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<p>Hi Johanna, I wouldn't call your option (2) a 'disjunctive'
definition but an '(annotation) decision tree', and I would
actually consider this good practice if the criteria are
systematically related to each other (I think Martin made that
point, too). They may, for instance, form hierarchies of
specificity, e.g. insofar as Criterion A implies Criterion B etc.
If the most specific criterion is not available you move on to the
next, just like you wrote. In the project that I mentioned we used
a tree for one of the semantic variables (not hierachically
ordered though) and it worked very well, at least in terms of
inter-annotator agreement. It also makes coding much faster (but
has to be treated with care, obviously).<br>
</p>
<p>Volker<br>
</p>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Am 18.11.2017 um 13:40 schrieb Johanna
NICHOLS:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAHDpjwoTorbtc4_B-mBqKWbC-tVwZXrr8ugM0+bGZRXixBwsBA@mail.gmail.com">
<div dir="ltr"><br>
I want to come back to the question of consistency in
disjunctive definitions, i.e. the danger that linguists pick and
choose which diagnostics to apply for which languages. Without
a more careful review of the literature I can't tell whether
what's been done is (a) cherry-picking or (b) use of as many of
the criteria as are applicable to the language in question. If
it's the latter, or any other strict procedure for choosing,
things are more rigorous and consistent than is assumed. <br>
<br>
In the cherry-picking view a set of criteria are treated like
this:<br>
<br>
(1) Criterion A, and/or<br>
Criterion B, and/or<br>
Criterion D, and/or<br>
Criterion D, and/or<br>
Criterion E.<br>
<br>
What would be the impact of using them like this:<br>
<br>
(2) Criterion A if applicable; if not<br>
Criterion B if applicable; if not<br>
Criterion C if applicable; if not<br>
Criterion D if applicable; if not<br>
Criterion E.<br>
<br>
The first way gives you a free choice to choose what works. The
second way requires you to go through the criteria in a set
order, starting with a specific one as first candidate, and
proceeding to the second only if the first is inapplicable, i.e.
if the language lacks the means to use it. If the language does
have the means for criterion A but fails to deploy them in such
a way that we could use it to identify wordhood, then we have to
stop, and the outcome is No, the object in question is not a
word. Only if criterion A is completely inapplicable to the
language do we get to try B. And so on. The procedure stops at
the first success: if Criterion A is applicable and
distinguishes some unit, that unit is a word. If none are
applicable the language has nothing that passes muster as a
word.<br>
<br>
If the criteria are carefully chosen and defined and ordered,
this procedure is rigorous and consistent. (Both theoretical
and empirical work would have to go into choosing and ordering
them.) (2) is probably too strict and would give many false
negatives (languages with no such thing as a word).
Alternatives might be:<br>
<br>
(3) All of Criteria A-E that are applicable.<br>
(4) A majority of Criteria A-E that are applicable.<br>
(5) (Some more complex combination of ordering and
applicability.)<br>
(6) (Some constraint other than applicability, plus rules for
choosing.)<br>
<br>
Of these, (3) probably overdoes the rigor. (4) allows for
inconsistency since you can pick and choose to make up your
majority. (2), (3), and (4) are theoretically unprincipled
since applicability is due to random typological or historical
contingencies. Something like (5) or (6) might strike a good
balance.<br>
<br>
So, to what extent have procedures like (2)-(6) been implicit in
what has actually been done in the literature? Or what such
approach to disjunctive criteria might work? Maybe fuzzy
concepts can have some bones in them after all.<br>
<br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Nov 18, 2017 at 3:27 PM,
Johanna NICHOLS <span dir="ltr"><<a
href="mailto:johanna@berkeley.edu" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">johanna@berkeley.edu</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>
<div>Volker, <br>
<br>
</div>
If there's a way to do this diplomatically, could you
cite an example or two of "important publications by
major authorities of the field where these criteria are
simply not applied"? In linguistics we don't have as
much technical comment on publications as some other
fields do, and maybe we should. In journals where I see
technical comments sections those comments are refereed,
edited, brief, and focused on factual and methodological
matters, i.e. about empirical fundamentals and not
debate on theoretical frameworks.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>If there's no way to do it diplomatically, never
mind.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
Johanna<br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div>
<div class="h5">On Sat, Nov 18, 2017 at 12:37 PM,
Volker Gast <span dir="ltr"><<a
href="mailto:volker.gast@uni-jena.de"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">volker.gast@uni-jena.de</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
</div>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div>
<div class="h5">
<p>Matthew -- are you saying that "one cannot
rule out disjunctively defined comparative
concept" because this is what you did?</p>
<p>I am not convinced by "disjunctive
comparative concepts". Now, that's nothing for
you to worry about -- I'm just one reader
(actually, audience of your ALT/2015-talk) who
doesn't buy your conclusions because he
doesn't accept your operationalizations.</p>
<p>But if we want "to talk TO each other (not
only PAST each other)", as Martin writes, it
would be good to have what other fields call
"standards of empirical research". We have
copied a lot of statistical methods from
fields such as the social sciences and
biology. I think it would also be beneficial
to take a look at their standards at the
"lower" level -- for instances, wrt how data
is gathered, processed and classified, how
hypotheses are operationalized, etc., to make
sure that the results obtained by somebody are
also accepted by others (just think of the
5%-threshold for statistical significance,
which is just a matter of convention).<br>
</p>
<p>I'm aware that this type of remark is
annoying for some of you. I teach both corpus
linguistics and typology. In corpus
linguistics our students deal with very basic
questions of empirical research -- like the
traditional 'quality criteria' -- e.g.
