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style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Courier;mso-bidi-font-family:Courier;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Matthew
writes: "The rara are relevant to
typological work in that they are crucial for demonstrating
the range of ways
that languages do things, and in so far as that is theory,
they are of
theoretical importance. But they are not particularly relevant
to the
theoretical goal of explaining why languages are the way they
are, which I
think is primarily explaining why the dominant patterns are
dominant."<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I think
this issue is
also more complex, since, as we all know and as e.g. Elena
Maslova (2000) has
argued, dominant patterns may be dominant for all sorts of
non-linguistic
reasons, and therefore claiming that more frequent patterns
are somehow
"better" than rare ones is a logical mistake. The same
concerns
rarities, many of which might well have happened to become
rare because of
non-linguistic factors. Moreover, as argued e.g. by Trudgill
in his
"Sociolinguistic Typology", what is rare and what is common
might
have well changed during the last millenia due to the changes
in
socioecological settings. Therefore I would rather say that
both dominant and
rare patterns are exlananda on their own right, and that
sometimes it might be
instructive to forget about frequencies of certain patterns in
language samples
so that these frequencies don't bias us.<span
style="mso-spacerun:yes">
</span>Best,<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Peter<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I have devoted considerable effort in my
published research
discussing the problem that Peter describes, showing how it is
often the case
that a particular language type may be more frequent for
nonlinguistic reasons
and proposing ways to factor out these nonlinguistic factors.
Thus what I mean
by “dominant” does not mean more frequent, but more frequent for
what are
apparently linguistic reasons.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Matthew<o:p></o:p></p>
<br>
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<![endif]--><!--StartFragment--><!--EndFragment-->On 1/26/16 7:10 AM,
Peter Arkadiev wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:4731121453810256@web1j.yandex.ru" type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Matthew writes:
"The rara are relevant to typological work in that they are crucial for demonstrating the range of ways that languages do things, and in so far as that is theory, they are of theoretical importance. But they are not particularly relevant to the theoretical goal of explaining why languages are the way they are, which I think is primarily explaining why the dominant patterns are dominant."
I think this issue is also more complex, since, as we all know and as e.g. Elena Maslova (2000) has argued, dominant patterns may be dominant for all sorts of non-linguistic reasons, and therefore claiming that more frequent patterns are somehow "better" than rare ones is a logical mistake. The same concerns rarities, many of which might well have happened to become rare because of non-linguistic factors. Moreover, as argued e.g. by Trudgill in his "Sociolinguistic Typology", what is rare and what is common might have well changed during the last millenia due to the changes in socioecological settings. Therefore I would rather say that both dominant and rare patterns are exlananda on their own right, and that sometimes it might be instructive to forget about frequencies of certain patterns in language samples so that these frequencies don't bias us.
Best,
Peter</pre>
</blockquote>
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