<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">On Sat, Nov 18, 2017 at 12:37 PM, Volker Gast <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:volker.gast@uni-jena.de" target="_blank">volker.gast@uni-jena.de</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<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/<wbr>disjunctive 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_-3772461755557999611moz-cite-prefix">Am 18.11.2017 um 07:36 schrieb Dryer,
Matthew:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal">With respect to Martin’s comment<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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>”<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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).
<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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).<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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.]<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Matthew<u></u><u></u></p>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
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<span style="font-weight:bold">From: </span>Lingtyp <<a href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp-bounces@listserv.<wbr>linguistlist.org</a>>
on behalf of Martin Haspelmath <<a href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de" target="_blank">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">lingtyp@listserv.<wbr>linguistlist.org</a>"
<<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp@listserv.<wbr>linguistlist.org</a>><br>
<span style="font-weight:bold">Subject: </span>Re: [Lingtyp]
wordhood: bonded vs. bound<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
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).
<u></u><u></u>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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.<u></u><u></u>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
For example, Tauya (a language of New Guinea) is said to
have (syllabic) case suffixes, but these never show any
allomorphy, e.g.<u></u><u></u>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
fena’a-ni [woman-ERG]<u></u><u></u><br>
na-pe [you-BEN]<u></u><u></u><br>
wate-’usa [house-INESS]<u></u><u></u><br>
Aresa-nani [Aresa-ALL]<u></u><u></u><br>
Tauya-sami [Tauya-ABL] (MacDonald 1990: 119-126)<u></u><u></u>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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).<u></u><u></u>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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).<u></u><u></u>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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.<u></u><u></u>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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.<u></u><u></u>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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”.)<u></u><u></u>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
Best,<u></u><u></u><br>
Martin<br>
<br>
<u></u><u></u>
<div class="m_-3772461755557999611moz-cite-prefix">On 14.11.17 07:02, Dryer,
Matthew wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:14px">I have a
number of problems with Martin’s proposal:<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:14px"><u></u> <u></u></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><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:14px"><span style="font-size:14pt"> <u></u><u></u></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"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:14px"><u></u> <u></u></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.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:14px"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:14px">Martin’s
definition of “free and “bound” from his 2013 paper is
as follows:<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:14px"><u></u> <u></u></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."<u></u><u></u></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”.<u></u><u></u></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.<u></u><u></u></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.<u></u><u></u></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.<u></u><u></u></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">Matthew<u></u><u></u></span></p>
</div>
<div style="font-size:14px"><br>
</div>
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<span style="font-weight:bold">From: </span>Lingtyp
<<a href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp-bounces@listserv.<wbr>linguistlist.org</a>>
on behalf of Martin Haspelmath <<a href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de" target="_blank">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>><br>
<span style="font-weight:bold">Date: </span>Sunday,
November 12, 2017 at 10:47 PM<br>
<span style="font-weight:bold">To: </span>"<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp@listserv.<wbr>linguistlist.org</a>"
<<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp@listserv.<wbr>linguistlist.org</a>><br>
<span style="font-weight:bold">Subject: </span>Re:
[Lingtyp] wordhood<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<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).<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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”).<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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”.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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”:<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">(1) “Leakage” of definitions
due to vague defining notions<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">(2) Incoherence of definitions
due to the use of different criteria in different
languages<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The first can be addressed by
tightening the defining notions, but the second is
fatal.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So here’s a proposal for
defining a notion of “simple morphosyntactic
word”:<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>A simple
morphosyntactic word is a form that consists of
(minimally) a root, plus any affixes.<u></u><u></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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:<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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.<u></u><u></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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.)<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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”.)<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></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?<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Best,<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<br>
<pre class="m_-3772461755557999611moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a class="m_-3772461755557999611moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de" target="_blank">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
</pre>
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</span></blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="m_-3772461755557999611moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a class="m_-3772461755557999611moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de" target="_blank">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
</pre>
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<pre class="m_-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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