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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">This is an excellent proposal, if by
"category check" one means "term check". The grammatical terms
that we use are often confusing, because they have different
meanings in different authors or in different traditions.
Terminological reflection can help remedy this situation.<br>
<br>
But I think one should be careful to avoid the impression that the
grammatical terms we use are anything other than convenient tools
used by linguists. Categories of languages are language-specific
entities, and they cannot be "polysemous" or "homonymous".<br>
<br>
Here are some further comments on the "Diversity Linguistics
Comment" blog: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://dlc.hypotheses.org/332">http://dlc.hypotheses.org/332</a><br>
<br>
Greetings,<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
On 16/12/2012 18:48, Plank wrote:<br>
</div>
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CALL FOR PAPERS
<div><br>
</div>
<div>We invite submissions for a new regular feature of LT,
CATEGORY CHECK. The remit is a dual one: (i) to acquaint the
typological and wider public with the more unfamiliar categories
from the languages of the world, be they phonetic, phonological,
morphological, syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic; and/or (ii)
to explain categories, familiar or unfamiliar, that are
polysemous or homonymous or just unclear in current descriptive
and theoretical practice.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Contributions must be theoretically informed
and crosslinguistically firmly grounded. Also, we expect an
awareness that comparability across languages and
theory-dependence are real issues. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Although contributions should be concise, and authoritative
rather than argumentative in style, they will be more detailed
than the typical entry in a linguistic dictionary or
encyclopedia. Without rendering conventional scholarly
research redundant, crowdsourcing (e.g., through lingtyp) can
be useful to ascertain crosslinguistic distributions.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Submissions are welcome at any time, and they will be
peer-reviewed like all submissions to LT.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Many previous contributions to LT have effectively served
some such purpose: remember mirativity, interrogative
verbs, delocutive verbs, senary base (numeral systems with
base 6), the labial flap? There's lots more that one could
think of, and that some languages have thought of.
Categories some of us have been thinking of as candidates
for CATEGORY CHECK include these -- and feel free to expand
the list:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>allotive [sic; with epenthetic /t/: "opérateur
d'altérité")</div>
<div>aorist</div>
<div>associative</div>
<div>avertive, frustrative, apprehensional</div>
<div>case assimilation</div>
<div>collective</div>
<div>conative</div>
<div>conjunct/disjunct</div>
<div>deponent</div>
<div>diphthong</div>
<div>endoclitic</div>
<div>equative</div>
<div>floating tone</div>
<div>generic</div>
<div>gerund</div>
<div>imprecative/optative</div>
<div>inchoative, inceptive, ingressive; terminative,
cessative, completive; continuative</div>
<div>initial mutation</div>
<div>interrogative inflection</div>
<div>inverse</div>
<div>inverse number marking</div>
<div>laryngeal</div>
<div>lenis/fortis</div>
<div>logophor</div>
<div>metathesis as a grammatical device</div>
<div>oblique</div>
<div>obviative</div>
<div>polarity</div>
<div>prospective, proximative; retrospective</div>
<div>remote/immediate (past, future, imperative; hesternal,
hodiernal etc.) </div>
<div>supine</div>
<div>template, templatic morphology</div>
<div>tonal case marking</div>
<div>trills</div>
<div><br>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>Over categories that want checking don't forget the other
periodical features of LT, other than regular articles and
book reviews: Debate, Target Articles with Peer Commentary,
the Universals Register, Language Profiles, Family Portraits,
Area Surveys. Only the opportunities for Obituaries come
uncalled for.</div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>for the Editorial Board of LT</div>
<div>Frans Plank</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
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<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:haspelmath@eva.mpg.de">haspelmath@eva.mpg.de</a>)
Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
Tel. (MPI) +49-341-3550 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616
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