > written in French, German, and less so in English. French was one of the > languages that were listed as basic conditions (or recommendations) for > starting the study of Indo-European linguistics in Berlin, when I was a > student, although this was never tested. Many people who grow up in an > English academic context studying philosophy still consider it important > to learn German. In German work, we rarely translate English texts, and > some do the same with French texts, even in English journalism, some > journalists consider it as okay to mix some German and French words or > phrases here and there. > > Clearly, knowing French and German as a linguist can be an advantage, if > one is interested in reading the classics in the original, such as > Gabelentz (who wrote an excellent Chinese grammar that has not been > translated yet) or Meillet (for his numerous contributions to > methodology), and there are many others. But so are other languages with > linguistic and philosophical traditions, and depending on the subfield, > knowledge of them is almost obligatory. Ideally, all linguists would be > able to read as many of the languages in which scholarly work is > produced as possible. And ideally, all linguists would also write > scientific work in their mother tongue, as this may encourage younger > scholars and students. > > As to the practice of not translating: I followed this in my > dissertation, since this was what I had learned: German and French > should not be translated. Having been teaching a lot more in the > meantime, however, and also having been giving courses in different > contexts where this "Indo-Europeanist" tradition differs, I have dropped > it now and provide translations for German and French, as I would do it > for Chinese and Russian. But still, in some cases, journals don't even > allow you to provide translations of the titles in the references (few > style guides include recommendations for translated titles or for > quoting a book you have read in translation along with the original). > > Interestingly, the ancient Europe, which we use to justify the mix of > German, English, and French, was apparently not that multilingual as one > tends to imagine it: August Schleicher did not write his famous comment > on Darwin's Origin of Species until he was given a German translation. > Nowadays, he'd probably would have written his comment in bad English, > who knows. I find it difficult to say what is better: embracing > multlingualism in scientific work or embracing English monolingualism, > where all those who do not have English as a mothertongue are also in > disadvantage. Maybe there's a way in the middle. But translations should > always be given into the language in which you write your text (at least > that's what I think now), including titles in the references. We do our > scientific work not only to convince people, but also to give our > colleagues a chance to learn more. By providing a translation, you > provide insights into a work to those who are not able to read it > directly, so one could say it is some kind of a scientific service, > maybe even a duty. > > Best, > > Mattis > > On 26.06.20 05:56, joo at shh.mpg.de wrote: > > Dear all, > > > > In linguistics, it is common to see in-text citation of text written in > > different European languages without giving translation, such as an > > English paper quoting French text without additional translation, > > assuming that the reader is able to read these languages. > > I believe that this practice is problematic and we should not assume the > > readers to be able to read French, German, or other European languages > > (unless the topic of the paper is directly related to one of these > > languages). Why do we assume the reader to read a European language but > > not a non-European language such as Chinese or Turkish? Clearly the > > latter two are also languages used extensively in academic works, why > > should they almost always be given translation when European languages > > like French or German are very often exempted from translation? > > I would like to know your opinion on this. I?m writing this on this > > mailing list because I believe this happens more often in typology than > > in many other subfields. > > > > Regards, > > Ian Joo > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Lingtyp mailing list > > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -- Larry M. Hyman, Professor of Linguistics & Executive Director, France-Berkeley Fund Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/person_detail.php?person=19 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gilles.authier at gmail.com Fri Jun 26 07:35:15 2020 From: gilles.authier at gmail.com (Gilles Authier) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 09:35:15 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir ?tre rejet?, oui. GA On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent < nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> wrote: > A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns > the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access > relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions > asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has > not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? > Nigel > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > The University of Manchester > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wiemerb at uni-mainz.de Fri Jun 26 07:44:11 2020 From: wiemerb at uni-mainz.de (Wiemer, Bjoern) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 07:44:11 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> Je pense que oui? Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)? BW Von: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] Im Auftrag von Gilles Authier Gesendet: Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 An: Nigel Vincent Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Betreff: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir ?tre rejet?, oui. GA On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent > wrote: A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? Nigel Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk Fri Jun 26 08:03:55 2020 From: nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk (Nigel Vincent) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 08:03:55 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> References: , <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> Message-ID: Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites en allemand ou en danois ? ? Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Wiemer, Bjoern Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM To: Gilles Authier ; Nigel Vincent Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Subject: AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Je pense que oui? Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)? BW Von: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] Im Auftrag von Gilles Authier Gesendet: Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 An: Nigel Vincent Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Betreff: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir ?tre rejet?, oui. GA On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent > wrote: A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? Nigel Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Johanna.Mattissen at uni-koeln.de Fri Jun 26 08:58:39 2020 From: Johanna.Mattissen at uni-koeln.de (Johanna Mattissen) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 10:58:39 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Citing text in European languages without translation In-Reply-To: <02c9571d-179a-484d-835d-54362e750f05@Spark> References: <02c9571d-179a-484d-835d-54362e750f05@Spark> Message-ID: <6c9b13c6-a55d-1e84-3ca1-e5a1ae34bfd3@uni-koeln.de> Dear all, by the way, heaps of non-native speakers are forced to write in English and to read English, a language they have probably learnt at school. School English is just one variety of English, sometimes with outlooks on vocabulary of other varieties. Now, I have often come across native speakers using insider's idiomatic expressions and examples from different and lesser known varieties of English in their contributions without explaining what they mean. Paraphrasing would help in these cases as well. Regards, Johanna Mattissen European Legal Linguistics University of Cologne Am 26.06.2020 um 05:56 schrieb joo at shh.mpg.de: > Dear all, > > In linguistics, it is common to see in-text citation of text written > in different European languages without giving translation, such as an > English paper quoting French text without additional translation, > assuming that the reader is able to read these languages. > I believe that this practice is problematic and we should not assume > the readers to be able to read French, German, or other European > languages (unless the topic of the paper is directly related to one of > these languages). Why do we assume the reader to read a European > language but not a non-European language such as Chinese or Turkish? > Clearly the latter two are also languages used extensively in academic > works, why should they almost always be given translation when > European languages like French or German are very often exempted from > translation? > I would like to know your opinion on this. I?m writing this on this > mailing list because I believe this happens more often in typology > than in many other subfields. > > Regards, > Ian Joo > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hartmut at ruc.dk Fri Jun 26 09:22:05 2020 From: hartmut at ruc.dk (Hartmut Haberland) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 09:22:05 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: , <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> Message-ID: <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se r?f?rer ? la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou fran?aise (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in one language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, "More people can make out what it is about in French than actually read it".) To take a concrete example: Acta Linguistica Hafniensia was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. Today, it still calls itself an 'international journal', but now practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least not passively monolingual. Hartmut Haberland Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af Nigel Vincent Sendt: 26. juni 2020 10:04 Til: Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites en allemand ou en danois ... ? Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Wiemer, Bjoern > Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM To: Gilles Authier >; Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Subject: AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Je pense que oui... Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)... BW Von: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] Im Auftrag von Gilles Authier Gesendet: Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 An: Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Betreff: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir ?tre rejet?, oui. GA On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent > wrote: A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? Nigel Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk Fri Jun 26 09:39:11 2020 From: nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk (Nigel Vincent) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 09:39:11 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> References: , <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> , <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> Message-ID: I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special issue of 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on suppletion last year - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - we were able to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be published in French. [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cover/1467968x] The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the Philological Society: Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online Library If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email with instructions to retrieve your username onlinelibrary.wiley.com Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Hartmut Haberland Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM To: Nigel Vincent ; Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Subject: SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se r?f?rer ? la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou fran?aise (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in one language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, ?More people can make out what it is about in French than actually read it?.) To take a concrete example: Acta Linguistica Hafniensia was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. Today, it still calls itself an ?international journal?, but now practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least not passively monolingual. Hartmut Haberland Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af Nigel Vincent Sendt: 26. juni 2020 10:04 Til: Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites en allemand ou en danois ? ? Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Wiemer, Bjoern > Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM To: Gilles Authier >; Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Subject: AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Je pense que oui? Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)? BW Von: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] Im Auftrag von Gilles Authier Gesendet: Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 An: Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Betreff: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir ?tre rejet?, oui. GA On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent > wrote: A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? Nigel Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From haspelmath at shh.mpg.de Fri Jun 26 09:43:09 2020 From: haspelmath at shh.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 11:43:09 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> Message-ID: <213e7bdc-3105-4497-4f0a-38d55b052854@shh.mpg.de> Maybe if you're Danish (like Hartmut and Nigel), or were otherwise raised in some small (and rich) European country, then understanding many of these languages is kind of natural. But somehow asking *all linguists* to be like this seems Eurocentric to me. Korean/Chinese linguists (like Ian Joo) or African linguists will simply not have the chance to encounter so many languages in which other linguists have written relevant work. (In Africa, even big languages like Hausa and Yoruba are rarely used for academic purposes, it seems.) On the other hand, it's also ethnocentric to only cite work by American linguists and somehow assume that there is nothing else of relevance. So what's the solution? I think it must be (i) practical universalism (only use English/Globish), combined with (ii) awareness of the parochialism of English-language traditions. As an example of the latter, consider the term "agreement": As I realized only after reading Cysouw (2011) (https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/17668/1/thli.2011.011.pdf), this term did not exist in linguistics before Bloomfield (1933), and the relevant concepts didn't exist earlier either. Same with "grammatical relation" (due to Chomsky 1965), "focus" (due to Chomsky 1970), and quite a few other terms. Natural as these terms seem to us, they may not be the results of scientific discoveries that we made, but mostly due to the spread of the English language (and the influence of a few linguists working at rich U.S. universities). Universalism and parochialism are in a certain tension, but I think we really need to adopt both at the same time if we want to progress in our scientific understanding of language(s). Martin Am 26.06.20 um 11:22 schrieb Hartmut Haberland: > > Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se r?f?rer > ? la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou fran?aise > (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in /one/ > language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just > two or three languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but > how many do? > > (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, ?More people > can make out what it is about in French than actually read it?.) > > To take a concrete example: /Acta Linguistica Hafniensia /was founded > in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and > English. Today, it still calls itself an ?international journal?, but > now practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. > However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one > paper specifically dealing with English, there are references to > literature in German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So > linguists are at least not passively monolingual. > > Hartmut Haberland > > *Fra:*Lingtyp *P? vegne af > *Nigel Vincent > *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 > *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier > > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les r?f?rences jug?es > indispensables sont ?crites en allemand ou en danois ? ? > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > The University of Manchester > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > *From:*Wiemer, Bjoern > > *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM > *To:* Gilles Authier >; Nigel Vincent > > > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > > *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > Je pense que oui?? Actually, the same applies to articles on (a > language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups > (e.g., Scandinavian)? > > BW > > *Von:*Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *Im > Auftrag von *Gilles Authier > *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 > *An:* Nigel Vincent > > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les r?f?rences jug?es > indispensables sont ?crites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait > devoir ?tre rejet?, oui. > > GA > > On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent > > wrote: > > A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about > concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in > order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper > be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English > on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written > in a language other than English? > > Nigel > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > The University of Manchester > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Martin Haspelmath (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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ilja.serzants at uni-leipzig.de Fri Jun 26 09:57:11 2020 From: ilja.serzants at uni-leipzig.de (=?UTF-8?Q?Ilja_Ser=c5=beant?=) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 11:57:11 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> Message-ID: <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> Dear all, if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive knowledge of other languages is, of course, important and if a paper does not cite an important paper on the topic written in a language other than English that is, of course, a good reason for sending the paper back for revision. However, a very different topic is publishing new papers in languages other than English. I personally have strong reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual understanding even larger by publishing in languages other than English (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even more, perhaps, research English itself should also be different from the native English in that one should try to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, write in short sentences, etc. If you publish in languages other than English then you need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not. I think this issue is difficult to resolve in a fair way. Best, Ilja Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: > I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special issue of > 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on suppletion last year - > https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 > - we were > able to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be > published in French. > > > The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the Philological Society: > Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online Library > > If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email > with instructions to retrieve your username > onlinelibrary.wiley.com > > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > The University of Manchester > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* Hartmut Haberland > *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM > *To:* Nigel Vincent ; Wiemer, Bjoern > ; Gilles Authier > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se r?f?rer > ? la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou fran?aise > (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in /one/ > language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just > two or three languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but > how many do? > > (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, ?More people > can make out what it is about in French than actually read it?.) > > To take a concrete example: /Acta Linguistica Hafniensia /was founded > in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and > English. Today, it still calls itself an ?international journal?, but > now practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. > However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one > paper specifically dealing with English, there are references to > literature in German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So > linguists are at least not passively monolingual. > > Hartmut Haberland > > *Fra:*Lingtyp *P? vegne af > *Nigel Vincent > *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 > *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier > > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les r?f?rences jug?es > indispensables sont ?crites en allemand ou en danois ? ? > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > The University of Manchester > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > *From:*Wiemer, Bjoern > > *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM > *To:* Gilles Authier >; Nigel Vincent > > > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > > *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > Je pense que oui?? Actually, the same applies to articles on (a > language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups > (e.g., Scandinavian)? > > BW > > *Von:*Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *Im > Auftrag von *Gilles Authier > *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 > *An:* Nigel Vincent > > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les r?f?rences jug?es > indispensables sont ?crites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait > devoir ?tre rejet?, oui. > > GA > > On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent > > wrote: > > A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about > concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in > order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper > be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English > on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written > in a language other than English? > > Nigel > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > The University of Manchester > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Ilja A. Ser?ant, postdoc Project "Grammatical Universals" Universit?t Leipzig (IPF 141199) Nikolaistra?e 6-10 04109 Leipzig URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 Room 5.22 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk Fri Jun 26 09:58:39 2020 From: nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk (Nigel Vincent) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 09:58:39 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <213e7bdc-3105-4497-4f0a-38d55b052854@shh.mpg.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk>, <213e7bdc-3105-4497-4f0a-38d55b052854@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: But the term 'agreement' has been around in writings about grammar for centuries. Here is the relevant entry from the OED: 6. Grammar. The fact or condition of agreeing in number, gender, case, person, etc., with another element in the sentence or clause. Cf. concord n.1 6. 1549 W. Lily Shorte Introd. Gram. (new ed.) To Rdr. sig. Aiii Lette hym passe to the Concordes, to knowe the agreement of partes amonge theim selues. 1669 J. Milton Accedence 41 The agreement of words together in Number, Gender, Case, and Person, which is call'd Concord. 1787 H. Blair Lect. Rhetoric (ed. 3) I. viii. 200 When I say, in Latin, ?Formosa fortis viri uxor?, it is only the agreement, in gender, number, and case, of the adjective ?formosa?..with the substantive ?uxor?..that declares the meaning. 1879 J. A. H. Murray in Trans. Philol. Soc. 619 In the English ?the men push the stone,? we have neither formal expression of the destination [of the action] nor formal agreement of verb and subject. 1979 Amer. Speech 1976 51 134 Of the nine problems covered, subject-verb agreement receives a thorough treatment. 2004 H. Barber et al. in M. Carreiras & C. Clifton On-line Study Sentence Comprehension xv. 315 Agreement in gender between nouns and adjectives is mandatory in Spanish. Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Lingtyp on behalf of Martin Haspelmath Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 11:43 AM To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Maybe if you're Danish (like Hartmut and Nigel), or were otherwise raised in some small (and rich) European country, then understanding many of these languages is kind of natural. But somehow asking *all linguists* to be like this seems Eurocentric to me. Korean/Chinese linguists (like Ian Joo) or African linguists will simply not have the chance to encounter so many languages in which other linguists have written relevant work. (In Africa, even big languages like Hausa and Yoruba are rarely used for academic purposes, it seems.) On the other hand, it's also ethnocentric to only cite work by American linguists and somehow assume that there is nothing else of relevance. So what's the solution? I think it must be (i) practical universalism (only use English/Globish), combined with (ii) awareness of the parochialism of English-language traditions. As an example of the latter, consider the term "agreement": As I realized only after reading Cysouw (2011) (https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/17668/1/thli.2011.011.pdf), this term did not exist in linguistics before Bloomfield (1933), and the relevant concepts didn't exist earlier either. Same with "grammatical relation" (due to Chomsky 1965), "focus" (due to Chomsky 1970), and quite a few other terms. Natural as these terms seem to us, they may not be the results of scientific discoveries that we made, but mostly due to the spread of the English language (and the influence of a few linguists working at rich U.S. universities). Universalism and parochialism are in a certain tension, but I think we really need to adopt both at the same time if we want to progress in our scientific understanding of language(s). Martin Am 26.06.20 um 11:22 schrieb Hartmut Haberland: Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se r?f?rer ? la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou fran?aise (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in one language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, ?More people can make out what it is about in French than actually read it?.) To take a concrete example: Acta Linguistica Hafniensia was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. Today, it still calls itself an ?international journal?, but now practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least not passively monolingual. Hartmut Haberland Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af Nigel Vincent Sendt: 26. juni 2020 10:04 Til: Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites en allemand ou en danois ? ? Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Wiemer, Bjoern > Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM To: Gilles Authier >; Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Subject: AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Je pense que oui? Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)? BW Von: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] Im Auftrag von Gilles Authier Gesendet: Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 An: Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Betreff: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir ?tre rejet?, oui. GA On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent > wrote: A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? Nigel Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Martin Haspelmath (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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From oesten at ling.su.se Fri Jun 26 10:02:22 2020 From: oesten at ling.su.se (=?iso-8859-1?Q?=D6sten_Dahl?=) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 10:02:22 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk>, <213e7bdc-3105-4497-4f0a-38d55b052854@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: <97eefc4cf208422180876b4b2727b415@ling.su.se> Yes, and actually Bloomfield used "agreement" as a cover term for "concord", "government", and "cross-reference", but as Cysouw notes in the paper Martin refers to, the term is now normally restricted to what was earlier called "concord". ?sten Fr?n: Lingtyp F?r Nigel Vincent Skickat: den 26 juni 2020 11:59 Till: Martin Haspelmath ; lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org ?mne: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship But the term 'agreement' has been around in writings about grammar for centuries. Here is the relevant entry from the OED: 6. Grammar. The fact or condition of agreeing in number, gender, case, person, etc., with another element in the sentence or clause. Cf. concord n.1 6. 1549 W. Lily Shorte Introd. Gram. (new ed.) To Rdr. sig. Aiii Lette hym passe to the Concordes, to knowe the agreement of partes amonge theim selues. 1669 J. Milton Accedence 41 The agreement of words together in Number, Gender, Case, and Person, which is call'd Concord. 1787 H. Blair Lect. Rhetoric (ed. 3) I. viii. 200 When I say, in Latin, 'Formosa fortis viri uxor', it is only the agreement, in gender, number, and case, of the adjective 'formosa'..with the substantive 'uxor'..that declares the meaning. 1879 J. A. H. Murray in Trans. Philol. Soc. 619 In the English 'the men push the stone,' we have neither formal expression of the destination [of the action] nor formal agreement of verb and subject. 1979 Amer. Speech 1976 51 134 Of the nine problems covered, subject-verb agreement receives a thorough treatment. 2004 H. Barber et al. in M. Carreiras & C. Clifton On-line Study Sentence Comprehension xv. 315 Agreement in gender between nouns and adjectives is mandatory in Spanish. Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Lingtyp > on behalf of Martin Haspelmath > Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 11:43 AM To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Maybe if you're Danish (like Hartmut and Nigel), or were otherwise raised in some small (and rich) European country, then understanding many of these languages is kind of natural. But somehow asking *all linguists* to be like this seems Eurocentric to me. Korean/Chinese linguists (like Ian Joo) or African linguists will simply not have the chance to encounter so many languages in which other linguists have written relevant work. (In Africa, even big languages like Hausa and Yoruba are rarely used for academic purposes, it seems.) On the other hand, it's also ethnocentric to only cite work by American linguists and somehow assume that there is nothing else of relevance. So what's the solution? I think it must be (i) practical universalism (only use English/Globish), combined with (ii) awareness of the parochialism of English-language traditions. As an example of the latter, consider the term "agreement": As I realized only after reading Cysouw (2011) (https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/17668/1/thli.2011.011.pdf), this term did not exist in linguistics before Bloomfield (1933), and the relevant concepts didn't exist earlier either. Same with "grammatical relation" (due to Chomsky 1965), "focus" (due to Chomsky 1970), and quite a few other terms. Natural as these terms seem to us, they may not be the results of scientific discoveries that we made, but mostly due to the spread of the English language (and the influence of a few linguists working at rich U.S. universities). Universalism and parochialism are in a certain tension, but I think we really need to adopt both at the same time if we want to progress in our scientific understanding of language(s). Martin Am 26.06.20 um 11:22 schrieb Hartmut Haberland: Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se r?f?rer ? la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou fran?aise (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in one language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, "More people can make out what it is about in French than actually read it".) To take a concrete example: Acta Linguistica Hafniensia was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. Today, it still calls itself an 'international journal', but now practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least not passively monolingual. Hartmut Haberland Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af Nigel Vincent Sendt: 26. juni 2020 10:04 Til: Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites en allemand ou en danois ... ? Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Wiemer, Bjoern > Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM To: Gilles Authier >; Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Subject: AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Je pense que oui... Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)... BW Von: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] Im Auftrag von Gilles Authier Gesendet: Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 An: Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Betreff: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir ?tre rejet?, oui. GA On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent > wrote: A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? Nigel Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Martin Haspelmath (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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From haspelmath at shh.mpg.de Fri Jun 26 10:07:59 2020 From: haspelmath at shh.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 12:07:59 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <213e7bdc-3105-4497-4f0a-38d55b052854@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: Yes, Nigel, but as you know: In the 16th-17th century, English was irrelevant because Latin was the language of scholarship in Europe. In the 18th century, English was irrelevant because French was the language of scholarship. In the 19th century, English was irrelevant because German was the primary language of linguistics (it was Karl Ferdinand Becker, for example, who made the distinction between "subject" and "object" popular). So looking at the OED gives a wrong impression ? it appears to project the current supremacy of English back into the past. (Apparently, the established Latin term "concord" needed to be explained to English readers.) That's one of the reasons why we should call out common language "Globish". There's no real continuity with "English". Martin Am 26.06.20 um 11:58 schrieb Nigel Vincent: > But the term 'agreement' has been around in writings about grammar for > centuries. Here is the relevant entry from the OED: > > > *6.* /Grammar/. The fact or condition of agreeing in number, > gender, case, person, etc., with another element in the sentence > or clause. Cf. concord n.^1 6 > . > > 1549 W. Lily /Shorte Introd. Gram./ (new ed.) To Rdr. sig. Aiii Lette > hym passe to the Concordes, to knowe the agreement of partes amonge > theim selues. > 1669 J. Milton /Accedence/ 41?? The agreement of words together in > Number, Gender, Case, and Person, which is call'd Concord. > 1787 H. Blair /Lect. Rhetoric/ (ed. 3) I. viii. 200?? When I say, in > Latin, ?Formosa fortis viri uxor?, it is only the agreement, in > gender, number, and case, of the adjective ?formosa?..with the > substantive ?uxor?..that declares the meaning. > 1879 J. A. H. Murray in /Trans. Philol. Soc./ 619?? In the English > ?the men push the stone,? we have neither formal expression of the > destination [of the action] nor formal agreement of verb and subject. > 1979 /Amer. Speech 1976/ *51* 134?? Of the nine problems covered, > subject-verb agreement receives a thorough treatment. > 2004 H. Barber et al. in M. Carreiras & C. Clifton /On-line Study > Sentence Comprehension/ xv. 315 Agreement in gender between nouns and > adjectives is mandatory in Spanish. > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > The University of Manchester > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* Lingtyp on behalf > of Martin Haspelmath > *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:43 AM > *To:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > Maybe if you're Danish (like Hartmut and Nigel), or were otherwise > raised in some small (and rich) European country, then understanding > many of these languages is kind of natural. > > But somehow asking *all linguists* to be like this seems Eurocentric > to me. Korean/Chinese linguists (like Ian Joo) or African linguists > will simply not have the chance to encounter so many languages in > which other linguists have written relevant work. (In Africa, even big > languages like Hausa and Yoruba are rarely used for academic purposes, > it seems.) > > On the other hand, it's also ethnocentric to only cite work by > American linguists and somehow assume that there is nothing else of > relevance. > > So what's the solution? I think it must be (i) practical universalism > (only use English/Globish), combined with (ii) awareness of the > parochialism of English-language traditions. > > As an example of the latter, consider the term "agreement": As I > realized only after reading Cysouw (2011) > (https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/17668/1/thli.2011.011.pdf), this term > did not exist in linguistics before Bloomfield (1933), and the > relevant concepts didn't exist earlier either. Same with "grammatical > relation" (due to Chomsky 1965), "focus" (due to Chomsky 1970), and > quite a few other terms. Natural as these terms seem to us, they may > not be the results of scientific discoveries that we made, but mostly > due to the spread of the English language (and the influence of a few > linguists working at rich U.S. universities). > > Universalism and parochialism are in a certain tension, but I think we > really need to adopt both at the same time if we want to progress in > our scientific understanding of language(s). > > Martin > > Am 26.06.20 um 11:22 schrieb Hartmut Haberland: >> >> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se r?f?rer >> ? la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou fran?aise >> (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in /one/ >> language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just >> two or three languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but >> how many do? >> >> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, ?More people >> can make out what it is about in French than actually read it?.) >> >> To take a concrete example: /Acta Linguistica Hafniensia /was founded >> in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and >> English. Today, it still calls itself an ?international journal?, but >> now practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. >> However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one >> paper specifically dealing with English, there are references to >> literature in German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So >> linguists are at least not passively monolingual. >> >> Hartmut Haberland >> >> *Fra:*Lingtyp >> *P? vegne af >> *Nigel Vincent >> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 >> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern >> ; Gilles Authier >> >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les r?f?rences jug?es >> indispensables sont ?crites en allemand ou en danois ? ? >> >> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> The University of Manchester >> >> Linguistics & English Language >> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> >> The University of Manchester >> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> >> *From:*Wiemer, Bjoern > > >> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM >> *To:* Gilles Authier > >; Nigel Vincent >> > >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> > > >> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> Je pense que oui? Actually, the same applies to articles on (a >> language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups >> (e.g., Scandinavian)? >> >> BW >> >> *Von:*Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *Im >> Auftrag von *Gilles Authier >> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 >> *An:* Nigel Vincent > > >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les r?f?rences jug?es >> indispensables sont ?crites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait >> devoir ?tre rejet?, oui. >> >> GA >> >> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent >> > > wrote: >> >> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about >> concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in >> order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a >> paper be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in >> English on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work >> written in a language other than English? >> >> Nigel >> >> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> The University of Manchester >> >> Linguistics & English Language >> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> >> The University of Manchester >> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > -- > Martin Haspelmath (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 -- Martin Haspelmath (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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bernhard.hurch at uni-graz.at Fri Jun 26 10:57:41 2020 From: bernhard.hurch at uni-graz.at (Hurch, Bernhard (bernhard.hurch@uni-graz.at)) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 10:57:41 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> Message-ID: What is raised here is, to my advice a rather superficial question of style and of appearance. There is a more general point about this question: those colleagues who are not able to read and appropriately understand a quotation in let's say French or German or Spanish or Russian will not be able to receive and understand scientific essays, linguistic sources and materials in these languages. They will also be unable to understand and critically evaluate a quotation if they can't approach the source of the quotation. In other words: if your abilities are limited to read and understand only English you will miss about 90% of the relevant literature and sources etc. on e.g. Latin-American indigenous languages. 90% of the relevant literature on Caucasian languages etc. Do we want the linguistic discourse be of this limited type? Unfortunately we are speeding up on our way in this annoying direction. Instead of a further restriction we should think about appropriate ways to re-open the scientific discourse strategies. PS: By the way, Schuchardt 100 years ago published in 12 different languages and coresponded in 22 different languages (http://schuchardt.uni-graz.at). Why should internationalization of scientific discourse only mean ?anglification?. I do agree, it is a question of power (Make America great again). But still it is unpleasant and not really forward-looking. Bernhard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pa2 at soas.ac.uk Fri Jun 26 11:21:43 2020 From: pa2 at soas.ac.uk (Peter Austin) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 12:21:43 +0100 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> Message-ID: With all due respect, I find it incredible that someone could write: "publishing new papers in languages other than English. I personally have strong reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual understanding even larger by publishing in languages other than English (unless there is absolutely no escape). ... If you publish in languages other than English then you need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not". There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics and related fields published annually in languages like Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which never pierces the consciousness of English-only researchers because of attitudes like having language hierarchies composed entirely of European languages. Sheesh. Peter On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Ser?ant wrote: > Dear all, > > > if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive knowledge of > other languages is, of course, important and if a paper does not cite an > important paper on the topic written in a language other than English that > is, of course, a good reason for sending the paper back for revision. > > > However, a very different topic is publishing new papers in languages > other than English. I personally have strong reservations here. Linguistics > is such a complicated matter and it is often so difficult to exactly > understand others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual > understanding even larger by publishing in languages other than English > (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even more, perhaps, research > English itself should also be different from the native English in that one > should try to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, write > in short sentences, etc. > > > If you publish in languages other than English then you need a sort of > hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable (German, French, > Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not. I think this issue is difficult > to resolve in a fair way. > > > Best, > > Ilja > > > Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: > > I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special issue of > 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on suppletion last year - > https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - we were able to > persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be published in > French. > > The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the Philological Society: Vol > 117, No 3 - Wiley Online Library > > If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email with > instructions to retrieve your username > onlinelibrary.wiley.com > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > The University of Manchester > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > ------------------------------ > *From:* Hartmut Haberland > *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM > *To:* Nigel Vincent > ; Wiemer, Bjoern > ; Gilles Authier > > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se r?f?rer ? la > tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou fran?aise (Roussel, > Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in *one* language is myopic. > Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three languages to > keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? > > (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, ?More people can > make out what it is about in French than actually read it?.) > > To take a concrete example: *Acta Linguistica Hafniensia *was founded in > 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. > Today, it still calls itself an ?international journal?, but now > practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, > if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper > specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in > German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least > not passively monolingual. > > Hartmut Haberland > > *Fra:* Lingtyp > *P? vegne af *Nigel Vincent > *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 > *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern ; > Gilles Authier > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les r?f?rences jug?es > indispensables sont ?crites en allemand ou en danois ? ? > > > > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > ------------------------------ > > *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern > *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM > *To:* Gilles Authier ; Nigel Vincent < > nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > Je pense que oui? Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language > from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., > Scandinavian)? > > BW > > > > *Von:* Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org > ] *Im Auftrag von *Gilles > Authier > *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 > *An:* Nigel Vincent > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les r?f?rences jug?es > indispensables sont ?crites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir > ?tre rejet?, oui. > > GA > > > > On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent < > nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> wrote: > > A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns > the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access > relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions > asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has > not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? > > Nigel > > > > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > -- > Ilja A. Ser?ant, postdoc > Project "Grammatical Universals" > Universit?t Leipzig (IPF 141199) > Nikolaistra?e 6-10 > 04109 Leipzig > > URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ > > Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 > Room 5.22 > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -- Prof Peter K. Austin Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS Visiting Researcher, Oxford University Foundation Editor, EL Publishing Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society Department of Linguistics, SOAS Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square London WC1H 0XG United Kingdom -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hartmut at ruc.dk Fri Jun 26 11:26:30 2020 From: hartmut at ruc.dk (Hartmut Haberland) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 11:26:30 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> Message-ID: <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813CA0EB@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> I also want to add that publishing in several languages is an extremely useful intellectual exercise and leads to self-discipline and self-awareness when you realize that what you have written in one language simply does not work in one of the others ? a good reason to rethink what you have written. Hartmut Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af Peter Austin Sendt: 26. juni 2020 13:22 Til: Ilja Ser?ant Cc: Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship With all due respect, I find it incredible that someone could write: "publishing new papers in languages other than English. I personally have strong reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual understanding even larger by publishing in languages other than English (unless there is absolutely no escape). ... If you publish in languages other than English then you need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not". There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics and related fields published annually in languages like Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which never pierces the consciousness of English-only researchers because of attitudes like having language hierarchies composed entirely of European languages. Sheesh. Peter On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Ser?ant > wrote: Dear all, if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive knowledge of other languages is, of course, important and if a paper does not cite an important paper on the topic written in a language other than English that is, of course, a good reason for sending the paper back for revision. However, a very different topic is publishing new papers in languages other than English. I personally have strong reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual understanding even larger by publishing in languages other than English (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even more, perhaps, research English itself should also be different from the native English in that one should try to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, write in short sentences, etc. If you publish in languages other than English then you need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not. I think this issue is difficult to resolve in a fair way. Best, Ilja Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special issue of 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on suppletion last year - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - we were able to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be published in French. [Billede fjernet af afsender.] The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the Philological Society: Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online Library If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email with instructions to retrieve your username onlinelibrary.wiley.com Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Hartmut Haberland Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM To: Nigel Vincent ; Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Subject: SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se r?f?rer ? la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou fran?aise (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in one language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, ?More people can make out what it is about in French than actually read it?.) To take a concrete example: Acta Linguistica Hafniensia was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. Today, it still calls itself an ?international journal?, but now practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least not passively monolingual. Hartmut Haberland Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af Nigel Vincent Sendt: 26. juni 2020 10:04 Til: Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites en allemand ou en danois ? ? Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Wiemer, Bjoern > Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM To: Gilles Authier >; Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Subject: AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Je pense que oui? Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)? BW Von: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] Im Auftrag von Gilles Authier Gesendet: Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 An: Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Betreff: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir ?tre rejet?, oui. GA On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent > wrote: A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? Nigel Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Ilja A. Ser?ant, postdoc Project "Grammatical Universals" Universit?t Leipzig (IPF 141199) Nikolaistra?e 6-10 04109 Leipzig URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 Room 5.22 _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Prof Peter K. Austin Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS Visiting Researcher, Oxford University Foundation Editor, EL Publishing Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society Department of Linguistics, SOAS Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square London WC1H 0XG United Kingdom -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 804 bytes Desc: image001.jpg URL: From pa2 at soas.ac.uk Fri Jun 26 11:29:13 2020 From: pa2 at soas.ac.uk (Peter Austin) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 12:29:13 +0100 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <213e7bdc-3105-4497-4f0a-38d55b052854@shh.mpg.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <213e7bdc-3105-4497-4f0a-38d55b052854@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: Can we please be careful with making statements like "African linguists will simply not have the chance to encounter so many languages in which other linguists have written relevant work. (In Africa, even big languages like Hausa and Yoruba are rarely used for academic purposes, it seems.)". Africa is a large and diverse continent and there are many colleagues there who are familiar with relevant literature in English, French, Arabic, Portuguese since these are the languages of higher education and research in their countries. Peter On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:43, Martin Haspelmath wrote: > Maybe if you're Danish (like Hartmut and Nigel), or were otherwise raised > in some small (and rich) European country, then understanding many of these > languages is kind of natural. > > But somehow asking *all linguists* to be like this seems Eurocentric to > me. Korean/Chinese linguists (like Ian Joo) or African linguists will > simply not have the chance to encounter so many languages in which other > linguists have written relevant work. (In Africa, even big languages like > Hausa and Yoruba are rarely used for academic purposes, it seems.) > > On the other hand, it's also ethnocentric to only cite work by American > linguists and somehow assume that there is nothing else of relevance. > > So what's the solution? I think it must be (i) practical universalism > (only use English/Globish), combined with (ii) awareness of the > parochialism of English-language traditions. > > As an example of the latter, consider the term "agreement": As I realized > only after reading Cysouw (2011) ( > https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/17668/1/thli.2011.011.pdf), this term did > not exist in linguistics before Bloomfield (1933), and the relevant > concepts didn't exist earlier either. Same with "grammatical relation" (due > to Chomsky 1965), "focus" (due to Chomsky 1970), and quite a few other > terms. Natural as these terms seem to us, they may not be the results of > scientific discoveries that we made, but mostly due to the spread of the > English language (and the influence of a few linguists working at rich U.S. > universities). > > Universalism and parochialism are in a certain tension, but I think we > really need to adopt both at the same time if we want to progress in our > scientific understanding of language(s). > > Martin > > Am 26.06.20 um 11:22 schrieb Hartmut Haberland: > > Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se r?f?rer ? la > tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou fran?aise (Roussel, > Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in *one* language is myopic. > Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three languages to > keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? > > (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, ?More people can > make out what it is about in French than actually read it?.) > > To take a concrete example: *Acta Linguistica Hafniensia *was founded in > 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. > Today, it still calls itself an ?international journal?, but now > practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, > if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper > specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in > German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least > not passively monolingual. > > Hartmut Haberland > > *Fra:* Lingtyp > *P? vegne af *Nigel Vincent > *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 > *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern ; > Gilles Authier > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les r?f?rences jug?es > indispensables sont ?crites en allemand ou en danois ? ? > > > > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > ------------------------------ > > *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern > *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM > *To:* Gilles Authier ; Nigel Vincent < > nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > Je pense que oui? Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language > from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., > Scandinavian)? > > BW > > > > *Von:* Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org > ] *Im Auftrag von *Gilles > Authier > *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 > *An:* Nigel Vincent > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les r?f?rences jug?es > indispensables sont ?crites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir > ?tre rejet?, oui. > > GA > > > > On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent < > nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> wrote: > > A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns > the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access > relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions > asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has > not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? > > Nigel > > > > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > -- > Martin Haspelmath (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 > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -- Prof Peter K. Austin Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS Visiting Researcher, Oxford University Foundation Editor, EL Publishing Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society Department of Linguistics, SOAS Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square London WC1H 0XG United Kingdom -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk Fri Jun 26 11:31:47 2020 From: nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk (Nigel Vincent) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 11:31:47 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <213e7bdc-3105-4497-4f0a-38d55b052854@shh.mpg.de> , Message-ID: Let's not oversimplify things, Martin. I think the right answer is not to say 'X is the language of scholarship in century Y'. There certainly was a period when Latin was dominant but already in the early 17th century other languages were being used - e.g. Galileo's 'Dialogo' in 1632 - and until relatively recently there were several languages commonly used before the current dominance of English. The history is well discussed in Michael Gordin's Scientific Babel: The Language of Science from the Fall of Latin to the Rise of English Chicago: Chicago University Press (2015). What the OED does is document the various uses but it is not projecting modern usage back. And it is interesting that it cites a use of 'agreement' as equivalent to 'concord' from the same grammar by Lily that Cysouw cites. Also since there is at least one use of 'agreement' in a specialist journal (Murray in Transactions of the Philological Society') in 1879, I would conclude that Cysouw is just plain wrong in attributing the first modern use to Bloomfield. On the more general issue, I agree with Bernhard and Peter. It is ironic that a couple of years ago I was asked if I would mind giving my invited plenary at a specialist conference on Italian linguistics in Italian because most of the native speakers had chosen to give their papers in English! Nigel Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Martin Haspelmath Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 12:07 PM To: Nigel Vincent ; lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Yes, Nigel, but as you know: In the 16th-17th century, English was irrelevant because Latin was the language of scholarship in Europe. In the 18th century, English was irrelevant because French was the language of scholarship. In the 19th century, English was irrelevant because German was the primary language of linguistics (it was Karl Ferdinand Becker, for example, who made the distinction between "subject" and "object" popular). So looking at the OED gives a wrong impression ? it appears to project the current supremacy of English back into the past. (Apparently, the established Latin term "concord" needed to be explained to English readers.) That's one of the reasons why we should call out common language "Globish". There's no real continuity with "English". Martin Am 26.06.20 um 11:58 schrieb Nigel Vincent: But the term 'agreement' has been around in writings about grammar for centuries. Here is the relevant entry from the OED: 6. Grammar. The fact or condition of agreeing in number, gender, case, person, etc., with another element in the sentence or clause. Cf. concord n.1 6. 1549 W. Lily Shorte Introd. Gram. (new ed.) To Rdr. sig. Aiii Lette hym passe to the Concordes, to knowe the agreement of partes amonge theim selues. 1669 J. Milton Accedence 41 The agreement of words together in Number, Gender, Case, and Person, which is call'd Concord. 1787 H. Blair Lect. Rhetoric (ed. 3) I. viii. 200 When I say, in Latin, ?Formosa fortis viri uxor?, it is only the agreement, in gender, number, and case, of the adjective ?formosa?..with the substantive ?uxor?..that declares the meaning. 1879 J. A. H. Murray in Trans. Philol. Soc. 619 In the English ?the men push the stone,? we have neither formal expression of the destination [of the action] nor formal agreement of verb and subject. 1979 Amer. Speech 1976 51 134 Of the nine problems covered, subject-verb agreement receives a thorough treatment. 2004 H. Barber et al. in M. Carreiras & C. Clifton On-line Study Sentence Comprehension xv. 315 Agreement in gender between nouns and adjectives is mandatory in Spanish. Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Lingtyp on behalf of Martin Haspelmath Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 11:43 AM To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Maybe if you're Danish (like Hartmut and Nigel), or were otherwise raised in some small (and rich) European country, then understanding many of these languages is kind of natural. But somehow asking *all linguists* to be like this seems Eurocentric to me. Korean/Chinese linguists (like Ian Joo) or African linguists will simply not have the chance to encounter so many languages in which other linguists have written relevant work. (In Africa, even big languages like Hausa and Yoruba are rarely used for academic purposes, it seems.) On the other hand, it's also ethnocentric to only cite work by American linguists and somehow assume that there is nothing else of relevance. So what's the solution? I think it must be (i) practical universalism (only use English/Globish), combined with (ii) awareness of the parochialism of English-language traditions. As an example of the latter, consider the term "agreement": As I realized only after reading Cysouw (2011) (https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/17668/1/thli.2011.011.pdf), this term did not exist in linguistics before Bloomfield (1933), and the relevant concepts didn't exist earlier either. Same with "grammatical relation" (due to Chomsky 1965), "focus" (due to Chomsky 1970), and quite a few other terms. Natural as these terms seem to us, they may not be the results of scientific discoveries that we made, but mostly due to the spread of the English language (and the influence of a few linguists working at rich U.S. universities). Universalism and parochialism are in a certain tension, but I think we really need to adopt both at the same time if we want to progress in our scientific understanding of language(s). Martin Am 26.06.20 um 11:22 schrieb Hartmut Haberland: Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se r?f?rer ? la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou fran?aise (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in one language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, ?More people can make out what it is about in French than actually read it?.) To take a concrete example: Acta Linguistica Hafniensia was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. Today, it still calls itself an ?international journal?, but now practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least not passively monolingual. Hartmut Haberland Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af Nigel Vincent Sendt: 26. juni 2020 10:04 Til: Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites en allemand ou en danois ? ? Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html ________________________________ From: Wiemer, Bjoern > Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM To: Gilles Authier >; Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Subject: AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Je pense que oui? Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)? BW Von: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] Im Auftrag von Gilles Authier Gesendet: Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 An: Nigel Vincent > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Betreff: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir ?tre rejet?, oui. GA On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent > wrote: A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? Nigel Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics The University of Manchester Linguistics & English Language School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Martin Haspelmath (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 -- Martin Haspelmath (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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From harald.hammarstrom at gmail.com Fri Jun 26 11:32:28 2020 From: harald.hammarstrom at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?Harald_Hammarstr=C3=B6m?=) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 13:32:28 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <213e7bdc-3105-4497-4f0a-38d55b052854@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: I did a quick-and-dirty search over older (pre-1933) grammars (written in English) and there are many grammars from at least the 1850s and on which do use the term and concept agreement, e.g. * O'Donovan, J. (1845) A Grammar of the Irish Language. Dublin: Hodges and Smith. "Of the Agreement of the Article with its Substantive, and of its Collocation" "Of the Collocation and Agreement of Pronouns with their Antecedents" "Of the Agreement of a Verb with its Nominative Case" ... * Davies, J. (1851) A Tahitian and English dictionary, with introductory remarks on the Polynesian language, and a short grammar of the Tahitian dialect. Tahiti: London Missionary Society. "The rules of syntax are usually comprised under those of concord or agreement of words, and those of government or dependence of words; many of the English rules of concord and government will not apply to the Tahitian dialect, but the following observations may be of some use." "There is nothing inherent in the verb, (a few of the reduplicates only excepted) to signify persons numbers non gender, and consequently the rules about their concord or agreement with the verb have no place in Tahitian." ... * Buckner, H. F. & G. Herrod. (1860) Grammar of the Maskwke, or Creek Language. Marion, Alabama: Domestic and Indian Mission Board of the Southern Baptists Convention. "The part of Grammar called Syntax has reference to the agreement and government of words; and of their proper arrangement in sentences. Agreement is nothing more than the obedience which one word pays to the law of the governing word ; as, in English, a verb agrees with its nominal live case, because the nominative case governs the verb. Government in language consists in the power which one Word has over another, according to tho laws which are founded upon tho established use of the best speakers or writers of the language." Pada tanggal Jum, 26 Jun 2020 pukul 12.07 Martin Haspelmath < haspelmath at shh.mpg.de> menulis: > Yes, Nigel, but as you know: In the 16th-17th century, English was > irrelevant because Latin was the language of scholarship in Europe. > > In the 18th century, English was irrelevant because French was the > language of scholarship. > > In the 19th century, English was irrelevant because German was the primary > language of linguistics (it was Karl Ferdinand Becker, for example, who > made the distinction between "subject" and "object" popular). > > So looking at the OED gives a wrong impression ? it appears to project the > current supremacy of English back into the past. (Apparently, the > established Latin term "concord" needed to be explained to English readers.) > > That's one of the reasons why we should call out common language > "Globish". There's no real continuity with "English". > > Martin > > Am 26.06.20 um 11:58 schrieb Nigel Vincent: > > But the term 'agreement' has been around in writings about grammar for > centuries. Here is the relevant entry from the OED: > > *6.* *Grammar*. The fact or condition of agreeing in number, gender, > case, person, etc., with another element in the sentence or clause. Cf. > concord n.1 6 . > 1549 W. Lily *Shorte Introd. Gram.* (new ed.) To Rdr. sig. Aiii Lette > hym passe to the Concordes, to knowe the agreement of partes amonge theim > selues. > 1669 J. Milton *Accedence* 41 The agreement of words together in > Number, Gender, Case, and Person, which is call'd Concord. > 1787 H. Blair *Lect. Rhetoric* (ed. 3) I. viii. 200 When I say, in > Latin, ?Formosa fortis viri uxor?, it is only the agreement, in gender, > number, and case, of the adjective ?formosa?..with the substantive > ?uxor?..that declares the meaning. > 1879 J. A. H. Murray in *Trans. Philol. Soc.* 619 In the English ?the > men push the stone,? we have neither formal expression of the destination > [of the action] nor formal agreement of verb and subject. > 1979 *Amer. Speech 1976* * 51* 134 Of the nine problems covered, > subject-verb agreement receives a thorough treatment. > 2004 H. Barber et al. in M. Carreiras & C. Clifton *On-line Study > Sentence Comprehension* xv. 315 Agreement in gender between nouns and > adjectives is mandatory in Spanish. > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > The University of Manchester > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > ------------------------------ > *From:* Lingtyp > on behalf of Martin > Haspelmath > *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:43 AM > *To:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > Maybe if you're Danish (like Hartmut and Nigel), or were otherwise raised > in some small (and rich) European country, then understanding many of these > languages is kind of natural. > > But somehow asking *all linguists* to be like this seems Eurocentric to > me. Korean/Chinese linguists (like Ian Joo) or African linguists will > simply not have the chance to encounter so many languages in which other > linguists have written relevant work. (In Africa, even big languages like > Hausa and Yoruba are rarely used for academic purposes, it seems.) > > On the other hand, it's also ethnocentric to only cite work by American > linguists and somehow assume that there is nothing else of relevance. > > So what's the solution? I think it must be (i) practical universalism > (only use English/Globish), combined with (ii) awareness of the > parochialism of English-language traditions. > > As an example of the latter, consider the term "agreement": As I realized > only after reading Cysouw (2011) ( > https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/17668/1/thli.2011.011.pdf), this term did > not exist in linguistics before Bloomfield (1933), and the relevant > concepts didn't exist earlier either. Same with "grammatical relation" (due > to Chomsky 1965), "focus" (due to Chomsky 1970), and quite a few other > terms. Natural as these terms seem to us, they may not be the results of > scientific discoveries that we made, but mostly due to the spread of the > English language (and the influence of a few linguists working at rich U.S. > universities). > > Universalism and parochialism are in a certain tension, but I think we > really need to adopt both at the same time if we want to progress in our > scientific understanding of language(s). > > Martin > > Am 26.06.20 um 11:22 schrieb Hartmut Haberland: > > Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se r?f?rer ? la > tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou fran?aise (Roussel, > Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in *one* language is myopic. > Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three languages to > keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? > > (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, ?More people can > make out what it is about in French than actually read it?.) > > To take a concrete example: *Acta Linguistica Hafniensia *was founded in > 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. > Today, it still calls itself an ?international journal?, but now > practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, > if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper > specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in > German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least > not passively monolingual. > > Hartmut Haberland > > *Fra:* Lingtyp > *P? vegne af *Nigel Vincent > *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 > *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern ; > Gilles Authier > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les r?f?rences jug?es > indispensables sont ?crites en allemand ou en danois ? ? > > > > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > ------------------------------ > > *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern > *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM > *To:* Gilles Authier ; Nigel Vincent < > nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > Je pense que oui? Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language > from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., > Scandinavian)? > > BW > > > > *Von:* Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org > ] *Im Auftrag von *Gilles > Authier > *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 > *An:* Nigel Vincent > *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les r?f?rences jug?es > indispensables sont ?crites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir > ?tre rejet?, oui. > > GA > > > > On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent < > nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> wrote: > > A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns > the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access > relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions > asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has > not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? > > Nigel > > > > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > The University of Manchester > > > > Linguistics & English Language > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > -- > Martin Haspelmath (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 > > > -- > Martin Haspelmath (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 > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From haspelmath at shh.mpg.de Fri Jun 26 11:35:02 2020 From: haspelmath at shh.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 13:35:02 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> Message-ID: <909f67ec-435f-5e8b-8e1a-a6c5ea9920c3@shh.mpg.de> Peter, are there actually linguistics papers published in Arabic? Is Portuguese still being used to write about African languages? (It seems to me that only English and French are relevant for African linguistics these days.) But to the larger point: Some Europeans may be proud of the various other (European) languages they can read, but de facto, young linguists are not competitive if they publish in other languages. And certainly, papers in general linguistics usually have zero impact if they are not written in English. Sad as it may be, this is the reality of the 21st century. We may deplore it, but we will hardly be able to change it. (What we *may* be able to do is change the name we use for our common language: Globish.) Martin P.S. Thanks to Nigel and Harald for the additional info on "agreement" ? really useful! Am 26.06.20 um 13:21 schrieb Peter Austin: > With all due respect, I find it incredible that someone could write: > "publishing new papers in languages other than English. I personally > have strong reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated > matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand others. I > think one should not make the problem of mutual understanding even > larger by publishing in languages other than English (unless there is > absolutely no escape). ... If you publish in languages other than > English then you need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are > considered publishable (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and > which are not". > > There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics and > related fields published annually in languages like Chinese, Japanese > and Arabic, much of which never pierces the consciousness of > English-only researchers because of attitudes like having language > hierarchies composed entirely of European?languages. Sheesh. > > Peter > > > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Ser?ant > > > wrote: > > Dear all, > > > if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive > knowledge of other languages is, of course, important and if a > paper does not cite an important paper on the topic written in a > language other than English that is, of course, a good reason for > sending the paper back for revision. > > > However, a very different topic is publishing new papers in > languages other than English. I personally have strong > reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated matter and it > is often so difficult to exactly understand others. I think one > should not make the problem of mutual understanding even larger by > publishing in languages other than English (unless there is > absolutely no escape). Even more, perhaps, research English itself > should also be different from the native English in that one > should try to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic > expressions, write in short sentences, etc. > > > If you publish in languages other than English then you need a > sort of hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable > (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not. I think > this issue is difficult to resolve in a fair way. > > > Best, > > Ilja > > > Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: >> I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special issue >> of 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on suppletion last >> year - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 >> - we >> were able to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles >> to be published in French. >> >> >> The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the Philological >> Society: Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online Library >> >> If the address matches an existing account you will receive an >> email with instructions to retrieve your username >> onlinelibrary.wiley.com >> >> >> >> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> The University of Manchester >> >> Linguistics & English Language >> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> The University of Manchester >> >> >> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> *From:* Hartmut Haberland >> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM >> *To:* Nigel Vincent >> ; Wiemer, Bjoern >> ; Gilles >> Authier >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> >> >> *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se >> r?f?rer ? la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou >> fran?aise (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses >> in /one/ language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read >> more than just two or three languages to keep up with the >> relevant literature, but how many do? >> >> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, ?More >> people can make out what it is about in French than actually read >> it?.) >> >> To take a concrete example: /Acta Linguistica Hafniensia /was >> founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, >> French and English. Today, it still calls itself an >> ?international journal?, but now practically all papers are in >> English, with very few exceptions. However, if you take a random >> issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper specifically >> dealing with English, there are references to literature in >> German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are >> at least not passively monolingual. >> >> Hartmut Haberland >> >> *Fra:*Lingtyp >> *P? vegne af >> *Nigel Vincent >> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 >> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern >> ; Gilles Authier >> >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les r?f?rences >> jug?es indispensables sont ?crites en allemand ou en danois ? ? >> >> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> The University of Manchester >> >> Linguistics & English Language >> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> >> The University of Manchester >> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> >> *From:*Wiemer, Bjoern > > >> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM >> *To:* Gilles Authier > >; Nigel Vincent >> > > >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> > > >> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> Je pense que oui?? Actually, the same applies to articles on (a >> language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups >> (e.g., Scandinavian)? >> >> BW >> >> *Von:*Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] >> *Im Auftrag von *Gilles Authier >> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 >> *An:* Nigel Vincent > > >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les r?f?rences >> jug?es indispensables sont ?crites dans une langue romane, il me >> semblerait devoir ?tre rejet?, oui. >> >> GA >> >> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent >> > > wrote: >> >> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought >> about concerns the languages a researcher should be able to >> read in order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for >> example, a paper be rejected or revisions asked for if >> someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has >> not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? >> >> Nigel >> >> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> The University of Manchester >> >> Linguistics & English Language >> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> >> The University of Manchester >> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > -- > Ilja A. Ser?ant, postdoc > Project "Grammatical Universals" > Universit?t Leipzig (IPF 141199) > Nikolaistra?e 6-10 > 04109 Leipzig > > URL:http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ > > Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 > Room 5.22 > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > Prof Peter K. Austin > Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS > Visiting Researcher, Oxford University > Foundation Editor, EL Publishing > Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society > > Department of Linguistics, SOAS > Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square > London WC1H 0XG > United Kingdom > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Martin Haspelmath (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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil at shh.mpg.de Fri Jun 26 11:46:39 2020 From: gil at shh.mpg.de (David Gil) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 14:46:39 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <909f67ec-435f-5e8b-8e1a-a6c5ea9920c3@shh.mpg.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <909f67ec-435f-5e8b-8e1a-a6c5ea9920c3@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: Just a historical anecdote. back in the late '70, R.B. Lees was instrumental in setting up a generatively-oriented linguistics department at Tel Aviv University.? Although he spoke fluent Hebrew, he insisted that he and his colleagues teach only in English (contrary to all other subjects at the same university that were being taught in Hebrew).? When I (then a beginning TA) took him to task on this, his response was that modern linguistics could not be taught in Hebrew because there were no equivalents for crucial methodological turns of phrase such as "account for".? To which my response was Well then coin a new expression, and if that doesn't work then maybe there is something incoherent in an expression that resists translation into another language.? I lost the argument of course. David -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 From christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de Fri Jun 26 11:50:39 2020 From: christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de (Christian Lehmann) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 13:50:39 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <909f67ec-435f-5e8b-8e1a-a6c5ea9920c3@shh.mpg.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <909f67ec-435f-5e8b-8e1a-a6c5ea9920c3@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: <07f42ebe-6887-61cd-d546-74d15a2f09eb@Uni-Erfurt.De> Dear all, thanks for this lively and heterogeneous discussion! It inspired me to add a page to my website which I have long been planning to write: https://www.christianlehmann.eu/ling/ling_meth/metalanguage/index.php?open=language_of_linguistics If you continue with this discussion, I will, of course, update this text. Christian PS 1: Those who are not familiar with my style will notice the lack of political correctness. Yes. PS 2: Those who know my earlier publications will note that I have learnt something in the matter actually occupying us. In "Der Relativsatz", I wrote that examples in certain European languages do not need an interlinear gloss, let alone a translation. Meanwhile it has become clear to me that (while everybody is, of course, free to learn to read as many languages as he desires), I cannot simply expect a Japanese or Korean colleague to read those European languages in which I have been educated. -- Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann Rudolfstr. 4 99092 Erfurt Deutschland Tel.: +49/361/2113417 E-Post: christianw_lehmann at arcor.de Web: https://www.christianlehmann.eu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pa2 at soas.ac.uk Fri Jun 26 11:59:35 2020 From: pa2 at soas.ac.uk (Peter Austin) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 12:59:35 +0100 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <909f67ec-435f-5e8b-8e1a-a6c5ea9920c3@shh.mpg.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <909f67ec-435f-5e8b-8e1a-a6c5ea9920c3@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: Martin I defer to colleagues more knowledgeable than I (especially those at LLACAN, Paris) but there are certainly recent publications on Cape Verde Creole (located in West Africa) in Portuguese, and maybe also on Angolan languages. My former colleague Lameen Souag compiled a listing some years ago of resources about endangered languages in Arabic that ran to hundreds of entries so perhaps he or others can comment. I am reluctant to accept a defeatist attitude re publication in languages other than English -- it seems to me just as you took on closed access publishers with Language Science Press there is a place for multilingual activism in publication, especially in support of early career colleagues in places like Latin America or Francophonie. If Nigel can get TPhS to publish an article in French then why not you with LSP? Peter On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 12:36, Martin Haspelmath wrote: > Peter, are there actually linguistics papers published in Arabic? Is > Portuguese still being used to write about African languages? (It seems to > me that only English and French are relevant for African linguistics these > days.) > > But to the larger point: Some Europeans may be proud of the various other > (European) languages they can read, but de facto, young linguists are not > competitive if they publish in other languages. And certainly, papers in > general linguistics usually have zero impact if they are not written in > English. > > Sad as it may be, this is the reality of the 21st century. We may deplore > it, but we will hardly be able to change it. (What we *may* be able to do > is change the name we use for our common language: Globish.) > > Martin > > P.S. Thanks to Nigel and Harald for the additional info on "agreement" ? > really useful! > > Am 26.06.20 um 13:21 schrieb Peter Austin: > > With all due respect, I find it incredible that someone could write: > "publishing new papers in languages other than English. I personally have > strong reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated matter and it > is often so difficult to exactly understand others. I think one should not > make the problem of mutual understanding even larger by publishing in > languages other than English (unless there is absolutely no escape). ... If > you publish in languages other than English then you need a sort of > hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable (German, French, > Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not". > > There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics and related > fields published annually in languages like Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, > much of which never pierces the consciousness of English-only researchers > because of attitudes like having language hierarchies composed entirely of > European languages. Sheesh. > > Peter > > > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Ser?ant > wrote: > >> Dear all, >> >> >> if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive knowledge of >> other languages is, of course, important and if a paper does not cite an >> important paper on the topic written in a language other than English that >> is, of course, a good reason for sending the paper back for revision. >> >> >> However, a very different topic is publishing new papers in languages >> other than English. I personally have strong reservations here. Linguistics >> is such a complicated matter and it is often so difficult to exactly >> understand others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual >> understanding even larger by publishing in languages other than English >> (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even more, perhaps, research >> English itself should also be different from the native English in that one >> should try to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, write >> in short sentences, etc. >> >> >> If you publish in languages other than English then you need a sort of >> hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable (German, French, >> Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not. I think this issue is difficult >> to resolve in a fair way. >> >> >> Best, >> >> Ilja >> >> >> Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: >> >> I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special issue of >> 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on suppletion last year - >> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - we were able >> to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be published in >> French. >> >> The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the Philological Society: >> Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online Library >> >> If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email with >> instructions to retrieve your username >> onlinelibrary.wiley.com >> >> >> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> The University of Manchester >> >> Linguistics & English Language >> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> The University of Manchester >> >> >> >> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> ------------------------------ >> *From:* Hartmut Haberland >> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM >> *To:* Nigel Vincent >> ; Wiemer, Bjoern >> ; Gilles Authier >> >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> >> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se r?f?rer ? >> la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou fran?aise (Roussel, >> Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in *one* language is >> myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three >> languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? >> >> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, ?More people can >> make out what it is about in French than actually read it?.) >> >> To take a concrete example: *Acta Linguistica Hafniensia *was founded in >> 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. >> Today, it still calls itself an ?international journal?, but now >> practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, >> if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper >> specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in >> German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least >> not passively monolingual. >> >> Hartmut Haberland >> >> *Fra:* Lingtyp >> *P? vegne af *Nigel Vincent >> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 >> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern ; >> Gilles Authier >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> >> >> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les r?f?rences jug?es >> indispensables sont ?crites en allemand ou en danois ? ? >> >> >> >> >> >> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> The University of Manchester >> >> >> >> Linguistics & English Language >> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> >> The University of Manchester >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> ------------------------------ >> >> *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern >> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM >> *To:* Gilles Authier ; Nigel Vincent < >> nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org < >> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> >> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> >> >> Je pense que oui? Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language >> from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., >> Scandinavian)? >> >> BW >> >> >> >> *Von:* Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org >> ] *Im Auftrag von *Gilles >> Authier >> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 >> *An:* Nigel Vincent >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> >> >> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les r?f?rences jug?es >> indispensables sont ?crites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir >> ?tre rejet?, oui. >> >> GA >> >> >> >> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent < >> nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> wrote: >> >> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns >> the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access >> relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions >> asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has >> not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? >> >> Nigel >> >> >> >> >> >> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> The University of Manchester >> >> >> >> Linguistics & English Language >> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> >> The University of Manchester >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> -- >> Ilja A. Ser?ant, postdoc >> Project "Grammatical Universals" >> Universit?t Leipzig (IPF 141199) >> Nikolaistra?e 6-10 >> 04109 Leipzig >> >> URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ >> >> Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 >> Room 5.22 >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> > > > -- > Prof Peter K. Austin > Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS > Visiting Researcher, Oxford University > Foundation Editor, EL Publishing > Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society > > Department of Linguistics, SOAS > Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square > London WC1H 0XG > United Kingdom > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > -- > Martin Haspelmath (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 > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -- Prof Peter K. Austin Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS Visiting Researcher, Oxford University Foundation Editor, EL Publishing Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society Department of Linguistics, SOAS Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square London WC1H 0XG United Kingdom -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alexberd at gmail.com Fri Jun 26 12:08:03 2020 From: alexberd at gmail.com (Aleksandrs Berdicevskis) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 14:08:03 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> Message-ID: > > There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics and related > fields published annually in languages like Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, > much of which never pierces the consciousness of English-only researchers > because of attitudes like having language hierarchies composed entirely of > European languages. Sheesh. > But is it really because of attitudes? Or rather because very few people are able to master dozens of languages to the level where they can fluently read scholarly work (and keep track of everything published)? And dozens is actually an understatement, if we truly abandon the idea of having the lingua franca of science, it should rather be thousands. It would be great to live in a world like that, but that's hardly possible (excellent work will inevitably remain invisible), and I think the drawbacks of the compartmentalization of science outweigh the benefits of linguistic diversity and multicentric perspectives in this case. Ulrich Ammon put forward a "somewhat utopian" idea of "International English" -- a set of varieties of English where not only Anglophone countries define the norms. I think that's very close to what Martin and Ilja are proposing, and that something like that is actually the best practically possible solution. > > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Ser?ant > wrote: > >> Dear all, >> >> >> if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive knowledge of >> other languages is, of course, important and if a paper does not cite an >> important paper on the topic written in a language other than English that >> is, of course, a good reason for sending the paper back for revision. >> >> >> However, a very different topic is publishing new papers in languages >> other than English. I personally have strong reservations here. Linguistics >> is such a complicated matter and it is often so difficult to exactly >> understand others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual >> understanding even larger by publishing in languages other than English >> (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even more, perhaps, research >> English itself should also be different from the native English in that one >> should try to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, write >> in short sentences, etc. >> >> >> If you publish in languages other than English then you need a sort of >> hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable (German, French, >> Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not. I think this issue is difficult >> to resolve in a fair way. >> >> >> Best, >> >> Ilja >> >> >> Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: >> >> I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special issue of >> 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on suppletion last year - >> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - we were able >> to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be published in >> French. >> >> The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the Philological Society: >> Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online Library >> >> If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email with >> instructions to retrieve your username >> onlinelibrary.wiley.com >> >> >> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> The University of Manchester >> >> Linguistics & English Language >> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> The University of Manchester >> >> >> >> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> ------------------------------ >> *From:* Hartmut Haberland >> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM >> *To:* Nigel Vincent >> ; Wiemer, Bjoern >> ; Gilles Authier >> >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> >> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se r?f?rer ? >> la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou fran?aise (Roussel, >> Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in *one* language is >> myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three >> languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? >> >> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, ?More people can >> make out what it is about in French than actually read it?.) >> >> To take a concrete example: *Acta Linguistica Hafniensia *was founded in >> 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. >> Today, it still calls itself an ?international journal?, but now >> practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, >> if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper >> specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in >> German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least >> not passively monolingual. >> >> Hartmut Haberland >> >> *Fra:* Lingtyp >> *P? vegne af *Nigel Vincent >> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 >> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern ; >> Gilles Authier >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> >> >> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les r?f?rences jug?es >> indispensables sont ?crites en allemand ou en danois ? ? >> >> >> >> >> >> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> The University of Manchester >> >> >> >> Linguistics & English Language >> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> >> The University of Manchester >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> ------------------------------ >> >> *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern >> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM >> *To:* Gilles Authier ; Nigel Vincent < >> nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org < >> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> >> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> >> >> Je pense que oui? Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language >> from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., >> Scandinavian)? >> >> BW >> >> >> >> *Von:* Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org >> ] *Im Auftrag von *Gilles >> Authier >> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 >> *An:* Nigel Vincent >> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >> >> >> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les r?f?rences jug?es >> indispensables sont ?crites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir >> ?tre rejet?, oui. >> >> GA >> >> >> >> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent < >> nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> wrote: >> >> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns >> the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access >> relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions >> asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has >> not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? >> >> Nigel >> >> >> >> >> >> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> The University of Manchester >> >> >> >> Linguistics & English Language >> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> >> The University of Manchester >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> -- >> Ilja A. Ser?ant, postdoc >> Project "Grammatical Universals" >> Universit?t Leipzig (IPF 141199) >> Nikolaistra?e 6-10 >> 04109 Leipzig >> >> URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ >> >> Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 >> Room 5.22 >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> > > > -- > Prof Peter K. Austin > Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS > Visiting Researcher, Oxford University > Foundation Editor, EL Publishing > Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society > > Department of Linguistics, SOAS > Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square > London WC1H 0XG > United Kingdom > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rgyalrongskad at gmail.com Fri Jun 26 12:11:13 2020 From: rgyalrongskad at gmail.com (Guillaume Jacques) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 14:11:13 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <909f67ec-435f-5e8b-8e1a-a6c5ea9920c3@shh.mpg.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <909f67ec-435f-5e8b-8e1a-a6c5ea9920c3@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: > > But to the larger point: Some Europeans may be proud of the various other > (European) languages they can read, but de facto, young linguists are not > competitive if they publish in other languages. And certainly, papers in > general linguistics usually have zero impact if they are not written in > English. > There are subfields of linguistics (maybe not general linguistics) where most publications are not in English, and where even English-language publications do not necessarily have the highest impact, though this may not be visible in bibliometrical counts (since many non-English sources are not even indexed in google scholar etc). This is certainly true for Chinese linguistics, Japanese (and Ryukyuan) linguistics, Romance linguistics, (perhaps still) Indo-European linguistics and probably other fields. Knowledge of the relevant languages is one of the basic requirements to do research in those fields. > Sad as it may be, this is the reality of the 21st century. We may deplore > it, but we will hardly be able to change it. (What we *may* be able to do > is change the name we use for our common language: Globish.) > I think that the beauty of linguistic diversity is the reason that motivates most people to do linguistics (at least it is the reason why I do it). As such, I believe that linguists as a community should not embrace the shrinking diversity of scholarly languages. In particular, community-oriented research (such as dictionaries and text collections -- which are as important, if not more, than grammars) should be accessible to native speakers and in my opinion should be written in the national language. Moreover, there are cases when the use of English can be dangerous to non-native speakers (such as myself) when making precise translations of example sentences (from either unwritten languages or from ancient languages) and expressing some fine semantic nuances, even for scholars who use English on a daily basis. Guillaume -- Guillaume Jacques CNRS (CRLAO) - INALCO http://cnrs.academia.edu/GuillaumeJacques http://panchr.hypotheses.org/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From joo at shh.mpg.de Fri Jun 26 12:19:08 2020 From: joo at shh.mpg.de (joo at shh.mpg.de) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 21:19:08 +0900 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> Message-ID: <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> There?s nothing wrong with writing in English or other popular languages to reach a broader audience. However I think that an author should have the full choice to write in whatever language they want. If they choose to write their thesis in Piraha, then so be it, it is their thesis and their choice. Regards, Ian On 26. Jun 2020, 21:09 +0900, Aleksandrs Berdicevskis , wrote: > > > There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics and related fields published annually in languages like Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which never pierces the consciousness of English-only researchers because of attitudes like having language hierarchies composed entirely of European?languages. Sheesh. > > > > But is it really because of attitudes? Or rather because very few people are able to master dozens of languages to the level where they can fluently read scholarly work (and keep track of everything published)? And dozens is actually an understatement, if we truly abandon the idea of having the lingua franca of science, it should rather be thousands. It would be great to live in a world like that, but that's hardly possible (excellent work will inevitably remain invisible), and I think the drawbacks of the compartmentalization of science outweigh the benefits of linguistic diversity and multicentric perspectives in this case. > > > > Ulrich Ammon put forward a "somewhat utopian" idea of "International English" -- a set of varieties of English where not only Anglophone countries define the norms. I think that's very close to what Martin and Ilja are proposing, and that something like that is actually the best practically possible solution. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Ser?ant wrote: > > > > > Dear all, > > > > > > > > > > if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive knowledge of other languages is, of course, important and if a paper does not cite an important paper on the topic written in a language other than English that is, of course, a good reason for sending the paper back for revision. > > > > > > > > > > However, a very different topic is publishing new papers in languages other than English. I personally have strong reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual understanding even larger by publishing in languages other than English (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even more, perhaps, research English itself should also be different from the native English in that one should try to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, write in short sentences, etc. > > > > > > > > > > If you publish in languages other than English then you need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not. I think this issue is difficult to resolve in a fair way. > > > > > > > > > > Best, > > > > > Ilja > > > > > > > > > > Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: > > > > > > I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special issue of 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on suppletion last year - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - we were able to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be published in French. > > > > > > The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the Philological Society: Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online Library > > > > > > If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email with instructions to retrieve your username > > > > > > onlinelibrary.wiley.com > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > > > > > > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > > > > > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > > > > Linguistics & English Language > > > > > > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > > > > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > > > > > > From: Hartmut Haberland > > > > > > Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM > > > > > > To: Nigel Vincent ; Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier > > > > > > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > > > > Subject: SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > > > > > > > > > Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se r?f?rer ? la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou fran?aise (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in one language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? > > > > > > (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, ?More people can make out what it is about in French than actually read it?.) > > > > > > To take a concrete example: Acta Linguistica Hafniensia was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. Today, it still calls itself an ?international journal?, but now practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least not passively monolingual. > > > > > > Hartmut Haberland > > > > > > Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af Nigel Vincent > > > > > > Sendt: 26. juni 2020 10:04 > > > > > > Til: Wiemer, Bjoern ; Gilles Authier > > > > > > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > > > > Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > > > > > > > > > Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites en allemand ou en danois ? ? > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > > > > > > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > > > > > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > > > > Linguistics & English Language > > > > > > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > > > > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > > > > > > From: Wiemer, Bjoern > > > > > > Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM > > > > > > To: Gilles Authier ; Nigel Vincent > > > > > > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > > > > Subject: AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > > > > > > > > > Je pense que oui?? Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)? > > > > > > BW > > > > > > > > > > > > Von: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] Im Auftrag von Gilles Authier > > > > > > Gesendet: Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 > > > > > > An: Nigel Vincent > > > > > > Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > > > > Betreff: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > > > > > > > > > > > > Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir ?tre rejet?, oui. > > > > > > GA > > > > > > > > > > > > On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent wrote: > > > > > > > A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? > > > > > > > Nigel > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > > > > > > > Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > > > > > > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Linguistics & English Language > > > > > > > School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > > > > > > > The University of Manchester > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > > > > Lingtyp mailing list > > > > > > > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > > > > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > > > Lingtyp mailing list > > > > > > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > > > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > > -- > > > > > Ilja A. Ser?ant, postdoc > > > > > Project "Grammatical Universals" > > > > > Universit?t Leipzig (IPF 141199) > > > > > Nikolaistra?e 6-10 > > > > > 04109 Leipzig > > > > > > > > > > URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ > > > > > > > > > > Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 > > > > > Room 5.22 > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > > Lingtyp mailing list > > > > > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > > > > > > -- > > > Prof Peter K. Austin > > > Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS > > > Visiting Researcher, Oxford University > > > Foundation Editor, EL Publishing > > > Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society > > > > > > Department of Linguistics, SOAS > > > Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square > > > London WC1H 0XG > > > United Kingdom > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Lingtyp mailing list > > > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pa2 at soas.ac.uk Fri Jun 26 12:24:55 2020 From: pa2 at soas.ac.uk (Peter Austin) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 13:24:55 +0100 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> Message-ID: Piraha may be a stretch, but recently there have been PhD dissertations written and defended in Maori, Hawaiian and Inari Sami, among others. The issue at hand is supporting our colleagues to be able to publish (in books and journals) scholarship in these and other languages, it appears. Peter On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 13:20, wrote: > There?s nothing wrong with writing in English or other popular languages > to reach a broader audience. However I think that an author should have the > full choice to write in whatever language they want. If they choose to > write their thesis in Piraha, then so be it, it is their thesis and their > choice. > > Regards, > Ian > On 26. Jun 2020, 21:09 +0900, Aleksandrs Berdicevskis , > wrote: > > There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics and related >> fields published annually in languages like Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, >> much of which never pierces the consciousness of English-only researchers >> because of attitudes like having language hierarchies composed entirely of >> European languages. Sheesh. >> > > But is it really because of attitudes? Or rather because very few people > are able to master dozens of languages to the level where they can fluently > read scholarly work (and keep track of everything published)? And dozens is > actually an understatement, if we truly abandon the idea of having the > lingua franca of science, it should rather be thousands. It would be great > to live in a world like that, but that's hardly possible (excellent work > will inevitably remain invisible), and I think the drawbacks of the > compartmentalization of science outweigh the benefits of linguistic > diversity and multicentric perspectives in this case. > > Ulrich Ammon put forward a "somewhat utopian" idea of "International > English" -- a set of varieties of English where not only Anglophone > countries define the norms. I think that's very close to what Martin and > Ilja are proposing, and that something like that is actually the best > practically possible solution. > > > > > >> >> On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Ser?ant >> wrote: >> >>> Dear all, >>> >>> >>> if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive knowledge of >>> other languages is, of course, important and if a paper does not cite an >>> important paper on the topic written in a language other than English that >>> is, of course, a good reason for sending the paper back for revision. >>> >>> >>> However, a very different topic is publishing new papers in languages >>> other than English. I personally have strong reservations here. Linguistics >>> is such a complicated matter and it is often so difficult to exactly >>> understand others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual >>> understanding even larger by publishing in languages other than English >>> (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even more, perhaps, research >>> English itself should also be different from the native English in that one >>> should try to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, write >>> in short sentences, etc. >>> >>> >>> If you publish in languages other than English then you need a sort of >>> hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable (German, French, >>> Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not. I think this issue is difficult >>> to resolve in a fair way. >>> >>> >>> Best, >>> >>> Ilja >>> >>> >>> Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: >>> >>> I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special issue of >>> 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on suppletion last year - >>> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - we were able >>> to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be published in >>> French. >>> >>> The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the Philological Society: >>> Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online Library >>> >>> If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email >>> with instructions to retrieve your username >>> onlinelibrary.wiley.com >>> >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> ------------------------------ >>> *From:* Hartmut Haberland >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM >>> *To:* Nigel Vincent >>> ; Wiemer, Bjoern >>> ; Gilles Authier >>> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se r?f?rer ? >>> la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou fran?aise (Roussel, >>> Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in *one* language is >>> myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just two or three >>> languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but how many do? >>> >>> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, ?More people >>> can make out what it is about in French than actually read it?.) >>> >>> To take a concrete example: *Acta Linguistica Hafniensia* was founded >>> in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and English. >>> Today, it still calls itself an ?international journal?, but now >>> practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. However, >>> if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one paper >>> specifically dealing with English, there are references to literature in >>> German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least >>> not passively monolingual. >>> >>> Hartmut Haberland >>> >>> *Fra:* Lingtyp >>> *P? vegne af* Nigel Vincent >>> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 >>> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern ; >>> Gilles Authier >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> >>> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les r?f?rences jug?es >>> indispensables sont ?crites en allemand ou en danois ? ? >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> ------------------------------ >>> >>> *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM >>> *To:* Gilles Authier ; Nigel Vincent < >>> nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org < >>> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> >>> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> >>> Je pense que oui? Actually, the same applies to articles on (a language >>> from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., >>> Scandinavian)? >>> >>> BW >>> >>> >>> >>> *Von:* Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> ] *Im Auftrag von* Gilles >>> Authier >>> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 >>> *An:* Nigel Vincent >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> >>> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les r?f?rences jug?es >>> indispensables sont ?crites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait devoir >>> ?tre rejet?, oui. >>> >>> GA >>> >>> >>> >>> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent < >>> nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> wrote: >>> >>> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about concerns >>> the languages a researcher should be able to read in order to access >>> relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected or revisions >>> asked for if someone writing in English on a general linguistic topic has >>> not cited relevant work written in a language other than English? >>> >>> Nigel >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >>> -- >>> Ilja A. Ser?ant, postdoc >>> Project "Grammatical Universals" >>> Universit?t Leipzig (IPF 141199) >>> Nikolaistra?e 6-10 >>> 04109 Leipzig >>> >>> URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ >>> >>> Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 >>> Room 5.22 >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >> >> >> -- >> Prof Peter K. Austin >> Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS >> Visiting Researcher, Oxford University >> Foundation Editor, EL Publishing >> Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society >> >> Department of Linguistics, SOAS >> Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square >> London WC1H 0XG >> United Kingdom >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -- Prof Peter K. Austin Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS Visiting Researcher, Oxford University Foundation Editor, EL Publishing Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society Department of Linguistics, SOAS Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square London WC1H 0XG United Kingdom -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mattis.list at lingpy.org Fri Jun 26 12:36:23 2020 From: mattis.list at lingpy.org (Johann-Mattis List) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 14:36:23 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> Message-ID: <49f63694-ca8d-0d90-bd17-89928e5ea179@lingpy.org> I know that there is not much to gain scientifically for me in writing a German article nowadays. But as a scientist, one is also obliged to explain the results of one's research to a broader public, which is why I publish regular blog posts in German. Furthermore, I profited a lot from introductory text books and many other German articles on linguistics which I read when reading English was still difficult for me. I think even if we don't use non-English languages for high-end studies in many scientific fields, one can acknowledge the importance of translating work into many languages, or having original work on science written by the scientists in their native tongues, in order to help specifically the younger generations in their education. Best, Mattis On 6/26/20 2:24 PM, Peter Austin wrote: > Piraha may be a stretch, but recently there have been PhD dissertations > written and defended in Maori, Hawaiian and Inari Sami, among others. > The issue at hand is supporting our colleagues to be able to publish (in > books and journals) scholarship in these and other languages, it appears. > > Peter > > > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 13:20, > > wrote: > > There?s nothing wrong with writing in English or other popular > languages to reach a broader audience. However I think that an > author should have the full choice to write in whatever language > they want. If they choose to write their thesis in Piraha, then so > be it, it is their thesis and their choice.? > > Regards,? > Ian > On 26. Jun 2020, 21:09 +0900, Aleksandrs Berdicevskis > >, wrote: >> >> There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics >> and related fields published annually in languages like >> Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which never pierces the >> consciousness of English-only researchers because of attitudes >> like having language hierarchies composed entirely of >> European?languages. Sheesh. >> >> >> But is it really because of attitudes? Or rather because very few >> people are able to master dozens of languages to the level where >> they can fluently read scholarly work (and keep track of >> everything published)? And dozens is actually an understatement, >> if we truly abandon the idea of having the lingua franca of >> science, it should rather be thousands. It would be great to live >> in a world like that, but that's hardly possible (excellent work >> will inevitably remain invisible), and I think the drawbacks of >> the compartmentalization of science outweigh the benefits of >> linguistic diversity and multicentric perspectives in this case.? >> >> Ulrich Ammon put forward a "somewhat utopian" idea of >> "International English" -- a set of varieties of English where not >> only Anglophone countries define the norms. I think that's very >> close to what Martin and Ilja are proposing, and that something >> like that is actually the best practically possible solution.? >> >> >> >> ? >> >> >> On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Ser?ant >> > > wrote: >> >> Dear all, >> >> >> if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive >> knowledge of other languages is, of course, important and >> if a paper does not cite an important paper on the topic >> written in a language other than English that is, of >> course, a good reason for sending the paper back for revision. >> >> >> However, a very different topic is publishing new papers >> in languages other than English. I personally have strong >> reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated >> matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand >> others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual >> understanding even larger by publishing in languages other >> than English (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even >> more, perhaps, research English itself should also be >> different from the native English in that one should try >> to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, >> write in short sentences, etc. >> >> >> If you publish in languages other than English then you >> need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are considered >> publishable (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and >> which are not. I think this issue is difficult to resolve >> in a fair way. >> >> >> Best, >> >> Ilja >> >> >> Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: >>> I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special >>> issue of 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on >>> suppletion last year - >>> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - >>> we were able to persuade the publishers to allow one of >>> the articles to be published in French. >>> >>> >>> The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the >>> Philological Society: Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online >>> Library >>> >>> If the address matches an existing account you will >>> receive an email with instructions to retrieve your username >>> onlinelibrary.wiley.com >>> >>> >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> *From:* Hartmut Haberland >>> >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM >>> *To:* Nigel Vincent >>> ; Wiemer, Bjoern >>> ; >>> Gilles Authier >>> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> >>> >>> *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> ? >>> >>> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit >>> souvent se r?f?rer ? la tradition grammaticale grecque >>> (Tzartzanos) ou fran?aise (Roussel, Mirambel). >>> Restricting oneself to discourses in /one/ language is >>> myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just >>> two or three languages to keep up with the relevant >>> literature, but how many do? >>> >>> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, >>> ?More people can make out what it is about in French than >>> actually read it?.) >>> >>> To take a concrete example: /Acta Linguistica Hafniensia/ >>> was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers >>> in German, French and English. Today, it still calls >>> itself an ?international journal?, but now practically >>> all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. >>> However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), >>> apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, >>> there are references to literature in German, French, >>> Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least >>> not passively monolingual. >>> >>> Hartmut Haberland >>> >>> *Fra:* Lingtyp >>> >>> *P? >>> vegne af* Nigel Vincent >>> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 >>> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern >>> ; Gilles Authier >>> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> ? >>> >>> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les >>> r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites en allemand >>> ou en danois ? ? >>> >>> ? >>> >>> ? >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> ? >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> ? >>> >>> ? >>> >>> ? >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> >>> *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern >> > >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM >>> *To:* Gilles Authier >> >; Nigel Vincent >>> >> > >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> >> > >>> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> ? >>> >>> Je pense que oui?? Actually, the same applies to articles >>> on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) >>> or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)? >>> >>> BW >>> >>> ? >>> >>> *Von:* Lingtyp >>> [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *Im >>> Auftrag von* Gilles Authier >>> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 >>> *An:* Nigel Vincent >> > >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> ? >>> >>> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les >>> r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites dans une >>> langue romane, il me semblerait devoir ?tre rejet?, oui. >>> >>> GA >>> >>> ? >>> >>> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent >>> >> > wrote: >>> >>> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes >>> thought about concerns the languages a researcher >>> should be able to read in order to access relevant >>> scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected >>> or revisions asked for if someone writing in English >>> on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant >>> work written in a language other than English? >>> >>> Nigel >>> >>> ? >>> >>> ? >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> ? >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> ? >>> >>> ? >>> >>> ? >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> -- >> Ilja A. Ser?ant, postdoc >> Project "Grammatical Universals" >> Universit?t Leipzig (IPF 141199) >> Nikolaistra?e 6-10 >> 04109 Leipzig >> >> URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ >> >> Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 >> Room 5.22 >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> >> -- >> Prof Peter K. Austin >> Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS >> Visiting Researcher, Oxford University >> Foundation Editor, EL Publishing >> Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society >> >> Department of Linguistics, SOAS >> Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square >> London WC1H 0XG >> United Kingdom >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > Prof Peter K. Austin > Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS > Visiting Researcher, Oxford University > Foundation Editor, EL Publishing > Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society > > Department of Linguistics, SOAS > Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square > London WC1H 0XG > United Kingdom > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > From Johanna.Mattissen at uni-koeln.de Fri Jun 26 12:55:22 2020 From: Johanna.Mattissen at uni-koeln.de (Johanna Mattissen) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 14:55:22 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Citing text in European languages without translation Message-ID: <92017616-bbce-40b9-a3bd-9699877a32b0@uni-koeln.de> > And certainly, papers in general linguistics usually have zero impact > if they are not written in English. La situation est encore pire que Martin la d?crit: Les chercheur/ses de l?Afrique, de l?Asie et de l?Europe (en ordre alphab?tique) ne sont pas lu/es ni cit?/es m?me en ?crivant en anglais ? moins qu?ils/elles n?aient pas ?t? cit?/es dans un oeuvre d?un/e linguiste des ?tats-Unis ou de l?Australie auparavant ou qu?ils/elles n?aient pas publi? dans les quelques rares journaux vedettes (ce qui r?tr?cie encore consid?rablement le discours scientifique). A+, Johanna -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jeremy.moss.bradley at univie.ac.at Fri Jun 26 13:25:42 2020 From: jeremy.moss.bradley at univie.ac.at (Jeremy Bradley) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 15:25:42 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> Message-ID: Dear all, Another aspect to consider from the perspective of a smaller discipline (Uralic studies in my case) is that it is essential to uphold a certain continuity with existing scholarship, which up to very recently did not use English as a meta language at all. The more dominant English becomes as a meta-language in the discipline, the more the impression is created that you "don't really need" the other traditional meta-languages (German, Russian, Finnish, Hungarian), and the more you have young scholars separated from essential resources in the discipline operating on a comparatively shallow view of the languages. This is especially dramatic as numerous Uralic varieties went extinct long before English rose to prominence, and you simply cannot access them at all without English. The arguments for publishing in English are obvious, but there is definite pragmatic value for the discipline in maintaining a more diverse set of meta-language. In addition to the ideological dimension: that it's hard to communicate respect for (and more importantly, acknowledge utility of) the languages of smaller speaker communities if we reduce ourselves to using only what we perceive as the most "useful" language at this particular point in time. Jeremy On 26/06/2020 14:24, Peter Austin wrote: > Piraha may be a stretch, but recently there have been PhD > dissertations written and defended in Maori, Hawaiian and Inari Sami, > among others. The issue at hand is supporting our colleagues to be > able to publish (in books and journals) scholarship in these and other > languages, it appears. > > Peter > > > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 13:20, > > wrote: > > There?s nothing wrong with writing in English or other popular > languages to reach a broader audience. However I think that an > author should have the full choice to write in whatever language > they want. If they choose to write their thesis in Piraha, then so > be it, it is their thesis and their choice. > > Regards, > Ian > On 26. Jun 2020, 21:09 +0900, Aleksandrs Berdicevskis > >, wrote: >> >> There are hundreds of excellent research papers in >> linguistics and related fields published annually in >> languages like Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which >> never pierces the consciousness of English-only researchers >> because of attitudes like having language hierarchies >> composed entirely of European?languages. Sheesh. >> >> >> But is it really because of attitudes? Or rather because very few >> people are able to master dozens of languages to the level where >> they can fluently read scholarly work (and keep track of >> everything published)? And dozens is actually an understatement, >> if we truly abandon the idea of having the lingua franca of >> science, it should rather be thousands. It would be great to live >> in a world like that, but that's hardly possible (excellent work >> will inevitably remain invisible), and I think the drawbacks of >> the compartmentalization of science outweigh the benefits of >> linguistic diversity and multicentric perspectives in this case. >> >> Ulrich Ammon put forward a "somewhat utopian" idea of >> "International English" -- a set of varieties of English where >> not only Anglophone countries define the norms. I think that's >> very close to what Martin and Ilja are proposing, and that >> something like that is actually the best practically possible >> solution. >> >> >> >> >> On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Ser?ant >> > > wrote: >> >> Dear all, >> >> >> if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive >> knowledge of other languages is, of course, important and >> if a paper does not cite an important paper on the topic >> written in a language other than English that is, of >> course, a good reason for sending the paper back for >> revision. >> >> >> However, a very different topic is publishing new papers >> in languages other than English. I personally have strong >> reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated >> matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand >> others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual >> understanding even larger by publishing in languages >> other than English (unless there is absolutely no >> escape). Even more, perhaps, research English itself >> should also be different from the native English in that >> one should try to avoid dialectal, non-transparent >> idiomatic expressions, write in short sentences, etc. >> >> >> If you publish in languages other than English then you >> need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are >> considered publishable (German, French, Russian ?, >> Latvian ??) and which are not. I think this issue is >> difficult to resolve in a fair way. >> >> >> Best, >> >> Ilja >> >> >> Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: >>> I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a >>> special issue of 'Transactions of the Philological >>> Society' on suppletion last year - >>> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 >>> - we were able to persuade the publishers to allow one >>> of the articles to be published in French. >>> >>> >>> The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the >>> Philological Society: Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online >>> Library >>> >>> If the address matches an existing account you will >>> receive an email with instructions to retrieve your username >>> onlinelibrary.wiley.com >>> >>> >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> *From:* Hartmut Haberland >>> >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM >>> *To:* Nigel Vincent >>> ; Wiemer, Bjoern >>> ; >>> Gilles Authier >>> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> >>> >>> *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit >>> souvent se r?f?rer ? la tradition grammaticale grecque >>> (Tzartzanos) ou fran?aise (Roussel, Mirambel). >>> Restricting oneself to discourses in /one/ language is >>> myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than >>> just two or three languages to keep up with the relevant >>> literature, but how many do? >>> >>> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, >>> ?More people can make out what it is about in French >>> than actually read it?.) >>> >>> To take a concrete example: /Acta Linguistica >>> Hafniensia/ was founded in 1939 and its first issue >>> contained papers in German, French and English. Today, >>> it still calls itself an ?international journal?, but >>> now practically all papers are in English, with very few >>> exceptions. However, if you take a random issue (51(1), >>> May 2019), apart from one paper specifically dealing >>> with English, there are references to literature in >>> German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So >>> linguists are at least not passively monolingual. >>> >>> Hartmut Haberland >>> >>> *Fra:* Lingtyp >>> >>> *P? >>> vegne af* Nigel Vincent >>> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 >>> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern >>> ; Gilles Authier >>> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les >>> r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites en >>> allemand ou en danois ? ? >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> >>> *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern >> > >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM >>> *To:* Gilles Authier >> >; Nigel Vincent >>> >> > >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> >> > >>> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> Je pense que oui? Actually, the same applies to articles >>> on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., >>> Slavic) or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)? >>> >>> BW >>> >>> *Von:* Lingtyp >>> [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *Im >>> Auftrag von* Gilles Authier >>> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 >>> *An:* Nigel Vincent >> > >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les >>> r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites dans une >>> langue romane, il me semblerait devoir ?tre rejet?, oui. >>> >>> GA >>> >>> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent >>> >> > wrote: >>> >>> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes >>> thought about concerns the languages a researcher >>> should be able to read in order to access relevant >>> scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be >>> rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing >>> in English on a general linguistic topic has not >>> cited relevant work written in a language other than >>> English? >>> >>> Nigel >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> -- >> Ilja A. Ser?ant, postdoc >> Project "Grammatical Universals" >> Universit?t Leipzig (IPF 141199) >> Nikolaistra?e 6-10 >> 04109 Leipzig >> >> URL:http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ >> >> Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 >> Room 5.22 >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> >> -- >> Prof Peter K. Austin >> Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS >> Visiting Researcher, Oxford University >> Foundation Editor, EL Publishing >> Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society >> >> Department of Linguistics, SOAS >> Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square >> London WC1H 0XG >> United Kingdom >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > Prof Peter K. Austin > Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS > Visiting Researcher, Oxford University > Foundation Editor, EL Publishing > Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society > > Department of Linguistics, SOAS > Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square > London WC1H 0XG > United Kingdom > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -- Jeremy Bradley, Ph.D. University of Vienna http://www.mari-language.com jeremy.moss.bradley at univie.ac.at Office address: Institut EVSL Abteilung Finno-Ugristik Universit?t Wien Campus AAKH, Hof 7-2 Spitalgasse 2-4 1090 Wien AUSTRIA Mobile: +43-664-99-31-788 Skype: jeremy.moss.bradley -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From uchihara at buffalo.edu Fri Jun 26 14:00:59 2020 From: uchihara at buffalo.edu (Hiroto Uchihara) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 09:00:59 -0500 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <49f63694-ca8d-0d90-bd17-89928e5ea179@lingpy.org> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> <49f63694-ca8d-0d90-bd17-89928e5ea179@lingpy.org> Message-ID: Dear all, In my case my native language (Japanese) and the medium language (Spanish) spoken in the region where the languages I study are different from English, and I've had a dilemma. I feel the most comfortable writing in Japanese, but if I write something on Cherokee, Zapotec, Mixtec or Tlapanec in Japanese, some may get upset for the reasons that have been raised already, or because the community members would not be able to access these papers. Thus I mostly write in English but I have often been criticized for my grammar by native speakers of English, which has been quite discouraging (this has happened even after having them proofread). Some scholars in Japan do not write in English for this reason. If the accessibility for the community members is the priority, probably I should be writing more in Spanish on Zapotec, Mixtec or Tlapanec. Best, Hiroto 2020?6?26?(?) 7:36 Johann-Mattis List : > I know that there is not much to gain scientifically for me in writing a > German article nowadays. But as a scientist, one is also obliged to > explain the results of one's research to a broader public, which is why > I publish regular blog posts in German. Furthermore, I profited a lot > from introductory text books and many other German articles on > linguistics which I read when reading English was still difficult for > me. I think even if we don't use non-English languages for high-end > studies in many scientific fields, one can acknowledge the importance of > translating work into many languages, or having original work on science > written by the scientists in their native tongues, in order to help > specifically the younger generations in their education. > > Best, > > Mattis > > On 6/26/20 2:24 PM, Peter Austin wrote: > > Piraha may be a stretch, but recently there have been PhD dissertations > > written and defended in Maori, Hawaiian and Inari Sami, among others. > > The issue at hand is supporting our colleagues to be able to publish (in > > books and journals) scholarship in these and other languages, it appears. > > > > Peter > > > > > > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 13:20, > > > wrote: > > > > There?s nothing wrong with writing in English or other popular > > languages to reach a broader audience. However I think that an > > author should have the full choice to write in whatever language > > they want. If they choose to write their thesis in Piraha, then so > > be it, it is their thesis and their choice. > > > > Regards, > > Ian > > On 26. Jun 2020, 21:09 +0900, Aleksandrs Berdicevskis > > >, wrote: > >> > >> There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics > >> and related fields published annually in languages like > >> Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which never pierces the > >> consciousness of English-only researchers because of attitudes > >> like having language hierarchies composed entirely of > >> European languages. Sheesh. > >> > >> > >> But is it really because of attitudes? Or rather because very few > >> people are able to master dozens of languages to the level where > >> they can fluently read scholarly work (and keep track of > >> everything published)? And dozens is actually an understatement, > >> if we truly abandon the idea of having the lingua franca of > >> science, it should rather be thousands. It would be great to live > >> in a world like that, but that's hardly possible (excellent work > >> will inevitably remain invisible), and I think the drawbacks of > >> the compartmentalization of science outweigh the benefits of > >> linguistic diversity and multicentric perspectives in this case. > >> > >> Ulrich Ammon put forward a "somewhat utopian" idea of > >> "International English" -- a set of varieties of English where not > >> only Anglophone countries define the norms. I think that's very > >> close to what Martin and Ilja are proposing, and that something > >> like that is actually the best practically possible solution. > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Ser?ant > >> >> > wrote: > >> > >> Dear all, > >> > >> > >> if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive > >> knowledge of other languages is, of course, important and > >> if a paper does not cite an important paper on the topic > >> written in a language other than English that is, of > >> course, a good reason for sending the paper back for > revision. > >> > >> > >> However, a very different topic is publishing new papers > >> in languages other than English. I personally have strong > >> reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated > >> matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand > >> others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual > >> understanding even larger by publishing in languages other > >> than English (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even > >> more, perhaps, research English itself should also be > >> different from the native English in that one should try > >> to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, > >> write in short sentences, etc. > >> > >> > >> If you publish in languages other than English then you > >> need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are considered > >> publishable (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and > >> which are not. I think this issue is difficult to resolve > >> in a fair way. > >> > >> > >> Best, > >> > >> Ilja > >> > >> > >> Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: > >>> I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special > >>> issue of 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on > >>> suppletion last year - > >>> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - > >>> we were able to persuade the publishers to allow one of > >>> the articles to be published in French. > >>> > >>> > >>> The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the > >>> Philological Society: Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online > >>> Library > >>> > >>> If the address matches an existing account you will > >>> receive an email with instructions to retrieve your > username > >>> onlinelibrary.wiley.com > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > >>> The University of Manchester > >>> > >>> Linguistics & English Language > >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > >>> The University of Manchester > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > >>> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >>> *From:* Hartmut Haberland > >>> > >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM > >>> *To:* Nigel Vincent > >>> ; Wiemer, Bjoern > >>> ; > >>> Gilles Authier > >>> > >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > >>> > >>> > >>> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit > >>> souvent se r?f?rer ? la tradition grammaticale grecque > >>> (Tzartzanos) ou fran?aise (Roussel, Mirambel). > >>> Restricting oneself to discourses in /one/ language is > >>> myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just > >>> two or three languages to keep up with the relevant > >>> literature, but how many do? > >>> > >>> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, > >>> ?More people can make out what it is about in French than > >>> actually read it?.) > >>> > >>> To take a concrete example: /Acta Linguistica Hafniensia/ > >>> was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers > >>> in German, French and English. Today, it still calls > >>> itself an ?international journal?, but now practically > >>> all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. > >>> However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), > >>> apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, > >>> there are references to literature in German, French, > >>> Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least > >>> not passively monolingual. > >>> > >>> Hartmut Haberland > >>> > >>> *Fra:* Lingtyp > >>> > >>> *P? > >>> vegne af* Nigel Vincent > >>> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 > >>> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern > >>> ; Gilles Authier > >>> gilles.authier at gmail.com> > >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >>> > >>> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les > >>> r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites en allemand > >>> ou en danois ? ? > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > >>> The University of Manchester > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> Linguistics & English Language > >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > >>> > >>> The University of Manchester > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > >>> > >>> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >>> > >>> *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern >>> > > >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM > >>> *To:* Gilles Authier >>> >; Nigel Vincent > >>> >>> > > >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >>> > >>> >>> > > >>> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> Je pense que oui? Actually, the same applies to articles > >>> on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) > >>> or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)? > >>> > >>> BW > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> *Von:* Lingtyp > >>> [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *Im > >>> Auftrag von* Gilles Authier > >>> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 > >>> *An:* Nigel Vincent >>> > > >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >>> > >>> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les > >>> r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites dans une > >>> langue romane, il me semblerait devoir ?tre rejet?, oui. > >>> > >>> GA > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent > >>> >>> > wrote: > >>> > >>> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes > >>> thought about concerns the languages a researcher > >>> should be able to read in order to access relevant > >>> scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected > >>> or revisions asked for if someone writing in English > >>> on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant > >>> work written in a language other than English? > >>> > >>> Nigel > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE > >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics > >>> The University of Manchester > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> Linguistics & English Language > >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures > >>> > >>> The University of Manchester > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html > >>> > >>> _______________________________________________ > >>> Lingtyp mailing list > >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >>> > >>> > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > >>> > >>> > >>> _______________________________________________ > >>> Lingtyp mailing list > >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> > >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > >> -- > >> Ilja A. Ser?ant, postdoc > >> Project "Grammatical Universals" > >> Universit?t Leipzig (IPF 141199) > >> Nikolaistra?e 6-10 > >> 04109 Leipzig > >> > >> URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ > >> > >> Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 > >> Room 5.22 > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Lingtyp mailing list > >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >> > >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > >> > >> > >> > >> -- > >> Prof Peter K. Austin > >> Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS > >> Visiting Researcher, Oxford University > >> Foundation Editor, EL Publishing > >> Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society > >> > >> Department of Linguistics, SOAS > >> Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square > >> London WC1H 0XG > >> United Kingdom > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Lingtyp mailing list > >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >> > >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Lingtyp mailing list > >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >> > >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > _______________________________________________ > > Lingtyp mailing list > > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > > > > > -- > > Prof Peter K. Austin > > Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS > > Visiting Researcher, Oxford University > > Foundation Editor, EL Publishing > > Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society > > > > Department of Linguistics, SOAS > > Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square > > London WC1H 0XG > > United Kingdom > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Lingtyp mailing list > > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jrosesla at ualberta.ca Fri Jun 26 15:24:12 2020 From: jrosesla at ualberta.ca (=?UTF-8?Q?Jorge_Ros=C3=A9s_Labrada?=) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 09:24:12 -0600 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> <49f63694-ca8d-0d90-bd17-89928e5ea179@lingpy.org> Message-ID: Thank you everyone for a lively discussion of something that I personally think is really important for us as a field to think about. I write here mostly based on my own experience as a native Spanish speaker operating primarily in an English world (I did my schooling in Canada and now live and work here) but whose fieldwork is in Latin American countries. Most of my scholar output (thesis, articles, book chapters, etc.) has been in English and I arguably feel more comfortable writing in English than in Spanish now because that's the language of most of the linguistics literature I've read and of terminology. However, I was in a French (medium) PhD program and I wrote class papers in French and read papers in French. I also published in Spanish during my PhD in a journal in the country where I was doing my research and have presented in Spanish at the local university to make my research known locally but also to build capacity in linguistics in the country. I'll give you one concrete example of the issues caused by the hegemony of English here and then share some suggestions of how we could perhaps address some of the issues. I'm working with a colleague in Latin America who doesn't read or speak English (older, educated at a different time, etc.). In trying to publish an article, my colleague has had to use Google Translate to engage with the relevant typological literature and to engage with one reviewer's comments which were in English. As you can imagine, Google Translate doesn't do the best job at conveying nuance and some things come out mangled (*gloss* came out as *brillo*!!). This has led to numerous hours spent on trying to understand the literature and in trying to engage with it as well as hours and hours trying to understand a review. You may ask, "why bother?" Well, my colleague's institution wants publications in "important" journals... As I see it, we have a responsibility to try to address these issues and here are a few possible avenues: 1. *engage with the literature written in languages other than English* (not only European languages but whatever the languages of the area where we work are) *for reasons of scientific rigor*?why would you neglect most of the literature in an area because you don't speak the language it was written in? If you limit yourself to what is written in English, your research won't be able to engage with foundational ideas or literature (e.g. much of the initial literature for the part of the Amazon I work in was written in German by German explorers; I did a bit of German in university but not nearly enough to be able to read the originals so I've paid for translations of particular articles, I have asked friends for help translating small sections of articles, and I've used Google Translate to understand relevant passages in certain pieces). 2. *promote work written in languages other than English*??If you're bilingual/multilingual and work in a specific area of the world and you are engaging the literature written by local linguists, I think we should take steps to cite and promote that work in our own work. This sometimes entails having to translate examples or quotes for use in our publications but this increases the citations and visibility of our colleagues. 