[Lingtyp] languages without feet?

Mon May 8 05:15:55 UTC 2023

Thanks everyone for the helpful comments

Mark: this is an interesting comment, as it is typically used to argue in
favor of the universality of structures cross-linguistically.

" I’m not sure whether or not there are languages for which that would not
be true – i.e. in which assuming a foot level not only adds nothing, but
leads to a less insightful or unworkable analysis. To me, that’s a more
interesting question than whether or not we *have* to identify a foot
distinct from syllable and word for any given language to sustain a
particular prosodic analysis (lack of positive evidence not generally being
taken as negative evidence in theorizing about UG)."

Perhaps I'm missing some crucial assumption, but I don't understand this
formulation. Should it not be up to those *pushing *theoretical claims that
the conditions for the falsifiability of their theories be clear? If
someone is making a claim that some structure is universal, should it
really be an *open question *how they could ever conceivably be wrong?

Nespor & Vogel (2007:11) make a similar argument regarding layers of the
prosodic hierarchy. They argue that if one does not find evidence for a
given layer of the prosodic hierarchy one is not necessarily warranted in
assuming that the layer is not present. So one of the reasons that the
prosodic hierarchy hypothesis seems like it has wide empirical coverage is
because it is basically let off the hook for accounting for cases where
there seems to be no evidence for its domains. And the reverse is true as
well it turns out (too many domains? just posit some are not related to the
theory). I've heard the same argument used to justify the vP shell, the
argument for binary branching in all languages, and, of course, for the
universal foot as well. It's been insisted that if I don't want to adopt
the foot I should provide evidence *against *its presence (... against the
presence of something invisible).

When are we justified in saying that positing a particular formal structure
is "unworkable", especially when such structures are indeterminately
abstract, especially if we are willing to admit that the structure need not
have any empirical content? Are we not constructing a hypothesis that is
fundamentally unfalsifiable? Or is the claim here that falsifiability is
not a good criterion for scientific status?

And in linguistic descriptions, in the long run, doesn't presuming evidence
for a structure when none can be found present a misleading picture of
typological variation?

best,

Adam

On Mon, May 8, 2023 at 6:39 AM Mark Post <mark.post at sydney.edu.au> wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
>
>
> Just briefly, I think Enfield’s recent analysis of prosodic structure in
> Lao
>
>
>
> https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198865681.003.0007
>
>
>
> …which I think also holds for Thai, suggests that while it may be
> *possible* to handle prosodic phenomena at the word level – basically by
> proliferating word “types” – it’s more *desirable* to handle prosodic
> phenomena at the sub-word level – so it’s not really a case of shoehorning
> the data into a particular model for at least those lgs.
>
>
>
> I’m not sure whether or not there are languages for which that would not
> be true – i.e. in which assuming a foot level not only adds nothing, but
> leads to a less insightful or unworkable analysis. To me, that’s a more
> interesting question than whether or not we *have* to identify a foot
> distinct from syllable and word for any given language to sustain a
> particular prosodic analysis (lack of positive evidence not generally being
> taken as negative evidence in theorizing about UG).
>
>
>
> Cheers
>
> Mark
>
>
>
> *From: *Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of
> Kirsten <kirstenculhane at gmail.com>
> *Date: *Sunday, 7 May 2023 at 00:03
> *To: *Adam James Ross Tallman <ajrtallman at utexas.edu>
> *Cc: *LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG <LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org
> >
> *Subject: *Re: [Lingtyp] languages without feet?
>
> Hi Adam and everyone else,
>
> The Strict Layer Hypothesis assumes that foot structure —as for other
> prosodic domains — is present in all languages. I get the impression,
> however, that the lack of evidence or foot structure in many languages
> hasn't been problematised in the same way as for the syllable and word -
> e.g. Hyman's analysis of Gokana, Sheiring et al's re: Vietnamese (one
> exception is Özçelik 2017's paper The Foot is not an obligatory constituent
> of the Prosodic Hierarchy: “stress” in Turkish, French and child English).
>
> Anyway, underlying much of the discussion here is ultimately the question
> of what constitutes evidence for foot structure, and what is the
> relationship between foot structure and stress. I think there's good
> reasons not to treat stress as evidence for foot structure (you can account
> for stress without foot structure, and empirical evidence for stress both
> complex and lacking for many languages). This issue is the focus of my
> current paper in Linguistic typology, and is discussed in more detail in my
> forthcoming PhD thesis.
>
> All the best,
> Kirsten
>
>
>
> On Sat, 6 May 2023 at 11:21, Adam James Ross Tallman <
> ajrtallman at utexas.edu> wrote:
>
> Thanks everyone for your responses (Ian and David + private responders),
>
>
>
> Great leads to look at!
>
>
>
> Here's another question ... have there been any phonologists who have
> proposed or assume that *all languages have feet*. I ask because I've had
> reviewer questions and conference questions that seem to presuppose this to
> be the case. I'd like to see the original arguments, if there are any.
>
>
>
> best,
>
>
>
> Adam
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, May 6, 2023 at 7:20 AM Ian Maddieson <ianm at berkeley.edu> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
>
>
> There must be many languages in which the concept of a foot is not found
> to be relevant
>
> (see Sun-Ah Jun’s chapter "Prosodic Typology: By Prominence Type, Word
> prosody, and Macro-rhythm" in
>
> *Prosodic Typology II* (edited by Sun-Ah) for some discussion. The notion
> of a foot does not seem to
>
> useful for (standard)  French, Korean, Yorùbá, among many others, though
> it can be pressed into service
>
> in languages such as Thai and Mandarin. Since it’s an abstract notion, I’m
> not sure what phonetic
>
> data would be capable of providing direct evidence either for or against
> the notion of a foot, though
>
> if for example, vowel length was considered important in foot
> construction, data could confirm the
>
> presence of greater length where it’s presence had been invoked to justify
> foot structure.
>
>
>
> Ian
>
>
>
> On May 5, 2023, at 09:16, Adam James Ross Tallman <ajrtallman at utexas.edu>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> Hello all,
>
>
>
> In Caroline Féry's excellent *Prosodic Structure and Intonation*, she
> describes a class of "phrase languages", identified as languages whereby
> there isn't much going on at the level of the prosodic word.
>
>
>
> I was wondering if anyone had *described* explicitly a language where the
> same thing could be said of feet (neither iambic or trochaic)? Or perhaps
> even more radically, not just that the feet don't do much, but that they
> aren't there at all?
>
>
>
> Perhaps there's lots  of cases where feet haven't been proposed, are there
> any cases where they had been proposed, but then further research (perhaps
> some phonetic study) found that there was no evidence for them?
>
>
>
> best,
>
>
>
> Adam
>
>
> --
>
> Adam J.R. Tallman
>
> Post-doctoral Researcher
>
> Friedrich Schiller Universität
>
> Department of English Studies
>
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>
>
>
> Ian Maddieson
>
>
>
> Department of Linguistics
>
> University of New Mexico
>
> MSC03-2130
>
> Albuquerque NM 87131-0001
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Adam J.R. Tallman
>
> Post-doctoral Researcher
>
> Friedrich Schiller Universität
>
> Department of English Studies
>
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>
>

-- 
Adam J.R. Tallman
Post-doctoral Researcher
Friedrich Schiller Universität
Department of English Studies
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