(external, internal) validity, objectivity,
reliability -- and then, in typology, we read
important publications by major authorities of
the field where these criteria are simply not
applied, sometimes the statistics are faulty,
and students do enquire about this. What can I
say? There are no research standards in
typology? There is an ongoing discussion about
"arbitrary/subjective/random/d<wbr>isjunctive
comparative concepts" on the Lingtype-list?
I'm afraid it wouldn't convince them. What I
say is that typology still has some way to go
to in terms of research methods. There are
many non-trivial problems, as we have seen in
various discussions on this list, and we
should be aware that linguistic data is sui
generis (for instance, I think we can't adopt
just any method/software package from
genetics). But we shouldn't use "authority" as
a criterion in our methodological choices, and
the choices shouldn't be made in such a way to
legitimize our own research 'ex post'.<br>
</p>
<p>Volker<br>
</p>
<br>
<div
class="m_-3530313933156395715m_-3772461755557999611moz-cite-prefix">Am
18.11.2017 um 07:36 schrieb Dryer, Matthew:<br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>
<div class="h5">
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal">With respect to
Martin’s comment</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“<span
style="font-size:14.0pt;font-family:Calibri">It
is my impression that such ortho-affixes
(= forms written as affixes) are perhaps
even more common than “phonologically
weak” ortho-affixes, but this is an
empirical question (in his 2015 ALT
abstract, Matthew mentions 248 languages
with weak affixes, but 308 languages
with only affixes of the Tauya type,
apparently confirming my impression).</span>”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I realize that this is
a reasonable inference from my abstract,
but one often has to simplify things for
the purposes of an abstract. My definition
of a weak affix is very narrow and many if
not most affixes that are not weak affixes
by my narrow criteria can still be shown
to be attached phonologically by broader
criteria. Furthermore, I also treat a
morpheme as an affix for the purposes of
this study if it triggers phonologically
conditioned allomorphy in stems it
attaches to and it is clear from
Macdonald’s description of Tauya that some
of the ortho-affixes Martin mentions do
trigger phonologically conditioned
allomorphy in stems they attach to (pp 54,
72, 74, 79). </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I counted an affix as
weak for the purposes of the study in my
2015 ALT talk only if the description of
it in a grammar makes clear that it is
nonsyllabic (or has nonsyllabic
allomorphs) or that it exhibits
phonologically allomorphy or triggers
phonologically conditioned allomorphy in
adjacent stems. But in many grammars, it
is only in the discussion of phonology
that it becomes clear that a given affix
exhibits phonologically conditioned
allomorphy or that it triggers
phonologically conditioned allomorphy in
adjacent stems. But because I wanted to
include a large sample of languages and
because it is often unclear from
discussions of phonology whether
particular rules apply to particular
affixes or stems such affixes combine
with, I adopted the procedure of not
consulting the discussions of phonology in
classifying ortho-affixes as weak. This
made sense for my 2015 ALT talk since I
was examining whether there is a suffixing
preference and restricting attention to
weak affixes so defined applies equally to
prefixes and suffixes. For a different
type of typological study, this would have
been inappropriate. This illustrates how
comparative concepts are specific to
particular typological studies.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Furthermore, there are
other factors that I did not examine that
are relevant to whether a given
ortho-affix is attached phonologically.