3. *create opportunities for everyone to be able to present/publish in their native language if they so wish*. The international Journal of American Linguistics publishes articles in English and Spanish; the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA) accepts papers in Spanish, English and Portuguese (and last January we had a fantastic talk in Ch'ol [Mayan] by Morelia Va?zquez Marti?nez and Carol-Rose Little). These are examples of how to increase equity and accessibility for our Latin American colleagues. There are ways to make these things accessible to everyone (for presentations, use slides in one language and present in another or add subtitles). 4. *avoid fetishizing standardized English in reviewing*?if one is reviewing something and notices issues of grammar/style that needs correcting, I personally prefer to suggest that the paper should be looked at by a copy-editor working for the journaal rather than suggesting that the authors have a native speaker of standardized English look it over. This last type of suggestion is still way too common?and sometimes it is even made for people with English as an L1. 5. *allow for glosses in the language of wider communication for the region where you work alongside English*?yes, that means your glosses will have an extra line but you're increasing the accessibility of the examples to linguists working in that area as well as to bilingual speakers from that area who are not speakers of English. 6. *provide summaries of articles in multiple languages*?most Latin American journals that publish linguistic (and other) work, require an abstract in English so English speakers can decide quickly whether they should try to read the article. Why not promote the use of multiple abstracts in English publications so our colleagues who don't speak English or are not as confident with it can decide whether it is worth engaging with the article? I'm sure there are many other ideas that we could pursue but I hope that we, as a field, can find concrete ways in promoting other languages in publication. If we're letting English push out other "majority" languages, what is the fate of minoritized languages? (this is a whole other issue but the two are not unrelated and I'm glad that there's been progress in recent times in this respect [as Peter pointed out, there's a number of theses in minority languages that have started to appear in recent years]). All the best, Jorge ------------- Jorge Emilio Ros?s Labrada Assistant Professor, Indigenous Language Sustainability 4-22 Assiniboia Hall Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta Tel: (+1) 780-492-5698 Email: jrosesla at ualberta.ca *The University of Alberta acknowledges that we are located on Treaty 6 territory, **and respects the history, languages, and cultures of the First Nations, M?tis, Inuit, * *and all First Peoples of Canada, whose presence continues to enrich our institution.* On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 8:01 AM Hiroto Uchihara wrote: > Dear all, > > In my case my native language (Japanese) and the medium language (Spanish) > spoken in the region where the languages I study are different from > English, and I've had a dilemma. > > I feel the most comfortable writing in Japanese, but if I write something > on Cherokee, Zapotec, Mixtec or Tlapanec in Japanese, some may get upset > for the reasons that have been raised already, or because the community > members would not be able to access these papers. Thus I mostly write in > English but I have often been criticized for my grammar by native speakers > of English, which has been quite discouraging (this has happened even after > having them proofread). Some scholars in Japan do not write in English for > this reason. If the accessibility for the community members is the > priority, probably I should be writing more in Spanish on Zapotec, Mixtec > or Tlapanec. > > Best, > Hiroto > > 2020?6?26?(?) 7:36 Johann-Mattis List : > >> I know that there is not much to gain scientifically for me in writing a >> German article nowadays. But as a scientist, one is also obliged to >> explain the results of one's research to a broader public, which is why >> I publish regular blog posts in German. Furthermore, I profited a lot >> from introductory text books and many other German articles on >> linguistics which I read when reading English was still difficult for >> me. I think even if we don't use non-English languages for high-end >> studies in many scientific fields, one can acknowledge the importance of >> translating work into many languages, or having original work on science >> written by the scientists in their native tongues, in order to help >> specifically the younger generations in their education. >> >> Best, >> >> Mattis >> >> On 6/26/20 2:24 PM, Peter Austin wrote: >> > Piraha may be a stretch, but recently there have been PhD dissertations >> > written and defended in Maori, Hawaiian and Inari Sami, among others. >> > The issue at hand is supporting our colleagues to be able to publish (in >> > books and journals) scholarship in these and other languages, it >> appears. >> > >> > Peter >> > >> > >> > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 13:20, > >> > wrote: >> > >> > There?s nothing wrong with writing in English or other popular >> > languages to reach a broader audience. However I think that an >> > author should have the full choice to write in whatever language >> > they want. If they choose to write their thesis in Piraha, then so >> > be it, it is their thesis and their choice. >> > >> > Regards, >> > Ian >> > On 26. Jun 2020, 21:09 +0900, Aleksandrs Berdicevskis >> > >, wrote: >> >> >> >> There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics >> >> and related fields published annually in languages like >> >> Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which never pierces the >> >> consciousness of English-only researchers because of attitudes >> >> like having language hierarchies composed entirely of >> >> European languages. Sheesh. >> >> >> >> >> >> But is it really because of attitudes? Or rather because very few >> >> people are able to master dozens of languages to the level where >> >> they can fluently read scholarly work (and keep track of >> >> everything published)? And dozens is actually an understatement, >> >> if we truly abandon the idea of having the lingua franca of >> >> science, it should rather be thousands. It would be great to live >> >> in a world like that, but that's hardly possible (excellent work >> >> will inevitably remain invisible), and I think the drawbacks of >> >> the compartmentalization of science outweigh the benefits of >> >> linguistic diversity and multicentric perspectives in this case. >> >> >> >> Ulrich Ammon put forward a "somewhat utopian" idea of >> >> "International English" -- a set of varieties of English where not >> >> only Anglophone countries define the norms. I think that's very >> >> close to what Martin and Ilja are proposing, and that something >> >> like that is actually the best practically possible solution. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Ser?ant >> >> > >> > wrote: >> >> >> >> Dear all, >> >> >> >> >> >> if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive >> >> knowledge of other languages is, of course, important and >> >> if a paper does not cite an important paper on the topic >> >> written in a language other than English that is, of >> >> course, a good reason for sending the paper back for >> revision. >> >> >> >> >> >> However, a very different topic is publishing new papers >> >> in languages other than English. I personally have strong >> >> reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated >> >> matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand >> >> others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual >> >> understanding even larger by publishing in languages other >> >> than English (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even >> >> more, perhaps, research English itself should also be >> >> different from the native English in that one should try >> >> to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, >> >> write in short sentences, etc. >> >> >> >> >> >> If you publish in languages other than English then you >> >> need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are considered >> >> publishable (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and >> >> which are not. I think this issue is difficult to resolve >> >> in a fair way. >> >> >> >> >> >> Best, >> >> >> >> Ilja >> >> >> >> >> >> Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: >> >>> I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special >> >>> issue of 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on >> >>> suppletion last year - >> >>> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - >> >>> we were able to persuade the publishers to allow one of >> >>> the articles to be published in French. >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the >> >>> Philological Society: Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online >> >>> Library >> >>> >> >>> If the address matches an existing account you will >> >>> receive an email with instructions to retrieve your >> username >> >>> onlinelibrary.wiley.com >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> >>> The University of Manchester >> >>> >> >>> Linguistics & English Language >> >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> >>> The University of Manchester >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> >>> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> >>> *From:* Hartmut Haberland >> >>> >> >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM >> >>> *To:* Nigel Vincent >> >>> ; Wiemer, Bjoern >> >>> ; >> >>> Gilles Authier >> >>> >> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit >> >>> souvent se r?f?rer ? la tradition grammaticale grecque >> >>> (Tzartzanos) ou fran?aise (Roussel, Mirambel). >> >>> Restricting oneself to discourses in /one/ language is >> >>> myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just >> >>> two or three languages to keep up with the relevant >> >>> literature, but how many do? >> >>> >> >>> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, >> >>> ?More people can make out what it is about in French than >> >>> actually read it?.) >> >>> >> >>> To take a concrete example: /Acta Linguistica Hafniensia/ >> >>> was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers >> >>> in German, French and English. Today, it still calls >> >>> itself an ?international journal?, but now practically >> >>> all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. >> >>> However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), >> >>> apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, >> >>> there are references to literature in German, French, >> >>> Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least >> >>> not passively monolingual. >> >>> >> >>> Hartmut Haberland >> >>> >> >>> *Fra:* Lingtyp >> >>> >> >>> *P? >> >>> vegne af* Nigel Vincent >> >>> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 >> >>> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern >> >>> ; Gilles Authier >> >>> > gilles.authier at gmail.com> >> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >>> >> >>> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les >> >>> r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites en allemand >> >>> ou en danois ? ? >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> >>> The University of Manchester >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> Linguistics & English Language >> >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> >>> >> >>> The University of Manchester >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> >>> >> >>> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> >>> >> >>> *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern > >>> > >> >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM >> >>> *To:* Gilles Authier > >>> >; Nigel Vincent >> >>> > >>> > >> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >>> >> >>> > >>> > >> >>> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> Je pense que oui? Actually, the same applies to articles >> >>> on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) >> >>> or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)? >> >>> >> >>> BW >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> *Von:* Lingtyp >> >>> [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *Im >> >>> Auftrag von* Gilles Authier >> >>> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 >> >>> *An:* Nigel Vincent > >>> > >> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >>> >> >>> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les >> >>> r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites dans une >> >>> langue romane, il me semblerait devoir ?tre rejet?, oui. >> >>> >> >>> GA >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent >> >>> > >>> > wrote: >> >>> >> >>> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes >> >>> thought about concerns the languages a researcher >> >>> should be able to read in order to access relevant >> >>> scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected >> >>> or revisions asked for if someone writing in English >> >>> on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant >> >>> work written in a language other than English? >> >>> >> >>> Nigel >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >> >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >> >>> The University of Manchester >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> Linguistics & English Language >> >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >> >>> >> >>> The University of Manchester >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >> >>> >> >>> _______________________________________________ >> >>> Lingtyp mailing list >> >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >>> >> >>> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> _______________________________________________ >> >>> Lingtyp mailing list >> >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> >> >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> -- >> >> Ilja A. Ser?ant, postdoc >> >> Project "Grammatical Universals" >> >> Universit?t Leipzig (IPF 141199) >> >> Nikolaistra?e 6-10 >> >> 04109 Leipzig >> >> >> >> URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ >> >> >> >> Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 >> >> Room 5.22 >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> >> Lingtyp mailing list >> >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> >> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> -- >> >> Prof Peter K. Austin >> >> Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS >> >> Visiting Researcher, Oxford University >> >> Foundation Editor, EL Publishing >> >> Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society >> >> >> >> Department of Linguistics, SOAS >> >> Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square >> >> London WC1H 0XG >> >> United Kingdom >> >> _______________________________________________ >> >> Lingtyp mailing list >> >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> >> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> >> Lingtyp mailing list >> >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> >> >> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> > _______________________________________________ >> > Lingtyp mailing list >> > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> > >> > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> > >> > >> > >> > -- >> > Prof Peter K. Austin >> > Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS >> > Visiting Researcher, Oxford University >> > Foundation Editor, EL Publishing >> > Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society >> > >> > Department of Linguistics, SOAS >> > Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square >> > London WC1H 0XG >> > United Kingdom >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > Lingtyp mailing list >> > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> > >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From g.corbett at surrey.ac.uk Fri Jun 26 15:50:16 2020 From: g.corbett at surrey.ac.uk (Greville Corbett) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 15:50:16 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> <49f63694-ca8d-0d90-bd17-89928e5ea179@lingpy.org> Message-ID: <0DA6C90A-5AF6-4BD1-9D48-53C74524D754@surrey.ac.uk> There are some bright spots concerning the use of different languages. The International Congress of Slavists has as official languages all the Slavonic languages, plus English, French and German. In Belgrade in 2018, a session I chaired consisted of six papers, in six different languages, including Upper Sorbian. Very best, Grev On 26 Jun 2020, at 17:24, Jorge Ros?s Labrada > wrote: Thank you everyone for a lively discussion of something that I personally think is really important for us as a field to think about. I write here mostly based on my own experience as a native Spanish speaker operating primarily in an English world (I did my schooling in Canada and now live and work here) but whose fieldwork is in Latin American countries. Most of my scholar output (thesis, articles, book chapters, etc.) has been in English and I arguably feel more comfortable writing in English than in Spanish now because that's the language of most of the linguistics literature I've read and of terminology. However, I was in a French (medium) PhD program and I wrote class papers in French and read papers in French. I also published in Spanish during my PhD in a journal in the country where I was doing my research and have presented in Spanish at the local university to make my research known locally but also to build capacity in linguistics in the country. I'll give you one concrete example of the issues caused by the hegemony of English here and then share some suggestions of how we could perhaps address some of the issues. I'm working with a colleague in Latin America who doesn't read or speak English (older, educated at a different time, etc.). In trying to publish an article, my colleague has had to use Google Translate to engage with the relevant typological literature and to engage with one reviewer's comments which were in English. As you can imagine, Google Translate doesn't do the best job at conveying nuance and some things come out mangled (gloss came out as brillo!!). This has led to numerous hours spent on trying to understand the literature and in trying to engage with it as well as hours and hours trying to understand a review. You may ask, "why bother?" Well, my colleague's institution wants publications in "important" journals... As I see it, we have a responsibility to try to address these issues and here are a few possible avenues: 1. engage with the literature written in languages other than English (not only European languages but whatever the languages of the area where we work are) for reasons of scientific rigor?why would you neglect most of the literature in an area because you don't speak the language it was written in? If you limit yourself to what is written in English, your research won't be able to engage with foundational ideas or literature (e.g. much of the initial literature for the part of the Amazon I work in was written in German by German explorers; I did a bit of German in university but not nearly enough to be able to read the originals so I've paid for translations of particular articles, I have asked friends for help translating small sections of articles, and I've used Google Translate to understand relevant passages in certain pieces). 2. promote work written in languages other than English??If you're bilingual/multilingual and work in a specific area of the world and you are engaging the literature written by local linguists, I think we should take steps to cite and promote that work in our own work. This sometimes entails having to translate examples or quotes for use in our publications but this increases the citations and visibility of our colleagues. 3. create opportunities for everyone to be able to present/publish in their native language if they so wish. The international Journal of American Linguistics publishes articles in English and Spanish; the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA) accepts papers in Spanish, English and Portuguese (and last January we had a fantastic talk in Ch'ol [Mayan] by Morelia Va?zquez Marti?nez and Carol-Rose Little). These are examples of how to increase equity and accessibility for our Latin American colleagues. There are ways to make these things accessible to everyone (for presentations, use slides in one language and present in another or add subtitles). 4. avoid fetishizing standardized English in reviewing?if one is reviewing something and notices issues of grammar/style that needs correcting, I personally prefer to suggest that the paper should be looked at by a copy-editor working for the journaal rather than suggesting that the authors have a native speaker of standardized English look it over. This last type of suggestion is still way too common?and sometimes it is even made for people with English as an L1. 5. allow for glosses in the language of wider communication for the region where you work alongside English?yes, that means your glosses will have an extra line but you're increasing the accessibility of the examples to linguists working in that area as well as to bilingual speakers from that area who are not speakers of English. 6. provide summaries of articles in multiple languages?most Latin American journals that publish linguistic (and other) work, require an abstract in English so English speakers can decide quickly whether they should try to read the article. Why not promote the use of multiple abstracts in English publications so our colleagues who don't speak English or are not as confident with it can decide whether it is worth engaging with the article? I'm sure there are many other ideas that we could pursue but I hope that we, as a field, can find concrete ways in promoting other languages in publication. If we're letting English push out other "majority" languages, what is the fate of minoritized languages? (this is a whole other issue but the two are not unrelated and I'm glad that there's been progress in recent times in this respect [as Peter pointed out, there's a number of theses in minority languages that have started to appear in recent years]). All the best, Jorge ------------- Jorge Emilio Ros?s Labrada Assistant Professor, Indigenous Language Sustainability 4-22 Assiniboia Hall Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta Tel: (+1) 780-492-5698 Email: jrosesla at ualberta.ca The University of Alberta acknowledges that we are located on Treaty 6 territory, and respects the history, languages, and cultures of the First Nations, M?tis, Inuit, and all First Peoples of Canada, whose presence continues to enrich our institution. On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 8:01 AM Hiroto Uchihara > wrote: Dear all, In my case my native language (Japanese) and the medium language (Spanish) spoken in the region where the languages I study are different from English, and I've had a dilemma. I feel the most comfortable writing in Japanese, but if I write something on Cherokee, Zapotec, Mixtec or Tlapanec in Japanese, some may get upset for the reasons that have been raised already, or because the community members would not be able to access these papers. Thus I mostly write in English but I have often been criticized for my grammar by native speakers of English, which has been quite discouraging (this has happened even after having them proofread). Some scholars in Japan do not write in English for this reason. If the accessibility for the community members is the priority, probably I should be writing more in Spanish on Zapotec, Mixtec or Tlapanec. Best, Hiroto 2020?6?26?(?) 7:36 Johann-Mattis List >: I know that there is not much to gain scientifically for me in writing a German article nowadays. But as a scientist, one is also obliged to explain the results of one's research to a broader public, which is why I publish regular blog posts in German. Furthermore, I profited a lot from introductory text books and many other German articles on linguistics which I read when reading English was still difficult for me. I think even if we don't use non-English languages for high-end studies in many scientific fields, one can acknowledge the importance of translating work into many languages, or having original work on science written by the scientists in their native tongues, in order to help specifically the younger generations in their education. Best, Mattis On 6/26/20 2:24 PM, Peter Austin wrote: > Piraha may be a stretch, but recently there have been PhD dissertations > written and defended in Maori, Hawaiian and Inari Sami, among others. > The issue at hand is supporting our colleagues to be able to publish (in > books and journals) scholarship in these and other languages, it appears. > > Peter > > > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 13:20, >> > wrote: > > There?s nothing wrong with writing in English or other popular > languages to reach a broader audience. However I think that an > author should have the full choice to write in whatever language > they want. If they choose to write their thesis in Piraha, then so > be it, it is their thesis and their choice. > > Regards, > Ian > On 26. Jun 2020, 21:09 +0900, Aleksandrs Berdicevskis > >>, wrote: >> >> There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics >> and related fields published annually in languages like >> Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which never pierces the >> consciousness of English-only researchers because of attitudes >> like having language hierarchies composed entirely of >> European languages. Sheesh. >> >> >> But is it really because of attitudes? Or rather because very few >> people are able to master dozens of languages to the level where >> they can fluently read scholarly work (and keep track of >> everything published)? And dozens is actually an understatement, >> if we truly abandon the idea of having the lingua franca of >> science, it should rather be thousands. It would be great to live >> in a world like that, but that's hardly possible (excellent work >> will inevitably remain invisible), and I think the drawbacks of >> the compartmentalization of science outweigh the benefits of >> linguistic diversity and multicentric perspectives in this case. >> >> Ulrich Ammon put forward a "somewhat utopian" idea of >> "International English" -- a set of varieties of English where not >> only Anglophone countries define the norms. I think that's very >> close to what Martin and Ilja are proposing, and that something >> like that is actually the best practically possible solution. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Ser?ant >> >> >> wrote: >> >> Dear all, >> >> >> if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive >> knowledge of other languages is, of course, important and >> if a paper does not cite an important paper on the topic >> written in a language other than English that is, of >> course, a good reason for sending the paper back for revision. >> >> >> However, a very different topic is publishing new papers >> in languages other than English. I personally have strong >> reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated >> matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand >> others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual >> understanding even larger by publishing in languages other >> than English (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even >> more, perhaps, research English itself should also be >> different from the native English in that one should try >> to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, >> write in short sentences, etc. >> >> >> If you publish in languages other than English then you >> need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are considered >> publishable (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and >> which are not. I think this issue is difficult to resolve >> in a fair way. >> >> >> Best, >> >> Ilja >> >> >> Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: >>> I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special >>> issue of 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on >>> suppletion last year - >>> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - >>> we were able to persuade the publishers to allow one of >>> the articles to be published in French. >>> > >>> >>> The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the >>> Philological Society: Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online >>> Library >>> > >>> If the address matches an existing account you will >>> receive an email with instructions to retrieve your username >>> onlinelibrary.wiley.com > >>> >>> >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> *From:* Hartmut Haberland > >>> > >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM >>> *To:* Nigel Vincent > >>> >; Wiemer, Bjoern >>> > >; >>> Gilles Authier > >>> > >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit >>> souvent se r?f?rer ? la tradition grammaticale grecque >>> (Tzartzanos) ou fran?aise (Roussel, Mirambel). >>> Restricting oneself to discourses in /one/ language is >>> myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just >>> two or three languages to keep up with the relevant >>> literature, but how many do? >>> >>> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, >>> ?More people can make out what it is about in French than >>> actually read it?.) >>> >>> To take a concrete example: /Acta Linguistica Hafniensia/ >>> was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers >>> in German, French and English. Today, it still calls >>> itself an ?international journal?, but now practically >>> all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. >>> However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), >>> apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, >>> there are references to literature in German, French, >>> Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least >>> not passively monolingual. >>> >>> Hartmut Haberland >>> >>> *Fra:* Lingtyp >>> > >>> > *P? >>> vegne af* Nigel Vincent >>> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 >>> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern > >>> >; Gilles Authier >>> > > >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> > >>> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> >>> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les >>> r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites en allemand >>> ou en danois ? ? >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> >>> *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern >>> >> >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM >>> *To:* Gilles Authier >>> >>; Nigel Vincent >>> >>> >> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> > >>> >>> >> >>> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> >>> Je pense que oui? Actually, the same applies to articles >>> on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) >>> or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)? >>> >>> BW >>> >>> >>> >>> *Von:* Lingtyp >>> [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *Im >>> Auftrag von* Gilles Authier >>> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 >>> *An:* Nigel Vincent >>> >> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> > >>> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> >>> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les >>> r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites dans une >>> langue romane, il me semblerait devoir ?tre rejet?, oui. >>> >>> GA >>> >>> >>> >>> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent >>> >>> >> wrote: >>> >>> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes >>> thought about concerns the languages a researcher >>> should be able to read in order to access relevant >>> scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected >>> or revisions asked for if someone writing in English >>> on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant >>> work written in a language other than English? >>> >>> Nigel >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> > >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> -- >> Ilja A. Ser?ant, postdoc >> Project "Grammatical Universals" >> Universit?t Leipzig (IPF 141199) >> Nikolaistra?e 6-10 >> 04109 Leipzig >> >> URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ >> >> Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 >> Room 5.22 >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> > >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> >> >> -- >> Prof Peter K. Austin >> Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS >> Visiting Researcher, Oxford University >> Foundation Editor, EL Publishing >> Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society >> >> Department of Linguistics, SOAS >> Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square >> London WC1H 0XG >> United Kingdom >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> > >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> > >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > > > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > > > > -- > Prof Peter K. Austin > Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS > Visiting Researcher, Oxford University > Foundation Editor, EL Publishing > Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society > > Department of Linguistics, SOAS > Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square > London WC1H 0XG > United Kingdom > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flistserv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7Cg.corbett%40surrey.ac.uk%7Cc5288b97d28e474296ca08d819e535ef%7C6b902693107440aa9e21d89446a2ebb5%7C0%7C0%7C637287819541996004&sdata=ujAJWUCP%2B4%2FBdjGU6EaPPYoLZYp0VZnBe0wtY9TGT98%3D&reserved=0 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From volker.gast at uni-jena.de Fri Jun 26 17:33:17 2020 From: volker.gast at uni-jena.de (Volker Gast) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 19:33:17 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> <49f63694-ca8d-0d90-bd17-89928e5ea179@lingpy.org> Message-ID: <20200626193317.Horde.4mzjBz4YcTSCXqfWjlCJl_X@webmail.uni-jena.de> Hi everybody, I've been working on a project that I call "Academic Content Modeling". The idea is to use NLP resources to improve access to academic (linguistic) texts (e.g. topic models as semantic representations of articles). I've also been working on automatic translation (of parliamentary corpora), and we will shortly be advertizing two jobs related to this in Jena. When I read Jorge's comment on 'gloss' being translated as 'brillo' by Google Translate, I thought -- why not (re)train translation models specifically for linguistic texts? There are excellent models around (trained with deep learning), and they can be adapted to specific genres (which is what we will be doing for parliamentary corpora anyway). So I wonder if it would make sense to set up a service -- e.g. a website -- specifically for the translation of linguistic texts, a specialized version of Google Translate or DeepL as it were. This could be a community effort, as the retraining of models would certainly imply some manual work and academic expertise. Please let me know (off list) if you are interested in this (or if you're working on something like this already). Perhaps we can join forces. One of the more ambitious ideas in the "Academic Content Modeling" project is to train language independent topic models. We will do this with parliamentary corpora first (as we want to compare parliamentary discourse crosslinguistically). This implies a mapping from texts to language-independent concepts. If we map linguistic texts to topic models based on language-independent concepts, we could search databases of academic texts not for terms, but for concepts (or topics defined in terms of concepts), ideally getting hits from various languages. Together with a linguistic translation service, this could be a way of partially overcoming the language barrier, at least for some languages. Best, Volker Zitat von Jorge Ros?s Labrada : > Thank you everyone for a lively discussion of something that I personally > think is really important for us as a field to think about. I write here > mostly based on my own experience as a native Spanish speaker operating > primarily in an English world (I did my schooling in Canada and now live > and work here) but whose fieldwork is in Latin American countries. > > Most of my scholar output (thesis, articles, book chapters, etc.) has been > in English and I arguably feel more comfortable writing in English than in > Spanish now because that's the language of most of the linguistics > literature I've read and of terminology. However, I was in a French > (medium) PhD program and I wrote class papers in French and read papers in > French. I also published in Spanish during my PhD in a journal in the > country where I was doing my research and have presented in Spanish at the > local university to make my research known locally but also to build > capacity in linguistics in the country. > > I'll give you one concrete example of the issues caused by the hegemony of > English here and then share some suggestions of how we could perhaps > address some of the issues. > > I'm working with a colleague in Latin America who doesn't read or speak > English (older, educated at a different time, etc.). In trying to publish > an article, my colleague has had to use Google Translate to engage with the > relevant typological literature and to engage with one reviewer's comments > which were in English. As you can imagine, Google Translate doesn't do the > best job at conveying nuance and some things come out mangled (*gloss* came > out as *brillo*!!). This has led to numerous hours spent on trying to > understand the literature and in trying to engage with it as well as hours > and hours trying to understand a review. You may ask, "why bother?" Well, > my colleague's institution wants publications in "important" journals... > > As I see it, we have a responsibility to try to address these issues and > here are a few possible avenues: > > 1. *engage with the literature written in languages other than English* > (not only European languages but whatever the languages of the area where > we work are) *for reasons of scientific rigor*?why would you neglect > most of the literature in an area because you don't speak the language it > was written in? If you limit yourself to what is written in English, your > research won't be able to engage with foundational ideas or literature > (e.g. much of the initial literature for the part of the Amazon I work in > was written in German by German explorers; I did a bit of German in > university but not nearly enough to be able to read the originals so I've > paid for translations of particular articles, I have asked > friends for help > translating small sections of articles, and I've used Google Translate to > understand relevant passages in certain pieces). > 2. *promote work written in languages other than English*??If you're > bilingual/multilingual and work in a specific area of the world > and you are > engaging the literature written by local linguists, I think we should take > steps to cite and promote that work in our own work. This sometimes > entails having to translate examples or quotes for use in our publications > but this increases the citations and visibility of our colleagues. > 3. *create opportunities for everyone to be able to present/publish in > their native language if they so wish*. The international Journal of > American Linguistics publishes articles in English and Spanish; > the Society > for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA) accepts > papers in Spanish, English and Portuguese (and last January we had a > fantastic talk in Ch'ol [Mayan] by Morelia Va?zquez Marti?nez and > Carol-Rose > Little). These are examples of how to increase equity and > accessibility for > our Latin American colleagues. There are ways to make these things > accessible to everyone (for presentations, use slides in one language and > present in another or add subtitles). > 4. *avoid fetishizing standardized English in reviewing*?if one is > reviewing something and notices issues of grammar/style that needs > correcting, I personally prefer to suggest that the paper should be looked > at by a copy-editor working for the journaal rather than suggesting that > the authors have a native speaker of standardized English look it over. > This last type of suggestion is still way too common?and sometimes it is > even made for people with English as an L1. > 5. *allow for glosses in the language of wider communication for the > region where you work alongside English*?yes, that means your glosses > will have an extra line but you're increasing the accessibility of the > examples to linguists working in that area as well as to > bilingual speakers > from that area who are not speakers of English. > 6. *provide summaries of articles in multiple languages*?most Latin > American journals that publish linguistic (and other) work, require an > abstract in English so English speakers can decide quickly whether they > should try to read the article. Why not promote the use of multiple > abstracts in English publications so our colleagues who don't > speak English > or are not as confident with it can decide whether it is worth engaging > with the article? > > I'm sure there are many other ideas that we could pursue but I hope that > we, as a field, can find concrete ways in promoting other languages in > publication. If we're letting English push out other "majority" languages, > what is the fate of minoritized languages? (this is a whole other issue but > the two are not unrelated and I'm glad that there's been progress in recent > times in this respect [as Peter pointed out, there's a number of theses in > minority languages that have started to appear in recent years]). > > All the best, > Jorge > ------------- > Jorge Emilio Ros?s Labrada > Assistant Professor, Indigenous Language Sustainability > > 4-22 Assiniboia Hall > Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta > Tel: (+1) 780-492-5698 > Email: jrosesla at ualberta.ca > > *The University of Alberta acknowledges that we are located on Treaty 6 > territory, **and respects the history, languages, and cultures of the First > Nations, M?tis, Inuit, * > *and all First Peoples of Canada, whose presence continues to enrich our > institution.* > > > On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 8:01 AM Hiroto Uchihara > wrote: > >> Dear all, >> >> In my case my native language (Japanese) and the medium language (Spanish) >> spoken in the region where the languages I study are different from >> English, and I've had a dilemma. >> >> I feel the most comfortable writing in Japanese, but if I write something >> on Cherokee, Zapotec, Mixtec or Tlapanec in Japanese, some may get upset >> for the reasons that have been raised already, or because the community >> members would not be able to access these papers. Thus I mostly write in >> English but I have often been criticized for my grammar by native speakers >> of English, which has been quite discouraging (this has happened even after >> having them proofread). Some scholars in Japan do not write in English for >> this reason. If the accessibility for the community members is the >> priority, probably I should be writing more in Spanish on Zapotec, Mixtec >> or Tlapanec. >> >> Best, >> Hiroto >> >> 2020?6?26?(?) 7:36 Johann-Mattis List : >> >>> I know that there is not much to gain scientifically for me in writing a >>> German article nowadays. But as a scientist, one is also obliged to >>> explain the results of one's research to a broader public, which is why >>> I publish regular blog posts in German. Furthermore, I profited a lot >>> from introductory text books and many other German articles on >>> linguistics which I read when reading English was still difficult for >>> me. I think even if we don't use non-English languages for high-end >>> studies in many scientific fields, one can acknowledge the importance of >>> translating work into many languages, or having original work on science >>> written by the scientists in their native tongues, in order to help >>> specifically the younger generations in their education. >>> >>> Best, >>> >>> Mattis >>> >>> On 6/26/20 2:24 PM, Peter Austin wrote: >>> > Piraha may be a stretch, but recently there have been PhD dissertations >>> > written and defended in Maori, Hawaiian and Inari Sami, among others. >>> > The issue at hand is supporting our colleagues to be able to publish (in >>> > books and journals) scholarship in these and other languages, it >>> appears. >>> > >>> > Peter >>> > >>> > >>> > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 13:20, > >>> > wrote: >>> > >>> > There?s nothing wrong with writing in English or other popular >>> > languages to reach a broader audience. However I think that an >>> > author should have the full choice to write in whatever language >>> > they want. If they choose to write their thesis in Piraha, then so >>> > be it, it is their thesis and their choice. >>> > >>> > Regards, >>> > Ian >>> > On 26. Jun 2020, 21:09 +0900, Aleksandrs Berdicevskis >>> > >, wrote: >>> >> >>> >> There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics >>> >> and related fields published annually in languages like >>> >> Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which never pierces the >>> >> consciousness of English-only researchers because of attitudes >>> >> like having language hierarchies composed entirely of >>> >> European languages. Sheesh. >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> But is it really because of attitudes? Or rather because very few >>> >> people are able to master dozens of languages to the level where >>> >> they can fluently read scholarly work (and keep track of >>> >> everything published)? And dozens is actually an understatement, >>> >> if we truly abandon the idea of having the lingua franca of >>> >> science, it should rather be thousands. It would be great to live >>> >> in a world like that, but that's hardly possible (excellent work >>> >> will inevitably remain invisible), and I think the drawbacks of >>> >> the compartmentalization of science outweigh the benefits of >>> >> linguistic diversity and multicentric perspectives in this case. >>> >> >>> >> Ulrich Ammon put forward a "somewhat utopian" idea of >>> >> "International English" -- a set of varieties of English where not >>> >> only Anglophone countries define the norms. I think that's very >>> >> close to what Martin and Ilja are proposing, and that something >>> >> like that is actually the best practically possible solution. >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Ser?ant >>> >> >> >> > wrote: >>> >> >>> >> Dear all, >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive >>> >> knowledge of other languages is, of course, important and >>> >> if a paper does not cite an important paper on the topic >>> >> written in a language other than English that is, of >>> >> course, a good reason for sending the paper back for >>> revision. >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> However, a very different topic is publishing new papers >>> >> in languages other than English. I personally have strong >>> >> reservations here. Linguistics is such a complicated >>> >> matter and it is often so difficult to exactly understand >>> >> others. I think one should not make the problem of mutual >>> >> understanding even larger by publishing in languages other >>> >> than English (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even >>> >> more, perhaps, research English itself should also be >>> >> different from the native English in that one should try >>> >> to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, >>> >> write in short sentences, etc. >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> If you publish in languages other than English then you >>> >> need a sort of hierarchy of which languages are considered >>> >> publishable (German, French, Russian ?, Latvian ??) and >>> >> which are not. I think this issue is difficult to resolve >>> >> in a fair way. >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> Best, >>> >> >>> >> Ilja >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent: >>> >>> I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special >>> >>> issue of 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on >>> >>> suppletion last year - >>> >>> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 - >>> >>> we were able to persuade the publishers to allow one of >>> >>> the articles to be published in French. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the >>> >>> Philological Society: Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online >>> >>> Library >>> >>> >>> >>> If the address matches an existing account you will >>> >>> receive an email with instructions to retrieve your >>> username >>> >>> onlinelibrary.wiley.com >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> >>> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> >>> *From:* Hartmut Haberland >>> >>> >>> >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM >>> >>> *To:* Nigel Vincent >>> >>> ; Wiemer, Bjoern >>> >>> ; >>> >>> Gilles Authier >>> >>> >>> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit >>> >>> souvent se r?f?rer ? la tradition grammaticale grecque >>> >>> (Tzartzanos) ou fran?aise (Roussel, Mirambel). >>> >>> Restricting oneself to discourses in /one/ language is >>> >>> myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just >>> >>> two or three languages to keep up with the relevant >>> >>> literature, but how many do? >>> >>> >>> >>> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, >>> >>> ?More people can make out what it is about in French than >>> >>> actually read it?.) >>> >>> >>> >>> To take a concrete example: /Acta Linguistica Hafniensia/ >>> >>> was founded in 1939 and its first issue contained papers >>> >>> in German, French and English. Today, it still calls >>> >>> itself an ?international journal?, but now practically >>> >>> all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. >>> >>> However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), >>> >>> apart from one paper specifically dealing with English, >>> >>> there are references to literature in German, French, >>> >>> Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So linguists are at least >>> >>> not passively monolingual. >>> >>> >>> >>> Hartmut Haberland >>> >>> >>> >>> *Fra:* Lingtyp >>> >>> >>> >>> *P? >>> >>> vegne af* Nigel Vincent >>> >>> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04 >>> >>> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern >>> >>> ; Gilles Authier >>> >>> >> gilles.authier at gmail.com> >>> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> >>> >>> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les >>> >>> r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites en allemand >>> >>> ou en danois ? ? >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> >>> >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> >>> >>> >>> *From:* Wiemer, Bjoern >> >>> > >>> >>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM >>> >>> *To:* Gilles Authier >> >>> >; Nigel Vincent >>> >>> >> >>> > >>> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> >>> >>> >> >>> > >>> >>> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Je pense que oui? Actually, the same applies to articles >>> >>> on (a language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) >>> >>> or subgroups (e.g., Scandinavian)? >>> >>> >>> >>> BW >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> *Von:* Lingtyp >>> >>> [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *Im >>> >>> Auftrag von* Gilles Authier >>> >>> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35 >>> >>> *An:* Nigel Vincent >> >>> > >>> >>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> >>> >>> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les >>> >>> r?f?rences jug?es indispensables sont ?crites dans une >>> >>> langue romane, il me semblerait devoir ?tre rejet?, oui. >>> >>> >>> >>> GA >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent >>> >>> >> >>> > wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes >>> >>> thought about concerns the languages a researcher >>> >>> should be able to read in order to access relevant >>> >>> scholarship. Should, for example, a paper be rejected >>> >>> or revisions asked for if someone writing in English >>> >>> on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant >>> >>> work written in a language other than English? >>> >>> >>> >>> Nigel >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE >>> >>> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Linguistics & English Language >>> >>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures >>> >>> >>> >>> The University of Manchester >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html >>> >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> >>> >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >> -- >>> >> Ilja A. Ser?ant, postdoc >>> >> Project "Grammatical Universals" >>> >> Universit?t Leipzig (IPF 141199) >>> >> Nikolaistra?e 6-10 >>> >> 04109 Leipzig >>> >> >>> >> URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/ >>> >> >>> >> Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713 >>> >> Room 5.22 >>> >> >>> >> _______________________________________________ >>> >> Lingtyp mailing list >>> >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >> >>> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> >> -- >>> >> Prof Peter K. Austin >>> >> Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS >>> >> Visiting Researcher, Oxford University >>> >> Foundation Editor, EL Publishing >>> >> Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society >>> >> >>> >> Department of Linguistics, SOAS >>> >> Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square >>> >> London WC1H 0XG >>> >> United Kingdom >>> >> _______________________________________________ >>> >> Lingtyp mailing list >>> >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >> >>> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >> >>> >> _______________________________________________ >>> >> Lingtyp mailing list >>> >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> >> >>> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> > _______________________________________________ >>> > Lingtyp mailing list >>> > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> > >>> > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > -- >>> > Prof Peter K. Austin >>> > Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS >>> > Visiting Researcher, Oxford University >>> > Foundation Editor, EL Publishing >>> > Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society >>> > >>> > Department of Linguistics, SOAS >>> > Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square >>> > London WC1H 0XG >>> > United Kingdom >>> > >>> > _______________________________________________ >>> > Lingtyp mailing list >>> > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> > >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Lingtyp mailing list >>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lingtyp mailing list >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp >> From haspelmath at shh.mpg.de Fri Jun 26 18:57:51 2020 From: haspelmath at shh.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 20:57:51 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <20200626193317.Horde.4mzjBz4YcTSCXqfWjlCJl_X@webmail.uni-jena.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> <49f63694-ca8d-0d90-bd17-89928e5ea179@lingpy.org> <20200626193317.Horde.4mzjBz4YcTSCXqfWjlCJl_X@webmail.uni-jena.de> Message-ID: <52b9ded8-5d8d-5eba-cbd9-45cbe9e68304@shh.mpg.de> It seems that there are two groups of people: the "defeatists" who realize that English/Globish has won, and the "romantics" who cherish linguistic diversity also when it comes to linguistics writings. I belong to the defeatists, also because I know that I owe my own career to my early switch to English (my 1993 dissertation on indefinite pronouns was the first linguistics dissertation written in English in Germany, and it helped me get a good job; nowadays few people write in German about general linguistics). So, sad as it is: Just as speakers of S?liba or Japhug do not get good jobs without knowing another big language as well, linguists will hardly get good jobs unless they write in a big language. It's wonderful to hear about linguistics dissertations written in Quechua (http://www.openculture.com/2019/10/peruvian-scholar-writes-defends-the-first-thesis-written-in-quechua.html), but can this be much more than a symbolic act? Instead of talking about the languages we write in, we should perhaps talk about the way academia is organized. Why is it the case that people who write in small languages have fewer chances to get good jobs? What is it that discourages ambitious Latvian linguists from writing in Latvian? Why do I read in reviews that "X has published in excellent journals", and why is it that journals highlight their "impact factors"? Since this is a typology list: Why doesn't ALT object to De Gruyter's listing LT's impact factor (https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/lity/lity-overview.xml), even though impact factors are widely thought to be damaging to science? So if we are serious about our wish to support small languages, even in linguistics writings, we should perhaps think about moving away from De Gruyter and setting up a linguistics journal that is open to many other languages. Maybe with our prestige as ALT, we can make a real difference. (It seems unlikely, but it may be worth trying.) Best, Martin -- Martin Haspelmath (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 From clairebowern at gmail.com Fri Jun 26 19:44:51 2020 From: clairebowern at gmail.com (Claire Bowern) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 15:44:51 -0400 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <52b9ded8-5d8d-5eba-cbd9-45cbe9e68304@shh.mpg.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> <49f63694-ca8d-0d90-bd17-89928e5ea179@lingpy.org> <20200626193317.Horde.4mzjBz4YcTSCXqfWjlCJl_X@webmail.uni-jena.de> <52b9ded8-5d8d-5eba-cbd9-45cbe9e68304@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: For what it's worth, *Diachronica* allows submissions in French, German, or Spanish (as well as English) and we publish summaries of each article in French and German. We are currently looking into adding Mandarin and Spanish to the summaries (working out some logistical details). Of course, that does not really help with the Eurocentrism issue, since (apart from Mandarin) these are all European and colonial languages. The vast majority of our submissions are in English, the German submissions are all from Germany, the Spanish submissions are almost all from Central and South America, and the French submissions are mostly from Francophone Africa. Claire On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 3:00 PM Martin Haspelmath wrote: > It seems that there are two groups of people: the "defeatists" who > realize that English/Globish has won, and the "romantics" who cherish > linguistic diversity also when it comes to linguistics writings. > > I belong to the defeatists, also because I know that I owe my own career > to my early switch to English (my 1993 dissertation on indefinite > pronouns was the first linguistics dissertation written in English in > Germany, and it helped me get a good job; nowadays few people write in > German about general linguistics). > > So, sad as it is: Just as speakers of S?liba or Japhug do not get good > jobs without knowing another big language as well, linguists will hardly > get good jobs unless they write in a big language. It's wonderful to > hear about linguistics dissertations written in Quechua > ( > http://www.openculture.com/2019/10/peruvian-scholar-writes-defends-the-first-thesis-written-in-quechua.html), > > but can this be much more than a symbolic act? > > Instead of talking about the languages we write in, we should perhaps > talk about the way academia is organized. Why is it the case that people > who write in small languages have fewer chances to get good jobs? What > is it that discourages ambitious Latvian linguists from writing in Latvian? > > Why do I read in reviews that "X has published in excellent journals", > and why is it that journals highlight their "impact factors"? Since this > is a typology list: Why doesn't ALT object to De Gruyter's listing LT's > impact factor > (https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/lity/lity-overview.xml), even > though impact factors are widely thought to be damaging to science? > > So if we are serious about our wish to support small languages, even in > linguistics writings, we should perhaps think about moving away from De > Gruyter and setting up a linguistics journal that is open to many other > languages. Maybe with our prestige as ALT, we can make a real > difference. (It seems unlikely, but it may be worth trying.) > > Best, > Martin > > -- > Martin Haspelmath (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 > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gil at shh.mpg.de Fri Jun 26 20:11:39 2020 From: gil at shh.mpg.de (David Gil) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 23:11:39 +0300 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <52b9ded8-5d8d-5eba-cbd9-45cbe9e68304@shh.mpg.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> <49f63694-ca8d-0d90-bd17-89928e5ea179@lingpy.org> <20200626193317.Horde.4mzjBz4YcTSCXqfWjlCJl_X@webmail.uni-jena.de> <52b9ded8-5d8d-5eba-cbd9-45cbe9e68304@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: <639bf9c9-9a6b-c8ef-bd2d-25999ab8636a@shh.mpg.de> Dear all, Like Martin I am a "defeatist", except that I don't really think it's that bad a state of affairs. Looking at things from a somewhat broader perspective, we are clearly in a transition to a Global era where more and more things are being done on a global scale. Kids in Indonesia play online interactive electronic games with kids from America and Africa, and of course they interact in rudimentary Globish.? Ditto training sessions in top football clubs employing star players from all over the world, ditto the international space station, ditto Max Planck Institutes, so why not also scientific publications?? All of these and many others constitute collective endeavors which require a common language ? and English is the inevitable (albeit historically accidental) choice. If an earlier era witnessed the rise of national languages alongside regional ones, we are now in an era where the world village needs its own language, and the obvious choice is English (whether or not we decide to call it Globish ? I quite like the idea myself). And just as national languages call for bilingualism, and often offer an unfair advantage to native speakers of the national language, so the rise of global English points towards a new norm of trilingualism, with, again, an unfair advantage to persons whose native language happens to be English.? Yes, we need to find ways to help our friends whose native language is not English, just as, for some time now, we have needed to help those whose native language is not their national one.? But I really don't see any alternative to English as the global language. David On 26/06/2020 21:57, Martin Haspelmath wrote: > It seems that there are two groups of people: the "defeatists" who > realize that English/Globish has won, and the "romantics" who cherish > linguistic diversity also when it comes to linguistics writings. > > I belong to the defeatists, also because I know that I owe my own > career to my early switch to English (my 1993 dissertation on > indefinite pronouns was the first linguistics dissertation written in > English in Germany, and it helped me get a good job; nowadays few > people write in German about general linguistics). > > So, sad as it is: Just as speakers of S?liba or Japhug do not get good > jobs without knowing another big language as well, linguists will > hardly get good jobs unless they write in a big language. It's > wonderful to hear about linguistics dissertations written in Quechua > (http://www.openculture.com/2019/10/peruvian-scholar-writes-defends-the-first-thesis-written-in-quechua.html), > but can this be much more than a symbolic act? > > Instead of talking about the languages we write in, we should perhaps > talk about the way academia is organized. Why is it the case that > people who write in small languages have fewer chances to get good > jobs? What is it that discourages ambitious Latvian linguists from > writing in Latvian? > > Why do I read in reviews that "X has published in excellent journals", > and why is it that journals highlight their "impact factors"? Since > this is a typology list: Why doesn't ALT object to De Gruyter's > listing LT's impact factor > (https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/lity/lity-overview.xml), even > though impact factors are widely thought to be damaging to science? > > So if we are serious about our wish to support small languages, even > in linguistics writings, we should perhaps think about moving away > from De Gruyter and setting up a linguistics journal that is open to > many other languages. Maybe with our prestige as ALT, we can make a > real difference. (It seems unlikely, but it may be worth trying.) > > Best, > Martin > -- David Gil Senior Scientist (Associate) 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 (Israel): +972-556825895 Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091 From jrosesla at ualberta.ca Fri Jun 26 20:11:59 2020 From: jrosesla at ualberta.ca (=?UTF-8?Q?Jorge_Ros=C3=A9s_Labrada?=) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 14:11:59 -0600 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <52b9ded8-5d8d-5eba-cbd9-45cbe9e68304@shh.mpg.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> <49f63694-ca8d-0d90-bd17-89928e5ea179@lingpy.org> <20200626193317.Horde.4mzjBz4YcTSCXqfWjlCJl_X@webmail.uni-jena.de> <52b9ded8-5d8d-5eba-cbd9-45cbe9e68304@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: Martin invites us to think "about the way academia is organized" and "[w]hy is it the case that people who write in small languages have fewer chances to get good jobs?" while pointing out that "linguists will hardly get good jobs unless they write in a big language." I agree that we do need to be thinking about the way academia operates and especially the changes and attacks it is currently undergoing (casualization of labour, budget cuts, increased fees for the arts and humanities, predatory publishing companies, and many more) but I want to point out that we all (and especially the senior academics on this list) have some agency in hiring, funding, and publication decisions so when we serve on hiring or funding committees or serve as reviewers for a funding agency or a tenure case or sit on editorial boards, we should all be thinking about what work gets accepted/rewarded/promoted and what barriers prevent wider inclusion/representation and, importantly, how we can dismantle those barriers. Best, Jorge ------------- Jorge Emilio Ros?s Labrada Assistant Professor, Indigenous Language Sustainability 4-22 Assiniboia Hall Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta Tel: (+1) 780-492-5698 Email: jrosesla at ualberta.ca *The University of Alberta acknowledges that we are located on Treaty 6 territory, **and respects the history, languages, and cultures of the First Nations, M?tis, Inuit, * *and all First Peoples of Canada, whose presence continues to enrich our institution.