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I never took Philosophy 101, but I am trying to understand
differences and similarities between languages, and I feel that
using descriptive categories for comparative purposes often leads to
confusion.<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 22.01.16 22:25, Östen Dahl wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:windowtext">I
agree with Matthew that the issues are becoming too complex
and at the same time with Dan that this is Philosophy 101.
But the questions asked in that course are often the most
difficult ones. The quotation from William James may be
relevant here.
</span><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:windowtext"
lang="EN-US">It seems to me that what Martin is saying about
“cleric” as a comparative concept means that pace James this
concept cannot be an objective one, since apparently it is
just a "product of our cognitive system", as opposed to
chemical elements, which are
</span><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:windowtext">something
more.
</span><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:windowtext"
lang="EN-US">(But Locke said that all categories are
products of our cognitive system??) </span></p>
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<br>
I think Locke was wrong there (at least for the practical purposes
of science) – some categories are NOT just the products of our
cognitive system, but exist in the world, independently of any
observers. "Hydrogen" and "photon" are such categories, as are "red
fox" and "Lezgian language" (otherwise foxes wouldn't be able to
interbreed and speakers would be able to interact and conform to
norms). I have talked about such categories as "natural kinds"
(though I haven't read the philosophical literature about them), and
I think they constitute discoveries of science, not just instruments
for discoveries.<br>
<br>
According to generative grammar, categories such as vP or [+wh] or
[+coronal] are also natural kinds – existing in the world
independently of the observers, and (at least potentially)
discoveries of generative grammar. This is a possibility that we
should take very seriously, but my interim conclusion is that this
approach doesn't work well – to compare languages fruitfully, one
needs concepts that are set up specifically for the purposes of
comparison, as *instruments* for further discoveries. (Balthasar
Bickel has sometimes said that typological variables are like
measures – I like this analogy, because it's clear that concepts
such as "meter" are not discoveries, but are nevertheless crucial to
science.)<br>
<br>
Edith Moravcsik asked: "It is impossible in principle for
constructions in two languages to be members of the same descriptive
category?" I would say yes, because descriptive categories are set
up on a language-specific basis ("distributionally", to use Bill
Croft's word) for the purposes of description (or analysis).
Hypothetically one could imagine two languages that have exactly the
same grammar (but different words), and in that case, one might say
that they share descriptive categories. Perhaps at a lower level,
this situation is actually found – so maybe with respect to the
behaviour of property words, Italian and Spanish are indeed close to
identical. In that case, it would not do any practical harm to say
that they have the same descriptive category. But we normally
describe each language separately (e.g. we do not skip the
description of Spanish adjective syntax and point to an already
existing description of the same facts in an Italian grammar), i.e.
we treat each grammar as an indivisible unique system.<br>
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Östen continues:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:windowtext"
lang="EN-US">I am not quite sure I am following here. Does
the difference between “cleric” and “hydrogen” depend on the
differences in well-definedness or on the fact that “cleric”
is based on social constructs whereas “hydrogen” is a
natural phenomenon? I get confused when Martin mentions the
theoretical possibility of an innate mental category of
“cleric” – that would seem irrelevant to me. </span></p>
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</blockquote>
<br>
Hydrogen is a discovery (a natural kind), but "cleric" (in the
comparative sense) is a construct of comparative religion scholars,
i.e. an instrument for discoveries. "Well-definedness" is an issue
only for comparative concepts. We don't need definitions for natural
discoveries such as "red fox" or "hydrogen" or "Lezgian language",
or "vP" (note that generativists never define their categories,
which is completely consistent with their claimed status as natural
kinds). The suggestion of an innate mental category "cleric" was
meant to be patently absurd, but maybe for other categories of
social organization (e.g. grandfather or marriage), this is less
absurd.<br>
<br>
Volker Gast has made an intriguing suggestion:<br>
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This discussion seems to show a broad consensus that we do not
actually generalize over linguistic data, but over comparative
concepts/linguists' classifications. ... So I wonder if WALS
should be renamed to the 'The World Atlas of Comparative
Concepts'? ;-)</div>
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<br>
I wouldn't say that we don't generalize over "linguistic data", but
it is true that we don't generalize over grammars (in the strict
sense), just as comparative biologists (e.g. scholars concerned with
the <a
href="http://jmammal.oxfordjournals.org/content/17/4/412.2.abstract">relative
wing ratio of bats and birds</a>) do not generalize over genomes.
(As a historical anecdote, it may be interesting that the very first
working name of WALS was "The grammar atlas" – I still have an
e-mail from David Gil from November 1998, when we were starting to
work on this project, which has this in the subject line).<br>
<br>
So if grammars are analogous to genomes, the totality of our
linguistic behaviour (within a speech community) is analogous to
phenotypes. I would say that typologists generalize over these
phenotypes – compare Matthew's point that usage frequencies also
play an important role for word order typology. Whether these
phenotypes are well described by the term "structures" is indeed a
good question – I must say that I would associate the term
"structure" more with "grammar", perhaps using "grammatical
patterns" for the phenotypes. "World Atlas of Grammatical Patterns"?<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
Martin<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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