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On 21.01.16 19:18, Edith A. Moravcsik wrote:<br>
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IS THE ISSUE EMPIRICAL OR LOGICAL?
<p> As Östen Dahl has noted, it is important to clarify whether
some or all other scientific inquiries in various fields also
distinguish between descriptive categories and comparative
concepts. How about cross-cultural studies, comparative
literature, comparative religion, and the various fields of
natural science? It seems implausible that the distinction
would be linguistics-specific. If it is not, how is the
distinction defined and utilized in other fields?<br>
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<br>
Comparative concepts are widely used in other disciplines when a
comparative approach is adopted (I talked about this briefly in my
2010 paper, §9). I even found a paper published in a law journal
that uses the term "comparative concept"
(<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ejcl.org/22/art22-1.html">http://www.ejcl.org/22/art22-1.html</a>).<br>
<br>
Another example is the comparative study of folktales, where
researchers use the "<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarne%E2%80%93Thompson_classification_systems">Aarne-Thompson
classification index</a>". For biology and anthropology, I
recommend Charles Nunn's book "<a
href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo11462152.html">The
comparative approach in evolutionary anthropology and biology</a>".
And for astronomy, the discussion about the classification of Pluto
(is it a planet or not?) shows that the comparative concepts in
other disciplines can also be pretty arbitrary. In comparative
religion, terms like "clergy" are clearly useful for comparison,
even though Catholic priests and Protestant ministers play very
different roles within the system of the religion (and thus the fact
that different denomination-specific terms are used for them is not
an accident).<br>
<br>
What may be special in linguistics is that the task of
analyzing/describing an individual language is so challenging and
absorbing. 90% of all linguists only ever study a single language, I
think, and even those that adopt a comparative approach are usually
very knowledgeable and concerned about analytical issues. Thus, our
analytical terms are very prominent, and for many centuries, people
have simply carried them over from one language (such as Latin) to
another one (such as French, Russian, Persian and so on). That there
is a problem with this dawned on them only in the early 20th century
– and it required deep concern with Native American languages to
understand it (those linguists who mostly focused on the bigger
languages blissfully ignored the Boasian insights, including the
generativists). I think in other fields, the confusion between
analytical and comparative concepts was not so much of a problem,
because the distinction was obvious – perhaps also because the
diversity is more obvious in other fields.<br>
<br>
(There my also be fields where separate comparative concepts may not
be needed, because comparison in terms of universal analytical
notions is sufficient. I'm thinking of chemistry – it's surely no
accident that Mark Baker compared linguistics to chemistry in his
utopian 2001 book "The atoms of language". It seems that chemists
have indeed been successful in figuring out the universal blueprints
of stuff, and they can compare kinds of stuff via the blueprints.)<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10
D-07745 Jena
&
Leipzig University
Beethovenstrasse 15
D-04107 Leipzig
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