* On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 12:59 PM Martin Haspelmath wrote: > It seems that there are two groups of people: the "defeatists" who > realize that English/Globish has won, and the "romantics" who cherish > linguistic diversity also when it comes to linguistics writings. > > I belong to the defeatists, also because I know that I owe my own career > to my early switch to English (my 1993 dissertation on indefinite > pronouns was the first linguistics dissertation written in English in > Germany, and it helped me get a good job; nowadays few people write in > German about general linguistics). > > So, sad as it is: Just as speakers of S?liba or Japhug do not get good > jobs without knowing another big language as well, linguists will hardly > get good jobs unless they write in a big language. It's wonderful to > hear about linguistics dissertations written in Quechua > ( > http://www.openculture.com/2019/10/peruvian-scholar-writes-defends-the-first-thesis-written-in-quechua.html), > > but can this be much more than a symbolic act? > > Instead of talking about the languages we write in, we should perhaps > talk about the way academia is organized. Why is it the case that people > who write in small languages have fewer chances to get good jobs? What > is it that discourages ambitious Latvian linguists from writing in Latvian? > > Why do I read in reviews that "X has published in excellent journals", > and why is it that journals highlight their "impact factors"? Since this > is a typology list: Why doesn't ALT object to De Gruyter's listing LT's > impact factor > (https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/lity/lity-overview.xml), even > though impact factors are widely thought to be damaging to science? > > So if we are serious about our wish to support small languages, even in > linguistics writings, we should perhaps think about moving away from De > Gruyter and setting up a linguistics journal that is open to many other > languages. Maybe with our prestige as ALT, we can make a real > difference. (It seems unlikely, but it may be worth trying.) > > Best, > Martin > > -- > Martin Haspelmath (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 > > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hartmut at ruc.dk Fri Jun 26 20:43:58 2020 From: hartmut at ruc.dk (Hartmut Haberland) Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 20:43:58 +0000 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <52b9ded8-5d8d-5eba-cbd9-45cbe9e68304@shh.mpg.de> References: <638e6fbe400440f48e466d5bc723406e@uni-mainz.de> <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813C9B04@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> <073d0e37-148e-3277-9b8e-69fb7c276e72@uni-leipzig.de> <4fbeb33c-0fe0-4bd4-af8a-228e93898af1@Spark> <49f63694-ca8d-0d90-bd17-89928e5ea179@lingpy.org> <20200626193317.Horde.4mzjBz4YcTSCXqfWjlCJl_X@webmail.uni-jena.de> <52b9ded8-5d8d-5eba-cbd9-45cbe9e68304@shh.mpg.de> Message-ID: <64BC5F23CF335040B77A5CCE9CF7A7E801813CB910@MBX4.ad.ruc.dk> May I refer to a book by Linus Sal?, 2017. The Sociolinguistics of Academic Publishing. Language and the Practices of Homo Academicus. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. I haven?t checked the book again, and maybe I am oversimplifying, but what I remember is Linus? point that publications in English have less to do with real internationalization but with competition within a country about which universities are ?most international?. Hartmut -----Oprindelig meddelelse----- Fra: Lingtyp P? vegne af Martin Haspelmath Sendt: 26. juni 2020 20:58 Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship It seems that there are two groups of people: the "defeatists" who realize that English/Globish has won, and the "romantics" who cherish linguistic diversity also when it comes to linguistics writings. I belong to the defeatists, also because I know that I owe my own career to my early switch to English (my 1993 dissertation on indefinite pronouns was the first linguistics dissertation written in English in Germany, and it helped me get a good job; nowadays few people write in German about general linguistics). So, sad as it is: Just as speakers of S?liba or Japhug do not get good jobs without knowing another big language as well, linguists will hardly get good jobs unless they write in a big language. It's wonderful to hear about linguistics dissertations written in Quechua (http://www.openculture.com/2019/10/peruvian-scholar-writes-defends-the-first-thesis-written-in-quechua.html), but can this be much more than a symbolic act? Instead of talking about the languages we write in, we should perhaps talk about the way academia is organized. Why is it the case that people who write in small languages have fewer chances to get good jobs? What is it that discourages ambitious Latvian linguists from writing in Latvian? Why do I read in reviews that "X has published in excellent journals", and why is it that journals highlight their "impact factors"? Since this is a typology list: Why doesn't ALT object to De Gruyter's listing LT's impact factor (https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/lity/lity-overview.xml), even though impact factors are widely thought to be damaging to science? So if we are serious about our wish to support small languages, even in linguistics writings, we should perhaps think about moving away from De Gruyter and setting up a linguistics journal that is open to many other languages. Maybe with our prestige as ALT, we can make a real difference. (It seems unlikely, but it may be worth trying.) Best, Martin -- Martin Haspelmath (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 _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paoram at unipv.it Sun Jun 28 14:50:26 2020 From: paoram at unipv.it (Paolo Ramat) Date: Sun, 28 Jun 2020 16:50:26 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship Message-ID: <000801d64d5b$7659fd20$630df760$@unipv.it> Dear all, I have followed with great interest the discussion about ?Globish? and languages of scholarship. Having been since 1996 the (now outgoing) editor of the oldest Italian linguistic journal founded by G.I. Ascoli (1873: ?Archivio Glottologico Italiano?, AGI), I was faced many times with the language choice problem. I would like to make some comments. I think that between ?defeatists? and ?romantics? (Martin?s dichotomy) there is a third way. Linguists should care not only for the international readers? community but also for the ?local? readers who might not be interested in general, theoretical problems, but are strongly concerned for their own language and eager to know more about its history and perhaps also about its future. There exist journals which are dedicated to specific areas. Take for instance the Dutch journal ?Taal en Tongval? : we read on the cover sheet: <>. Similarly, it would make little sense to ask perspective contributors to the ?Rivista di Dialettologia Italiana? to use English (unless an article would deal with general problems concerning what?s a dialect and what does it mean for a dialectologist to write a grammar of a dialect). Admittedly, this is pure Eurocentrism (as Claire Bowern underlines); but we are the heirs of a long standing tradition which deserves to be kept. Why to re-baptize the glorious Norsk tidsskrift for sprogvidenskap as ?Norwegian Journal of Linguistics?? Even keeping the traditional ?NTS? name would it be possible to accept English written papers --perhaps the majority of them, if the Authors prefer to write in English or ?Globish?. Peter Austin is absolutely right when he writes that there are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics and related fields published annually in languages like Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which never pierces the consciousness of English-only researchers because of attitudes like having language hierarchies composed entirely of European languages (see also B.Hurch?s mail). Moreover. I agree with Martin when he writes that along with the traditional Eurocentrism it?s also ethnocentric to only cite work by American linguists and somehow assume that there is nothing else of relevance. On the other hand it is true, as Guillaume says, that young linguists are not competitive if they don?t publish in ?Globish?. Remember the amusing anecdote told by Nigel who, on the occasion of an international conference on Italian linguistics, was asked to held his plenary lecture in Italian since most of the native speakers had chosen to give their papers in English! (It?s amusing, but not so fun!...). The solution is to leave the choice to the Author of the article submitted to the journal, as, e.g., Diachronica does. This is the liberal policy we have adopted for AGI. But this is not the policy of the big publishing houses. I remember the long discussion we had with the publisher in order to have one volume of the EUROTYP-series published in French: Actance et Valence dans les langues de l?Europe (in a similar vein Nigel tells us of a special issue of 'Transactions of the Philological Society': he and Frans Plank have been able to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be published in French !). Whether you like it or not, this is the situation you have to live with. My conclusion: one has to have ?mixed (and at the same time liberal) feelings? : 1. ?Defeatism?: Globish (i.e. an English variety avoiding dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic expressions, using short sentences, etc.: see Ilja Ser?ant) is the international unavoidable language linguists and other scientists have to use when dealing with general problems which may be relevant for a large international audience. (Obviously, this does not impinge upon the possibility of having valuable English written contributions on M?cheno, a Bavarian dialect spoken in Trentino -- Fersentalerisch ! Once more: the language choice is a matter of the Author, who shouldn?t be compelled to use Globish) 2. On the other hand, just as Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese linguists have their own journals dedicated to the many languages spoken in their own areas, we ?I mean the European linguists?have to keep alive a tradition of studies using our mother tongues : a ?romantic? position, in Martin?s terms. Best, Paolo Universit? di Pavia (retired) IUSS Pavia (retired) Editor-in-Chief of ?Archivio Glottologico Italiano? Accademia dei Lincei, Socio corrispondente Academia Europaea Societas Linguistica Europaea, Honorary Member Home address: Piazzetta Arduino 11 I-27100 PAVIA ##39 0382 27027 ##39 347 044 9844 -- Questa e-mail ? stata controllata per individuare virus con Avast antivirus. https://www.avast.com/antivirus -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dubois at ucsb.edu Sun Jun 28 18:39:59 2020 From: dubois at ucsb.edu (John Du Bois) Date: Sun, 28 Jun 2020 11:39:59 -0700 Subject: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship In-Reply-To: <000801d64d5b$7659fd20$630df760$@unipv.it> References: <000801d64d5b$7659fd20$630df760$@unipv.it> Message-ID: Paolo, This is a wonderful statement of all the complexities of language choice that arise in the domain of scholarly linguistic publication, complete with a cogent proposal for how to balance the conflicting values that inevitably come into play. Jack ============================== John W. Du Bois Professor of Linguistics University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, California 93106 USA dubois at ucsb.edu On Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 7:50 AM Paolo Ramat wrote: > Dear all, > > I have followed with great interest the discussion about ?Globish? and > languages of scholarship. Having been since 1996 the (now outgoing) editor > of the oldest Italian linguistic journal founded by G.I. Ascoli (1873: > ?Archivio Glottologico Italiano?, *AGI*), I was faced many times with the > language choice problem. I would like to make some comments. > > I think that between ?defeatists? and ?romantics? (Martin?s dichotomy) > there is a third way. Linguists should care not only for the international > readers? community but also for the ?local? readers who might not be > interested in general, theoretical problems, but are strongly concerned for > their own language and eager to know more about its history and perhaps > also about its future. There exist journals which are dedicated to > specific areas. Take for instance the Dutch journal ?Taal en Tongval? : we > read on the cover sheet: < devoted to the scientific study of language variation in the Netherlands > and Flanders, in neighbouring areas and in languages related to Dutch. The > journal welcomes contributions in Dutch, English and German. In certain > cases we also consider articles in other languages, including Frisian, > Afrikaans and French.>>. Similarly, it would make little sense to ask > perspective contributors to the ?Rivista di Dialettologia Italiana? to use > English (unless an article would deal with general problems concerning > what?s a dialect and what does it mean for a dialectologist to write a > grammar of a dialect). Admittedly, this is pure *Eurocentrism* (as > Claire Bowern underlines); but we are the heirs of a long standing > tradition which deserves to be kept. Why to re-baptize the glorious Norsk > tidsskrift for sprogvidenskap as ?Norwegian Journal of Linguistics?? Even > keeping the traditional ?*NTS*? name would it be possible to accept > English written papers --perhaps the majority of them, if the Authors > prefer to write in English or ?Globish?. > > > > Peter Austin is absolutely right when he writes that there are hundreds > of excellent research papers in linguistics and related fields published > annually in languages like Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which > never pierces the consciousness of English-only researchers because of > attitudes like having language hierarchies composed entirely of European > languages (see also B.Hurch?s mail). Moreover. I agree with Martin when > he writes that along with the traditional Eurocentrism it?s also > ethnocentric to only cite work by American linguists and somehow assume > that there is nothing else of relevance. > > > > On the other hand it is true, as Guillaume says, that young linguists are > not competitive if they don?t publish in ?Globish?. Remember the amusing > anecdote told by Nigel who, on the occasion of an international conference > on Italian linguistics, was asked to held his plenary lecture in Italian > since most of the native speakers had chosen to give their papers in > English! (It?s amusing, but not so fun!...). > > > > The solution is to *leave the choice to the Author* of the article > submitted to the journal, as, e.g., *Diachronica* does. This is the > liberal policy we have adopted for *AGI. * > > But this is not the policy of the big publishing houses. I remember the > long discussion we had with the publisher in order to have one volume of > the EUROTYP-series published in French: *Actance et Valence dans les > langues de l?Europe *(in a similar vein Nigel tells us of a special issue > of 'Transactions of the Philological Society': he and Frans Plank have > been able to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be > published in French !). Whether you like it or not, this is the situation > you have to live with. > > My conclusion: one has to have ?mixed (and at the same time liberal) > feelings? : > > 1. ?Defeatism?: Globish (i.e. an English variety avoiding dialectal, > non-transparent idiomatic expressions, using short sentences, etc.: see Ilja > Ser?ant) is the international unavoidable language linguists and other > scientists have to use when dealing with general problems which may be > relevant for a large international audience. (Obviously, this does not > impinge upon the possibility of having valuable English written > contributions on M?cheno, a Bavarian dialect spoken in Trentino -- > Fersentalerisch ! Once more: the language choice is a matter of the Author, > who shouldn?t be compelled to use Globish) > > 2. On the other hand, just as Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese > linguists have their own journals dedicated to the many languages spoken in > their own areas, we ?I mean the European linguists?have to keep alive a > tradition of studies using our mother tongues : a ?romantic? position, in > Martin?s terms. > > Best, > > Paolo > > > > > > Universit? di Pavia (retired) > > IUSS Pavia (retired) > > Editor-in-Chief of ?Archivio Glottologico Italiano? > > Accademia dei Lincei, Socio corrispondente > > Academia Europaea > > Societas Linguistica Europaea, Honorary Member > > > > Home address: > > Piazzetta Arduino 11 > > I-27100 PAVIA > > ##39 0382 27027 ##39 347 044 9844 > > > > > ------------------------------ > [image: Avast logo] > > Questa e-mail ? stata controllata per individuare virus con Avast > antivirus. > www.avast.com > > <#m_-2072160162676558545_DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2> > _______________________________________________ > Lingtyp mailing list > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stela.manova at univie.ac.at Mon Jun 29 07:15:11 2020 From: stela.manova at univie.ac.at (Stela Manova) Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2020 09:15:11 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] CFP: Dissecting morphological theory: Diminutivization in root-, stem- and word-based morphology Message-ID: <743CFC18-D83A-47AC-820C-7B73E1F526DA@univie.ac.at> Dissecting morphological theory: Diminutivization in root-, stem- and word-based morphology Proposal for a workshop to be held during the 46. Austrian Linguistics Conference , Vienna, 4-6 December 2020 Workshop website: https://sites.google.com/view/morphologytheories-diminutives Organizers: Stela Manova , Boban Arsenijevi? , Laura Grestenberger , Katharina Korecky-Kr?ll Call for papers This workshop scrutinizes and compares theoretical assumptions in morphology. Diminutivization serves as a testing ground. The goal is to bring together scholars working within different theoretical frameworks as well as computational and experimental morphologists. Invited speaker: Professor Emeritus Wolfgang U. Dressler (University of Vienna), unconfirmed. Diminutive morphology presents a number of theoretical challenges. Just a few issues illustrated primarily with organizers? research: Diminutive affixes if attached to nouns denoting persons do not derive diminutives (proper), e.g. Russian mamo?ka ?mother-DIM, mommy? does not mean ?small mother?; thus, some diminutive forms appear closely related to hypocoristics (Dressler & Merlini Barbaresi 1994; Korecky-Kr?ll & Dressler 2007; Simonovi? & Arsenijevi? 2015; Manova et al. 2017). Diminutive affixes can change fundamental properties of nouns such as gender and countability (Manova & Winternitz 2011; Arsenijevi? 2016); in the verbal domain, diminutive affixes can change the conjugation class and/or valency of the base (Oltra-Massuet & Castroviejo 2014). Unlike diminutive nouns, not all diminutive verbs are derived from verbs (Grestenberger & Kallulli 2019); and ?small is many in the event domain? (Tovena 2011). Diminutive affixes can be repeated; all diminutivizers express the same semantics but they do not combine with each other freely (Manova & Winternitz 2011; Merlini Barbaresi 2012). To make theoretical assumptions comparable, we differentiate between composition and decomposition and recognize three types of composition exemplified with the organizations of three theories of morphology: Distributed Morphology (DM), Paradigm Function Morphology (PFM) and Natural Morphology (NM) : Root-based: composition in DM (Halle & Marantz 1998, Bobaljik 2017) is of this type, i.e. in a syntax-oriented model such as DM, a derivation takes place step-by-step starting from the root, e.g. from ?read. In DM, roots have a special status and are categoriless; the affix attached to the root provides the syntactic category, i.e. affixes are heads. However, recent DM studies (De Belder 2011; Lowenstamm 2015; Creemers et al. 2018) have claimed that some affixes are roots, i.e. categoriless too (on the categorization of diminutive suffixes, Grestenberger & Kallulli 2019). Stem-based: PFM (Stump 2001) links words in slots of inflectional paradigms but derives those words stem-based. Stump (2016) speaks of content paradigm, form paradigm and realized paradigm; the composition of a word form takes place in the form paradigm and starts from a stem (e.g. read; Latin hort?-, from hortor ?encourage?) to which then pieces of word structure without semantics (PFM is a-morphous) are attached by rules of exponence. The prototypical stem has the shape of [root + morpheme]. Similar to roots, stems may be categoriless, i.e. morphomes (Aronoff 1994). Morphomes are not associated with specific semantics, cannot be derived syntactically and are evidence for the existence of morphology by itself, i.e. against DM where morphology is distributed between syntax and phonology. Nevertheless, recent DM studies seem to use morphomes: combinations of categoriless roots and categoriless affixes (mentioned in 1) are morphomic stems in a stem-based analysis. Word-based: NM (Dressler et al. 1987) is morphology by itself, functionalist and cognitively oriented, and allows for root-, stem- and word-based composition. Since words have a primary role in discourse, word-based morphology is seen as the most natural, root-based morphology being the least natural, i.e. if a root or a stem coincides with a word (e.g. read), the base is classified as a word. With respect to decomposition, all three theories agree that people communicate with words and that the latter have internal structure, i.e. decomposition seems exclusively word-based. Recent DM-related neurolinguistic research has provided experimental evidence for this assumption: speakers decompose the (visual) stimulus (e.g. teacher) into morphemes, look these up in the mental lexicon, and recombine them (Fruchter et al. 2013; Fruchter & Marantz 2015). It has to be mentioned herein that PFM and NM have not explicitly addressed decomposition. Additionally, in PFM composition is exclusively related to form (a-morphous production of forms); in NM composition involves meaning and form (NM morphemes relate meaning and form); and in DM composition refers to meaning (DM morphemes are abstract and correspond to syntactic terminal nodes), while decomposition involves form and meaning (visual stimuli such as teacher are well-formed words and thus have meaning). On the relation of meaning and form in morphology, see Manova et al. (2020). Finally, regarding the organization of morphology, i.e. the derivation-inflection divide: in DM, there is no principal difference between derivational and inflectional affixes, i.e. both types of affixes can serve as heads; note, however, that the recent claim that some affixes are roots (references in 1) holds only for derivational affixes; PFM has been explicitly defined as a theory of inflectional morphology (Stump 2001) but paradigms have been postulated for derivational morphology as well (Bonami & Strnadov? 2019 and references therein); in NM derivation and inflection are the two poles of a continuum and there are thus prototypical and non-prototypical derivation and inflection (Dressler 1989), diminutivization of nouns being an example of non-prototypical derivation, i.e. between derivation and inflection but on the derivational side (Dressler & Korecky-Kr?ll 2015). We invite papers that, based on diminutives, discuss the (dis)advantages of a single theoretical framework or different theories comparatively. Papers that profit from a mix of theories are also welcome. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: Diminutivization of major word classes Diminutivization and non-major word classes Diminutivization and the derivation-inflection divide Gender, animacy, countability and diminutivization of nouns Aspect, pluractionality and diminutivization of verbs Diminutives versus hypocoristics Diminutivization of diminutives Acquisition of diminutive morphology Diachrony of diminutive morphology Diminutive morphology in language contact Sociolinguistic variation of diminutive morphology Experimental and computational evidence versus theoretical assumptions We plan a publication of a selection of the workshop papers. Important dates Deadline for abstract registration: 27 July 2020 (this is for organizational purposes, required are the title of the abstract and a few keywords) Deadline for abstract submission: 15 September 2020 Acceptance notifications: 1 October 2020 Workshop: 4-6 December 2020 (please note that the workshop may be moved to an online format) Abstract registration / submission Please use the following link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=dmtd2020 . Abstract format: anonymous PDF, max. 500 words (examples and references do not count), single spaced, justified alignment. Selected references Aronoff, Mark (1994). Morphology by Itself. Cambridge, Ma: MIT Press. Arsenijevi?, Boban (2016). Gender, like classifiers, marks uniform atomicity: Evidence from Serbo-Croatian. CLS (Chicago Linguistic Society) 52, University of Chicago, 21-23. 4. 2016. Belder, Marijke De (2011). Roots and affixes, eliminating lexical categories from syntax. PhD diss., Utrecht University. Bobaljik, Jonathan (2017). Distributed Morphology. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Retrieved 17 Jun. 2020, from https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-131 . Bonami, Olivier & Jana Strnadov? (2019). Paradigm structure and predictability in derivational morphology. Morphology 29(2): 167?197. Creemers, Ava., Jan Don & Paula Fenger (2018). Some affixes are roots, others are heads. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 36: 45?84. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-017-9372-1 Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1989). Prototypical differences between inflection and derivation. Zeitschrift f?r Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 42: 3-10. Dressler,Wolfgang U., Willi Mayerthaler, Oswald Panagl & Wolfgang U. Wurzel (1987). Leitmotifs in Natural Morphology. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Lavinia Merlini Barbaresi (1994). Morphopragmatics: diminutives and intensifiers in Italian, German, and other languages. Berlin: de Gruyter. Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Katharina Korecky-Kr?ll (2015). Evaluative morphology and language acquisition. In Nicola Grandi & Livia K?rtv?lyessy (eds.). Edinburgh Handbook of Evaluative Morphology, 134-141. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Fruchter, Joseph & Alec Marantz (2015). Decomposition, lookup, and recombination: MEG evidence for the Full Decomposition model of complex visual word recognition. Brain and Language 143: 81?96. Fruchter, Joseph, Linnaea Stockall & Alec Marantz (2013). MEG masked priming evidence for form-based decomposition of irregular verbs. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7: 1?16. Grestenberger, Laura & Dalina Kallulli (2019). The largesse of diminutives: suppressing the projection of roots. In M. Baird & J. Pesetsky (eds.), Proceedings of NELS 49, Cornell University, Oct. 5-7, 2018, vol. 2, 61?74. Amherst: GLSA. 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URL: From diana.forker at uni-jena.de Mon Jun 29 07:23:24 2020 From: diana.forker at uni-jena.de (Diana Forker) Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2020 09:23:24 +0200 Subject: [Lingtyp] Two doctoral fellowships in linguistics at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena Message-ID: <20200629092324.Horde.xXKpn1YsnnspGbMuZRGBXNN@webmail.uni-jena.de> Two doctoral fellowships in linguistics at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena 1. Fellowship The interdisciplinary research project "Global knowledge transfer and translocal paradoxes" at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena invites applications for a doctoral fellowship (3 years). The doctoral fellow is expected to make a significant contribution to the research programme of the centre as specified below, and to write a dissertation on a relevant topic. The linguistic subproject on "Transfer of linguistic technologies and resources" focuses on the transfer from high resource languages to low resource languages. This concerns the creation of linguistic corpora of smaller national languages using computer-aided methods (e.g. automated structural and semantic annotations, automatic translation), e.g. in the context of political discourse. In cooperation with other sub-projects, interdisciplinary, comparative corpus-based case studies on topics such as "digitalization", "freedom" or "pandemic management" will be carried out, for instance using topic modeling and sentiment analysis. Tasks and deliverables: * PhD dissertation * creation of annotated corpora of low resource languages * training of annotation and translation models for these languages * interdisciplinary case studies on topics that are of interest to the research centre * participation in the preparation of funding applications Requirements: * degree in general or computational linguistics, or the linguistics of a specific language * experience with work on multilingual corpora (annotation and analysis) * experience with word embeddings * experience with semantic text modeling (e.g. topic modeling, sentiment analysis) * solid knowledge of at least one programming language (e.g. Java, Python, R) * experience with version control systems * interest in research data management (e.g. reproducibility, FAIRness) Applications should include a CV, a sample of written work, an expos? for a PhD project and (optionally) letters of reference. Please send your applications by email to susanne.buechner at uni-jena.de. The deadline is July, 20, 2020. If you have any questions concerning the application, please get in touch with diana.forker at uni-jena.de or volker.gast at uni-jena.de Project summary: "Global knowledge transfer and translocal paradoxes" Globalisation is generally seen as both a cause and a consequence of increasing spatial mobility. This mobility involves various forms of transfer: the transfer of knowledge and norms in socio-cultural life as well as science and technology. The aim of the project is to analyse such global exchange processes. It will examine their conditions and consequences as well as the actors involved, in current and historical terms, from a conceptual and empirical perspective. The main focus is on the manifold tensions and paradoxes associated with cultural and regional differentiation on the one hand, and global connectedness on the other. Two types of paradoxes will figure centrally: (i) those that arise as a result of the (often asymmetrical) exchange processes between regional and cultural spaces; and (ii) those that arise within such spaces or societies as a result of said processes. * * * 2. Fellowship The interdisciplinary research project "Spheres of liberty and the protection of freedom in the European state" at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena invites applications for a doctoral fellowship (3 years). The doctoral fellow is expected to make a significant contribution to the research programme of the centre as specified below, and to write a dissertation on a relevant topic. The linguistic sub-project on "The blessings and curses of the digital era" investigates public discourse centering around attitudes towards digitalization and its relation to personal and political freedom. The studies will be corpus-based, e.g. using multilingual parliamentary corpora of European languages (https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/L4OAKN) and possibly additional newspaper and Twitter corpora. Tasks and deliverables: * PhD dissertation * creation of annotated parliamentary corpora * interdisciplinary case studies on the relationship between digitalization and freedom * participation in the preparation of funding applications Requirements: * degree in general linguistics, or the linguistics of a specific language * experience with work on multilingual corpora * solid knowledge of statistical methods of corpus analysis * interest in research data management Applications should include a CV, a sample of written work, an expos? for a PhD project and (optionally) letters of reference. Please send your applications by email to susanne.buechner at uni-jena.de. The deadline is July, 20, 2020. If you have any questions concerning the application, please get in touch with diana.forker at uni-jena.de or volker.gast at uni-jena.de Project summary: "Spheres of liberty and the protection of freedom in the European state" While the long-term consequences of the digital revolution are not yet fully understood, there is no doubt that modern societies face several political, economic and social challenges coming with technological progress in the domain of artificial intelligence. This concerns, among other things, the operation of the state under conditions of digitalization. On the one hand, the state is challenged by globally operating IT companies, resulting in significant enforcement deficits. On the other hand, the use of artificial intelligence enables the state to exercise control over citizens and companies. The project deals with these challenges from a legal, sociological and economic point of view, in several interconnected sub-projects from various fields. -- Prof. Dr. Diana Forker Professur f?r Kaukasusstudien Institut f?r Slawistik und Kaukasusstudien Jenergasse 8 (Acchouchierhaus) 07743 Jena Tel. +49-3641-944885