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I think we really agree in all major respects here:<br>
<br>
– yes, descriptive work has gotten better by integrating typological
perspectives (so description and typology should continue to exist
in symbiosis)<br>
<br>
– no, one shouldn't use ("structuralist") language-specific
categories for typological comparison (as the generativists often
try to do)<br>
<br>
– yes, every typological variable "captures" something of interest
in a language, even if it is only a tiny bit of some category<br>
<br>
We probably also agree that language description *needs* to make use
of language-specific categories, because without them, the
description would be very unparsimonious in many places and thus
impractical (for example, to describe German, we need categories
such as "Neuter gender" and "Weak verb"; otherwise, the description
would get hopelessly convoluted).<br>
<br>
(It seems that this is was at the heart of Randy LaPolla's objection
to using "subject" or "A" in classifying Chinese word order; he
seemed to think that word order statements need to be based on the
descriptively indispensable language-specific categories, even when
they are meant only for typological purposes.)<br>
<br>
But note that I use "comparative concept" in a broader sense than
"typological variable". Every typological variable is a comparative
concept (by definition), but some comparative concepts (e.g.
"ergative case", or "clause", or "high vowel") are not variables by
themselves – they are crucial ingredients of variables.<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 01.02.16 08:59, Balthasar Bickel
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:391946A1-2513-4C98-A123-02D8C718D0DD@uzh.ch"
type="cite">
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<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;
-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;" class="">I have just now
had a chance to read up on this very interesting discussion and
noticed a certain trend towards keeping comparative work outside
the description of individual languages. I find this
problematic. Modern descriptive work has become better precisely
by integrating typological perspectives, and I have always found
that I have started to understand a phenomenon in a language
only once I could tell with some precision how it compares to
similar phenomena in other languages.</div>
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</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;
-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;" class="">It might help to
realize that “comparative concepts” --- or typological
variables, as I prefer to call them --- contrast with
language-specific categories in two very different ways. Only
one of these contrasts is a contrast between research
enterprises.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;
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class="">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;
-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;" class="">(i) By definition,
the categories of a typological variable can recur across
languages, language-specific categories can’t. For example,
‘argument with most agent properties in Dowty’s definition’,
‘linearly ordered before’, a Nijmegen-style exlicitation
simulus, a Dahl TAM questionnaire context, a translation context
etc. can all by definition recur across languages, the
Saussurian sign -ed ‘PST’ can’t.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;
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class="">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;
-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;" class="">(ii)
Language-specific categories serve a purpose in a
Pāṇini-inspired, structuralist analysis where the goal is to
re-use categories in a maximally parsimonous way (so you can
say, e.g., there is a category of ‘subordinate clauses’ in
language X, defined by a set of properties in X, and then find
that the same category <i class="">also</i> captures --- or
even ‘causes’ --- the constraints on WH questions in X). By
contrast, typological variables don’t serve such a purpose. If
you want to explore patterns across variables or even capture
the system as a whole, you use stats (and so you might discover
for example that certain values on a variable that captures WH
possibilities correlate to some extent with certain values on a
variable that captures the scope behavior of illocutionary force
markers, a correlation caused by information structure
principles; Bickel 2010).</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;
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class="">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;
-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;" class="">The contrast in
(i) merely limits the range of things you can compare
typologically (as opposed to reconstruct proto-individuals), but
it doesn’t imply anything about the usefulness of typological
variables for describing languages, let alone call for a
terminological distinction between ‘matching’ vs ‘instantiating’
a category or for different research enterprises. Every
well-defined typological variable captures or measures something
of interest in a language --- but obviously it is only
‘something’, a very tiny aspect of a very complex phenomenon:
“is used for past time event” clearly only captures a tiny bit
of, say, the English PST marker, but it does capture something
real. In fact, a typologial variable might pick up something
that is indeed very real because it directly corresponds to
electrophysiologically detectable patterns (see e.g. Bickel et
al. 2015 in <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0132819"
class="">PloS ONE</a> on the S=A vs S≠A variable). (And, yes,
saying that Chinese is SVO captures something real in Chinese,
but I agree with others that the traditional terms and
abbreviations here are misleading.)</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;
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class="">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;
-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;" class="">The contrast in
(ii) is where we get a real opposition between different
approaches for analyzing languages, perhaps even
sub-disciplines. Given the complexity of language, though, it
won’t harm to use both approaches simultaneously. Where things
get tricky and confusing is if you want to design typological
variables not in the sense of (i) but for comparing the
language-specific categories in the sense of (ii). I wouldn’t.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;
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class="">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;
-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;" class="">Balthasar Bickel.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;
-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
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class="">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;
-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;" class="">More on this:</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;
-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;" class="">Bickel, B 2007.
Typology in the 21st century: major current developments. <i
class="">Ling. Typol.</i> 11. 239–251.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;
-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;" class="">Bickel, B 2010.
Capturing particulars and universals in clause linkage: a
multivariate analysis. In I Bril (ed.), <i class="">Clause-hierarchy
and clause-linking</i>, 51–101. Amsterdam: Benjamins.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;
-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;" class="">Bickel, B 2011.
Multivariate typology and field linguistics: a case study on
detransitivization in Kiranti (Sino-Tibetan). <i class="">Proc.
Conf. Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory</i> 3,
3–13.(<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.hrelp.org/publications/ldlt3/papers/ldlt3_02.pdf"
class="">http://www.hrelp.org/publications/ldlt3/papers/ldlt3_02.pdf</a>)</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Helvetica;
-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;" class="">Bickel, B 2015.
Distributional typology: statistical inquiries into the dynamics
of linguistic diversity. In B. Heine & H. Narrog (eds.), <i
class="">The Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis, 2nd
edition,</i> 901 – 923. Oxford: Oxford University Press.</div>
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</blockquote>
<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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