There may be clear evidence from
allophonic rules, but it is often very
unclear from grammatical descriptions
whether particular allophonic rules apply
to particular ortho-affixes or stems to
which ortho-affixes are attached. And even
if the information is there in the
grammatical description, it may take a lot
of work to see whether they apply to a
particular affix. For example, careful
examination of Macdonald’s description of
Tauya implies that the benefactive
ortho-affix <i>-pe</i> that Martin
mentions is attached phonologically, since
she gives examples of phonetic
representations of forms containing this
morpheme where it takes the form [-be]
after /m/ ([tembe] on page 54).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There might also be
evidence from stress, but still be unclear
how stress is assigned to forms including
ortho-affixes. For example, Tauya has
word-final stress, but it is not clear
from Macdonald’s description whether this
means that nouns bearing the ortho-affixes
that Martin mentions take stress on the
ortho-affix.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Some of you may have
noticed that what I say here contradicts
what I said in my earlier email about
comparative concepts needing to be
exhaustive. The comparative concept I used
in my 2015 ALT talk was not exhaustive and
was in fact disjunctive. Since that seemed
appropriate for that study, this suggests
that one cannot rule out disjunctively
defined comparative concepts. I sympathize
with Martin’s objecting to disjunctive
comparative concepts as a way to continue
to use confusing and ambiguous terms and I
agree that there is something odd about
arbitrary disjunctive comparative
concepts, but it is a mistake to simply
rule out disjunctive comparative concepts.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I should note finally
that while it is clear that the
ortho-affixes that Martin mentions are
attached phonologically, they are actually
not affixes by either his criteria or mine
since they are clitics that attach to
postnominal modifiers. [Martin has written
about problems with the use of the term
“clitic”. I am in complete agreement with
him about this. But I use the term here
and elsewhere in my research (including my
upcoming ALT talk on the encliticization
preference) as a label for a comparative
concept for grammatical morphemes that are
phonologically attached but attach to
stems of more than one stem class.]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Matthew</p>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<span
id="m_-3530313933156395715m_-3772461755557999611OLK_SRC_BODY_SECTION">
<div>
<div class="h5">
<div
style="font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt;text-align:left;color:black;BORDER-BOTTOM:medium
none;BORDER-LEFT:medium
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1pt solid;BORDER-RIGHT:medium
none;PADDING-TOP:3pt"> <span
style="font-weight:bold">From: </span>Lingtyp
<<a
href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">lingtyp-bounces@listserv.ling<wbr>uistlist.org</a>>
on behalf of Martin Haspelmath <<a
href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>><br>
<span style="font-weight:bold">Date: </span>Thursday,
November 16, 2017 at 7:14 PM<br>
<span style="font-weight:bold">To: </span>"<a
href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist<wbr>.org</a>"
<<a
href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist<wbr>.org</a>><br>
<span style="font-weight:bold">Subject: </span>Re:
[Lingtyp] wordhood: bonded vs. bound<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div>
<div class="h5"> Matthew Dryer thinks that
wordhood is generally understood by
grammar authors in terms of <b>bondedness</b>
(= phonological weakness, as shown by
nonsyllabicity and phono-conditioned
allomorphy), not in terms of <b>boundness</b>
(= inability to occur in isolation).
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
I don’t know if this is true, but
Matthew actually recognizes that
grammars often describe grammatical
markers as “affixes” even when they do
not show the two “phonological weakness”
(or bondedness) features.
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
For example, Tauya (a language of New
Guinea) is said to have (syllabic) case
suffixes, but these never show any
allomorphy, e.g.
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
fena’a-ni [woman-ERG]<br>
na-pe [you-BEN]<br>
wate-’usa [house-INESS]<br>
Aresa-nani [Aresa-ALL]<br>
Tauya-sami [Tauya-ABL] (MacDonald 1990:
119-126)
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
It is my impression that such
ortho-affixes (= forms written as
affixes) are perhaps even more common
than “phonologically weak”
ortho-affixes, but this is an empirical
question (in his 2015 ALT abstract,
Matthew mentions 248 languages with weak
affixes, but 308 languages with only
affixes of the Tauya type, apparently
confirming my impression).
