<div>Dear Daniel, dear all,</div><div> </div><div>that was an excellent point, and the analogy to 'family' defined relative to particular culture is very lucid. This is precisely how I believe many comparative linguistic notions can (or should) be defined -- relative to language. Take the notorious notion of subject, which is defined by some as "the privileged syntactic argument (by whatever criteria there are in particular languages that make one of their arguments privileged)". I may be wrong, but this seems to be the definition of subject in Role and Reference Grammar. Of course, for those who believe that comparability requires identification, this is a bad comparative concept, since in principle it does not exclude the possibility that there are two languages whose subjects have nothing in common. But still this is a workable concept allowing typologists to ask reasonable questions, e.g.:</div><div>1) Are there languages where subjects in this sense cannot be single out, and if yes, for what reasons? As far as I know, there are linguists who claim that the answer to this question is "yes", therefore the concept is not vacuous.</div><div>2) What are the grammatical properties that languages with subjects thus defined employ to render them privileged as opposed to other arguments? Well, much of the grammatical relations typology is just about this.</div><div>3) Do subjects thus defined cross-linguistically correlate with certain admittedly universally applicable comparative concepts such as "agent" or "topic" and is there a common "core" to subjects in all languages? Note that under the definition proposed, this becomes an empirical question with a potentially negative answer, rather than is built into the definition a priori.</div><div> </div><div>I think it is possible to define words, affixes, clitics etc. in such a way and get consistent and interesting results.</div><div> </div><div>Best regards,</div><div> </div><div>Peter</div><div> </div><div>-- </div><div>Peter Arkadiev, PhD</div><div>Institute of Slavic Studies</div><div>Russian Academy of Sciences</div><div>Leninsky prospekt 32-A 119991 Moscow</div><div>peterarkadiev@yandex.ru</div><div>http://inslav.ru/people/arkadev-petr-mihaylovich-peter-arkadiev</div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div>12.11.2017, 22:33, "Daniel Ross" <djross3@illinois.edu>:</div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div>I am enjoying reading all of the great perspectives here.<br /> </div>Responding to Martin (and others) about "family":<br /> </div>I am not convinced that families are an uninteresting concept cross-culturally. This is obviously not my area of research, but let me try to propose a definition:<br /> </div>'A core group of one's relatives (defined culturally).'<br /> </div>I included 'defined culturally' to emphasize that I am not talking about any absolute sense of 'core' or 'relative' (but that should be obvious from context), but also because for the most part (except to the degree that 'culture' varies some for each individual) this definition should reflect the same meaning for anyone in a particular culture, rather than being just whoever each individual likes the most, gets along with, sees the most often, etc. (Whether we should also distinguish between cultural and individual senses of family is another question, and that's fine, but not what I'm focusing on here.)<br /> </div>The key is how we define "relatives", which would then allow us to relatively objectively also define "core". The criteria for relatives can include (but need not necessarily limited to) blood, marriage, and adoption. "Adoption" can be interpreted broadly here, including 'friends', etc., as culturally applicable.<br /> </div>That definition fits well for the 'parent(s) and children' sense in many familiar cultures. It also fits well in cultures that find aunts/uncles, grandparents, cousins, etc., to be part of the core level as well because they are so close culturally. And it also works for less expected family types that categorize differently. In the Mosuo (or Na) culture (in China: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosuo">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosuo</a>), from what I understand (although my understanding isn't critical to the argument), women and men do not form pairs, and the fathers of children play a relatively small role in the lives of their children. In that case, "family" would not include husbands/fathers, culturally. Or to take an even less canonical example, in military culture, one's "brothers" in one's unit are family (all by 'adoption' in my terms, as well as military rank and affiliation, another kind of relatedness). (There's no rule that a person must belong to only one culture, or have only one family.)<br /> </div>I agree that "family" cannot be defined in absolute terms for all cultures. But I disagree that we cannot define family in an interesting way, if we define it in relative terms. It is also possible that there are some cultures out there that have no relevant cultural sense of "family", which would just be like a language lacking a certain feature and not belonging to a typology for it (but the absence can still be interesting for the analyst).<br /> </div>In terms of "asking general cross-cultural questions about families", I also disagree, in two ways:<br /> </div>1. We need to ask the right questions. "How often do all family members have meals together?" may not be an interesting question, because "meals together" (or even "all family members together") would not always be relevant culturally. A better question would be: "How many members (and who) make up families in each culture?" and "What do they do together?" -- then we could find a comparable activity to eating together (whether that's praying, or watching television, or going to war, or whatever), and then ask how often they do it together.