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Thanks, Östen, for raising these important points again. I remember
our discussion well. Yes, the distinction between "match" and
"instantiate" is subtle, and I'm not sure that the terminology I
chose was ideal.<br>
<br>
On 22.01.16 15:40, Östen Dahl wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"
lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"
lang="EN-US">1) I was, and am still, puzzled about a
distinction Martin made (see his 2010 paper) between
"matching" and "instantiating" (“the crucial difference
between comparative concepts as proposed here and the
crosslinguistic categories that I reject”). A
language-specific category (the German Dative) does not
"instantiate" the comparative concept 'dative', it just
"matches" it. Philosophers often say that something "falls
under" a concept. Gottlob Frege used the German locution
"unter einen Begriff fallen". For instance, Martin could be
said to fall under the concept 'typologist', which of course
could be claimed to be just a fancy way of saying that he is
a typologist. I assume that scholars in other disciplines
where comparative concepts are used would agree that "fall
under" could be used about them. Thus, to use Martin's
example, Pope Francis could be said to "fall under" the
concept 'clergy' (or maybe better: 'clergyperson'). But I
also think he could be said to "instantiate" that concept.
So my question to Martin is whether he would agree that the
German Dative "falls under" the comparative concept
'dative'.
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<br>
The point here is that many linguists assume (sometimes explicitly,
more often implicitly) that there is a fixed set of categories that
languages might have, just as there is a fixed set of chemical
elements that are found in the world. So when we discover a new
celestial body (e.g. <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Nine">Planet Nine</a>,
for which there now seems to be good evidence), we expect that the
chemical elements found there will *instantiate* some of the
existing elements.<br>
<br>
Thus, chemical elements are more than "products of our cognitive
system" (as John Locke said about categories – thanks to Jan
Rijkhoff for this nice quote). They are a hypothesized (and
overwhelmingly confirmed) set of "cross-planetary", universal
categories. They are true discoveries of physical constraints on
possible materials, not mere instruments of comparison (at least
this is my understanding)<br>
<br>
So I would NOT say that Pope Francis instantiates a universal
category of cleric, but merely that he matches the (arbitrary)
definition of "cleric" as it might be proposed by a comparative
religion scholar. Some other scholar might argue that this is not a
useful comparison, and that he should rather be compared to
monarchs, or human rights activists, or whatever. (Maybe there is a
school of "Universal Religion" scholars who think that we are born
with a set of cognitively possible religious categories – for these
scholars, Pope Francis might indeed instantiate the cleric
category.)<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"
lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"
lang="EN-US">2) Peter Arkadiev brought up the notion of a
"cross-linguistic gram-type" that Joan Bybee and I
introduced in our 1989 paper, which were said to be
"identifiable by their semantic foci and associated with
typical means of expression" and contrasted against
language-specific grams (grammatical items such as morphemes
and constructions). Later on, I have said that gram-types
are "clusters of grams in grammatical space". I wonder if
Martin sees any essential differences between this approach
and his.</span></p>
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<br>
I think gram-types are comparative concepts, but there seems to be
an additional claim involved, namely that grams cluster in a
non-accidental way, such that they tend to be more similar to esach
other than one would expect from a purely semantic (e.g.
tense-logical) point of view.<br>
<br>
It seems to me that the Dahl and Bybee work of the 1980s was
extremely insightful and constituted great progress, but it would be
even better if it were made clear what exactly the claims are and
how they could be falsified. The semantic-map model which was used
in later work (e.g. van der Auwera & Plungian on modality's
semantic map in 1998) seems better suited to expressing falsifiable
claims; apparently the notion of gram-type was not so prominent in
later semantic-map work, for whatever reason.<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"
lang="EN-US">3) Finally, here is a new puzzle for me: In his
latest posting, Martin uses the word "analytical" several
times, seemingly suggesting that it is equivalent to
"descriptive", although it is not combined with "category"
but with "terms", "concepts", "issues", and "notions". And
in the final paragraph he also speaks of "universal
analytical notions". So I wonder if you Martin could
explicate what you mean by "analytical" and how it differs
(if at all) from "descriptive"? And could you give an
example of a "universal analytical notion"?</span></p>
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<br>
For me, "description" and "analysis" are the same thing (sorry for
using both terms interchangeably). A universal analytical (or
descriptive) notion would be "hydrogen", or "atom".<br>
<br>
In grammar, I know of no such universal analytical notions (or
universal descriptive categories), though some semantic/pragmatic
notions such as negation and interrogation seem to come close.<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
P.S. Re David's posting: I agree that describing languages from a
cross-linguistic perspective (using comparative concepts) is often
useful, but before engaging in this kind of two-tiered description,
one should have understood the essential differences.<br>
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<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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