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
For this reason, I have suggested that
the stereotypical “affix” notion should
perhaps be captured in terms of
boundness together with
single-root-class adjacency. Since the
Tauya case-markers attach only to nouns,
they count as affixes; by contrast, if a
bound role marker attaches to both nouns
(English “for children”) and adjectives
(“for older children”) as well as to
other elements (“for many children”), we
do not regard it as an affix (but as a
preposition), even if it is bound (=
does not occur in isolation; English
"for" does not).
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
Matthew quite rightly points out that
this notion of boundness (which goes
back at least to Bloomfield 1933: §10.1)
implies that most function words in
English are bound, and in fact most
function words in most languages are
bound – but this is exactly what we
want, I feel, because the best way to
define a “function word” is as a bound
element that is not an affix. Linguists
often think of function words (or
“functional categories”) as defined
semantically, but it is actually very
hard to say what is the
semantic(-pragmatic) difference between
a plural marker and a word like
“several”, between a dual marker and the
word “two”, between a past-tense marker
and the expression “in the past”, or
between a comitative marker and the word
“accompany”. It seems to me that these
distinctions are best characterized in
terms of boundness, i.e. inability to
occur in isolation.
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
It may be true that occurrence in
isolation is a feature of an element
that is not easy to elicit from
speakers, but in actual language use,
there are a very large number of very
short utterances, so at least positive
evidence for free status (=non-bound
status) is not difficult to obtain.
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
In any event, it seems clear to me that
some key concepts of grammatical
typology such as “flag” (= bound role
marker on a nominal) and “person index”
(= bound person marker, generally on a
verb) require the Bloomfieldian
boundness notion, and that these
concepts are much easier to work with in
typology than the traditional
stereotypical notions of “case”,
“adposition”, “agreement marker”, and
“pronominal clitic”. (For bound person
forms, this was a major lesson of Anna
Siewierska’s 2004 book “Person”.)
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
Best,<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
<div
class="m_-3530313933156395715m_-3772461755557999611moz-cite-prefix">On
14.11.17 07:02, Dryer, Matthew wrote:<br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div><span class="">
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="font-size:14px">I have a
number of problems with Martin’s
proposal:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="font-size:14px"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="font-size:14px"><span
style="font-size:14pt">"<b>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:</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="font-size:14px"><span
style="font-size:14pt"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="font-size:14px"><b><span
style="font-size:14pt">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."</span></b><span
style="font-size:14pt"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="font-size:14px"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="font-size:14px">If one
examines the notion of “bound” from
his 2013 paper, I believe it implies
a comparative concept of affix that
differs greatly from what most
linguists (at last most
non-generative linguists) understand
by the term. That’s not a problem
for it as a comparative concept, but
it is a comparative concept that
differs considerably from the
stereotype.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="font-size:14px"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="font-size:14px">Martin’s
definition of “free and “bound” from
his 2013 paper is as follows:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="font-size:14px"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span
style="font-family:Times;font-size:18px">"But
distinguishing in a general way
between bound elements and free
elements is quite
straightforward, because there
is a single criterion: Free
forms are forms that can occur
on their own, i.e. in a complete
(possibly elliptical) utterance
(Bloomfield 1933: 160). This
criterion correlates very highly
with the criterion of
contrastive use: Only free forms
can be used contrastively."</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="font-size:14px"><span
style="font-size:13.0pt;font-family:Times"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="font-size:14px"><span
style="font-family:Times">First, I
find the notion of complete
utterance ambiguous. Does it mean
utterances in normal speech or
does it include metalinguistic
uses (like “What is the last word
in the sentence “Who are you going
with”? Answer “with”). I would
assume that it does not include
such metalinguistic uses. But then
many if not most so-called
function words in English would
count as bound since they cannot
be used as complete utterances.
Perhaps other speakers of English
would have different intuitions,
but if so that only indicates the
lack of clarity in the notion.