<br /> </div>2. I don't actually find that question above to be terrible. "How often do all family members have meals together?" can be answered for different cultures. In some it is more about whether "family bonds" are based on proximity and sharing time together. In another sense, it can address how much social bonding and support each member of the family receives from others: sharing a meal with one's military 'family' during war-time is important and similar to eating at 'home' with one's family.<br /> </div>So where am I going with this? Sorry for the long digression about families.<br /> </div><b>My main point is:</b> it seems to me that "family" is something that cultures DO, rather than something that cultures HAVE.<br /> </div>Therefore, I find it very appealing to consider that words are something languages DO, rather than something that languages HAVE.<br /> </div>Of course, if that is true, then the biggest problem, and I think one that all of us can agree on regardless, is that assuming "word" as a primitive/basic/given notion then basing all (or many) other linguistic concepts on it is problematic. (For example, defining affixes based on "words" may be the wrong way to go, as suggested by others above.)<br /><br />It also does not mean that "words" are "the same" across languages, but we can still look at how languages do things similarly or differently.<br /><br />The question I would propose to ask is: "How do different languages do words (if at all)?"<br /> </div>I feel that David's suggestion is one possible step in the right direction to answer a question like that. It's statistical, variable, and comparable.</div><div> </div><div>I'd also be interested in hearing alternative suggestions along the same lines. One possibility is to consider both phonological words (as David proposes) and morphosyntactic words (maybe by reference to affixes as discussed by others above), and then also to ask how and to what extent they correlate in differently languages.</div><div> </div>Daniel</div><div> <div>On Sun, Nov 12, 2017 at 5:27 AM, Maia Ponsonnet <span><<a target="_blank" href="mailto:maia.ponsonnet@uwa.edu.au">maia.ponsonnet@uwa.edu.au</a>></span> wrote:<blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 0.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div><div style="font-size:12pt;color:#000000;font-family:Calibri,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">I think we should also keep in mind another possibility beyond 1/ Vagueness and 2/ Incoherence. </span></p><p> </p><p>Describing the world involves making it fit into categories, but the world was not <i>made </i>to fit into our categories. Hence a logical conclusion of the rejection of essentialism is that sometimes (probably more often than not) no set of criteria will do a fully satisfying job at establishing categories that account for <i>all</i> the cases encountered in the world. </p><p> </p><p>This just because the world was not made to fit into our categories - useful categories must be the best possible fit for the world, but "perfect" (non-leaking) categories are probably the exception rather than the rule. </p><p> </p><p>So this is 3/ Our categories are <i>only </i>the best possible fit for the world phenomena - not a perfect fit.</p><p> </p><p>If I listened to the Wittgensteinien philosopher in me, I would say that forgetting about 3/ is still giving in to essentialism. </p><p> </p><div><div style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Calibri,Helvetica,sans-serif,EmojiFont,"Apple Color Emoji","Segoe UI Emoji",NotoColorEmoji,"Segoe UI Symbol","Android Emoji",EmojiSymbols;"><div style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Calibri,Helvetica,sans-serif,EmojiFont,"Apple Color Emoji","Segoe UI Emoji",NotoColorEmoji,"Segoe UI Symbol","Android Emoji",EmojiSymbols;"><p> </p><p style="font-family:Calibri,Helvetica,sans-serif,serif,EmojiFont;font-size:16px;"><span style="font-size:small;">Dr Maïa Ponsonnet</span><br style="font-family:Calibri,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;" /><span style="font-size:small;">Senior Lecturer in Linguistics</span><br style="font-family:Calibri,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;" /><span style="font-size:small;">ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Fellow</span></p><p style="font-family:Calibri,Helvetica,sans-serif,serif,EmojiFont;font-size:16px;"> </p><p style="font-family:Calibri,Helvetica,sans-serif,serif,EmojiFont;font-size:16px;"><span style="font-size:small;">Social Sciences Building, Room 2.47</span><br style="font-family:Calibri,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;" /><span style="font-size:small;">Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Education</span><br style="font-family:Calibri,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;" /><span style="font-size:small;">The University of Western Australia</span><br style="font-family:Calibri,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;" /><span style="font-size:small;">35 Stirling Hwy, </span><span style="font-size:small;">Perth, WA (6009), </span><span style="font-size:small;">Australia</span><br style="font-family:Calibri,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;" /><span style="font-size:small;">P. <a target="_blank" href="tel:+61%208%206488%202870">+61 (0) 8 6488 2870</a> - </span><span style="font-size:small;">M. <a target="_blank" href="tel:+61%20468%20571%20030">+61 (0) 468 571 030</a></span></p></div><div style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);"> <p style="font-family:Calibri,Helvetica,sans-serif,EmojiFont,"Apple Color Emoji","Segoe UI Emoji",NotoColorEmoji,"Segoe UI Symbol","Android Emoji",EmojiSymbols;"> </p></div></div></div> <div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);"><hr style="display:inline-block;width:98%;" /><div><font style="font-size:11pt;" face="Calibri, sans-serif" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> Lingtyp <<a target="_blank" href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org">lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>> on behalf of Martin Haspelmath <<a target="_blank" href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>><br /><b>Sent:</b> Sunday, 12 November 2017 8:47 PM<br /><b>To:</b> <a target="_blank" href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a><br /><b>Subject:</b> Re: [Lingtyp] wordhood</font><div> </div></div><div style="background-color:#ffffff;"><p><span>Mattis List and Balthasar Bickel rightly emphasize that “word” is not a Platonic entity (a natural kind) that exists in advance of language learning or linguistic analysis – few linguists would disagree here, not even generativists (who otherwise liberally assume natural-kind catgeories).