Furthermore, for many function
words in English, I am not sure
how to judge whether they can
occur alone as utterances. Many
such so-called function words
would appear to count as bound by
Martin’s definition, though they
would not count as affixes since
they lack other properties in his
definition of “affix”.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="font-size:14px"><span
style="font-family:Times"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="font-size:14px"><span
style="font-family:Times">Second,
many languages have grammatical
morphemes that must occur adjacent
to an open class word but which
behave as separate words
phonologically. These would all
apparently count as affixes by
Martin’s definition. Again, I have
no problem with this as a
comparative concept, only that it
means his notion of affix deviates
considerably from the stereotype.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="font-size:14px"><span
style="font-family:Times"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="font-size:14px"><span
style="font-family:Times">Third,
Martin says that his criterion “</span><span
style="font-family:Times">correlates
very highly with the criterion of
contrastive use</span><span
style="font-family:Times">”. But
by my intuitions, the ability to
occur as complete utterances does
not correlate closely with the
criterion of contrastive use,
since most so-called function
words CAN occur with contrastive
use (such as can in this
sentence!), as can some morphemes
that are conventionally treated as
affixes, like <i>un-</i> in “I’m
not happy, I’m UNhappy”. Of
course, Martin might argue that <i>
un-</i> is more like so-called
function words and less like
morphemes conventionally treated
as affixes. But the fact remains
that <i>un-</i> is easily the
locus of contrast but cannot be
used as a complete utterance. I
thus see no evidence of a close
correlation between the ability to
occur as a complete utterance and
the ability to be the locus of
contrast.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="font-size:14px"><span
style="font-family:Times"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="font-size:14px"><span
style="font-family:Times">Finally,
it is my experience that languages
differ in their conventions
regarding what can be a complete
utterance. Imagine two closely
related languages that differ in
their grammatical rules governing
what is a complete utterance. By
Martin’s definition, there might
be a large number of morphemes
that count as separate words in
one language but as affixes in the
other language. This strikes me as
odd. It seems odd to have a
criterion for what is a word and
what is an affix so dependent on
the grammatical rules in the
language for what constitutes a
complete utterance.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="font-size:14px"><span
style="font-family:Times"> </span></p>
</span>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="font-size:14px"><span
style="font-family:Times">Matthew</span></p>
</div>
<div style="font-size:14px"><br>
</div>
<span
id="m_-3530313933156395715m_-3772461755557999611OLK_SRC_BODY_SECTION"
style="font-size:14px">
<div
style="font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt;text-align:left;color:black;BORDER-BOTTOM:medium
none;BORDER-LEFT:medium
none;PADDING-BOTTOM:0in;PADDING-LEFT:0in;PADDING-RIGHT:0in;BORDER-TOP:#b5c4df
1pt solid;BORDER-RIGHT:medium
none;PADDING-TOP:3pt"><span class="">
<span style="font-weight:bold">From:
</span>Lingtyp <<a
href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">lingtyp-bounces@listserv.ling<wbr>uistlist.org</a>>
on behalf of Martin Haspelmath <<a
href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>><br>
</span><span style="font-weight:bold">Date:
</span>Sunday, November 12, 2017 at
10:47 PM<span class=""><br>
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<span style="font-weight:bold">Subject:
</span>Re: [Lingtyp] wordhood<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal">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).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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”).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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”.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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”:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">(1) “Leakage”
of definitions due to vague
defining notions</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">(2)
Incoherence of definitions due
to the use of different criteria
in different languages</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The first can
be addressed by tightening the
defining notions, but the second
is fatal.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So here’s a
proposal for defining a notion
of “simple morphosyntactic
word”:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>A simple
morphosyntactic word is a form
that consists of (minimally) a
root, plus any affixes.</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><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></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">(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”.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Best,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<br>
</span><span class="">
<pre class="m_-3530313933156395715m_-3772461755557999611moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a class="m_-3530313933156395715m_-3772461755557999611moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10
D-07745 Jena
&
Leipzig University
IPF 141199
Nikolaistrasse 6-10
D-04109 Leipzig
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<pre class="m_-3530313933156395715m_-3772461755557999611moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a class="m_-3530313933156395715m_-3772461755557999611moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10
D-07745 Jena
&
Leipzig University
IPF 141199
Nikolaistrasse 6-10
D-04109 Leipzig
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<pre class="m_-3530313933156395715m_-3772461755557999611moz-signature" cols="72">--
Prof. Volker Gast
English and American Studies
Ernst-Abbe-PLatz 8
D-07743 Jena
Fon: ++49 3641 9-44546
Fax: ++49 3641 9-44542</pre>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Prof. Volker Gast
English and American Studies
Ernst-Abbe-PLatz 8
D-07743 Jena
Fon: ++49 3641 9-44546
Fax: ++49 3641 9-44542</pre>
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