</span></p><p><span> </span></p><p><span>But I think many linguists still ACT AS IF there were such a natural kind, because the “word” notion is a crucial ingredient to a number of other notions that linguists use routinely – e.g. “gender”, which is typically defined in terms of “agreement” (which is defined in terms of inflectional marking on targets; and inflection is defined in terms of “word”).</span></p><p><span> </span></p><p><span>So is it possible to define a comparative concept ‘word’ that applies to all languages equally, and that accords reasonably with our stereotypes? Note that I didn’t deny this in my 2011 paper, I just said that nobody had come up with a satisfactory definition (that could be used, for instance, in defining “gender” or “polysynthesis”). So I’ll be happy to contribute to a discussion on how to make progress on defining “word”.</span></p><p><span> </span></p><p><span>Larry Hyman notes that other notions like “syllable” and “sentence” are also problematic in that they also “leak”. However, I think it is important to distinguish two situations of “slipperiness”:</span></p><p><span> </span></p><p><span>(1) “Leakage” of definitions due to vague defining notions</span></p><p><span> </span></p><p><span>(2) Incoherence of definitions due to the use of different criteria in different languages</span></p><p><span> </span></p><p><span>The first can be addressed by tightening the defining notions, but the second is fatal.</span></p><p><span> </span></p><p><span>To take up Östen Dahl’s example of the “family” notion: In one culture, a family might be said to be a set of minimally three living people consisting of two adults (regardless of gender) living in a romantic relationship plus all their descendants. In another culture, a family might be defined as a married couple consisting of a man and a woman plus all their living direct ancestors, all their (great) uncles and (great) aunts, and all the descendants of all of these.</span></p><p><span> </span></p><p><span>With two family concepts as different as these, it is obviously not very interesting to ask general cross-cultural questions about “families” (e.g. “How often do all family members have meals together?”). So the use of different criteria for different cultures is fatal here.</span></p><p><span> </span></p><p><span>What I find worrying is that linguists often seem to accept incoherent definitions of comparative concepts (this was emphasized especially in my 2015 paper on defining vs. diagnosing categories). Different diagnostics in different languages would not be fatal if “word” were a Platonic (natural-kind) concept, but if we are not born with a “word” category, typologists need to use the SAME criteria for all languages.</span></p><p><span> </span></p><p><span>So here’s a proposal for defining a notion of “simple morphosyntactic word”:</span></p><p><span> </span></p><p><span><b>A simple morphosyntactic word is a form that consists of (minimally) a root, plus any affixes.</b></span></p><p><span> </span></p><p><span>Here’s a proposal for defining a notion of “affix”, in such a way that the results do not go too much against our intuitions or stereotypes:</span></p><p><span> </span></p><p><span><b>An affix is a bound form that always occurs together with a root of the same root-class and is never separated from the root by a free form or a non-affixal bound form.</b></span></p><p><span> </span></p><p><span>These definitions make use of the notions of “root” and “root-class” (defined in Haspelmath 2012) and<span> </span>“bound (form)” vs. “free (form)” (defined in Haspelmath 2013). All these show leakage as in (1) above, but they are equally applicable to all languages, so they are not incoherent. (I thank Harald Hammarström for a helpful discussion that helped me to come up with the above definitions, which I had not envisaged in 2011.)</span></p><p><span> </span></p><p><span>(What I don’t know at the moment is how to relate “simple morphosyntactic word” to “morphosyntactic word” in general, because I cannot distinguish compounds from phrases comparatively; and I don’t know what to do with “phonological word”.)</span></p><p><span> </span></p><p><span>Crucially, the definitions above make use of a number of basic concepts that apply to ALL languages in the SAME way. David Gil’s proposal, to measure “bond strength” by means of a range of language-particular phenomena, falls short of this requirement (as already hinted by Eitan Grossman). Note that the problem I have with David’s proposal is not that it provides no categorical contrasts (recall my acceptance of vagueness in (1) above), but that there is no way of telling which phenomena should count as measuring bond strength.</span></p><p><span> </span></p><p><span>David’s approach resembles Keenan’s (1976) attempt at defining “subject” (perhaps not by accident, because Ed Keenan was David’s PhD supervisor), but I have a similar objection to Keenan: If different criteria are used for different languages, how do we know that we are measuring the same phenomenon across languages? Measuring X by means of Y makes sense only if we know independently that X and Y are very highly correlated. But do we know this, for subjects, or for bond strength?</span></p><p><span> </span></p><p><span>Best,</span></p><p><span>Martin</span></p><p><span> </span></p> <pre><span><font color="#888888">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a target="_blank" href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
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D-07745 Jena
&
Leipzig University
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