<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">All good points, surely. <div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Actually, as regards ALT’s journal, some such points have been raised in LT a while ago: LT 10(1) 2006 had a discussion of replicability in typology (pp 67-128) that probably bears re-reading, and LT 20(3) 2016 had an editorial reminder of “openness” requirements, including a reference to the TOP guidelines that I can only warmly recommend once more (p 722). </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">In retrospect I honestly don’t think LT's reviewers and editorial boards have been entirely naive and irresponsibly negligent on these counts — though, perhaps understandably, the typological “vision” of a submission was the first quality they’ve always tended to seek out. I’m confident that under our new editor, Masha Koptjevskaja-Tamm, due controls will remain in place, or where appropriate be tightened, to avoid the quality of vision being marred by poverty of execution.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Frans</div><div class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class="">
<br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On 20. Nov 2017, at 11:50, Geoffrey Haig <<a href="mailto:geoffrey.haig@uni-bamberg.de" class="">geoffrey.haig@uni-bamberg.de</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><p style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">Dear All,</p><p style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">A brief comment on the standards for quantitative approaches to typology: I don't think anyone would disagree that coding-procedures need to be maximally transparent, explicitly justified, and adequately illustrated. I also think it's extremely important to minimize subjective effects in annotation practice - in general more annotators are better than just one, etc.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br class=""></p><p style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">But what also needs to be stressed is ensuring the full accessibility and accountability of the raw data itself - in effect allowing for replication of the study by other scholars, who are free to opt for, e.g. different coding decisions (which will likely lead to different results). That is actually long-term the best way of assessing the strengths and weaknesses of any coding procedure.<br class=""></p><p style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">So: if the data are out there, with unrestricted access ("open science"), then the issue of coding procedures becomes less pivotal.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br class=""></p><p style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">I would would therefore support recommendations for maximizing data accountability, accessibility, and replicability, to be a part of ALT-guidelines, and considered them as criteria for evaluating quality (e.g. in reviewing publications, or nominations for awards etc.).</p><p style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">best</p><p style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">Geoff<br class=""></p><p style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><br class=""></p><p style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><br class=""></p><br style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><div class="moz-cite-prefix" style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Am 19.11.2017 um 23:33 schrieb Dryer, Matthew:<br class=""></div><blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:D6384351.5877C%25dryer@buffalo.edu" style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><div class=""><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';" class="">Volker,<o:p class=""></o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';" class=""><o:p class=""> </o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';" class="">I agree with what you say about the need to have clear operational definitions for one’s comparative concepts, but I don’t understand the following:<o:p class=""></o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';" class=""><o:p class=""> </o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';" class="">"To what extent do you consider the operationalizations valid, with respect to the definition of the tertium comparationis/comparative concept?"<o:p class=""></o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';" class=""><o:p class=""> </o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';" class="">This might make sense if one believes in crosslinguistic categories, but I don’t understand what it could mean applied to comparative concepts. It seems to imply that there is a set of comparative concepts out there that it is our job to discover and identify the properties of. But on my understanding, comparative concepts are not things that exist. Rather, they are simply notions that are defined for the purposes of a particular typological study. What exists if a continuous multi-dimensional space and the comparative concept is a partially arbitrary definition of a region within that continuous multi-dimenstional space. From that perspective, I don’t understand what it would mean for the operationalization to be valid.<o:p class=""></o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';" class=""><o:p class=""> </o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';" class="">Matthew</div></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><span id="OLK_SRC_BODY_SECTION" class=""><div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; text-align: left; border-width: 1pt medium medium; border-style: solid none none; padding: 3pt 0in 0in; border-top-color: rgb(181, 196, 223);" class=""><span style="font-weight: bold;" class="">From:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>Lingtyp <<a href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>> on behalf of Volker Gast <<a href="mailto:volker.gast@uni-jena.de" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">volker.gast@uni-jena.de</a>><br class=""><span style="font-weight: bold;" class="">Date:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>Sunday, November 19, 2017 at 7:57 PM<br class=""><span style="font-weight: bold;" class="">To:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>William Croft <<a href="mailto:wcroft@unm.edu" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">wcroft@unm.edu</a>><br class=""><span style="font-weight: bold;" class="">Cc:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>Linguistic Typology <<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>><br class=""><span style="font-weight: bold;" class="">Subject:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>Re: [Lingtyp] Empirical standards in typology<br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><div class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Thanks Bill. Note that I didn't say that there is no awareness, or no</div><div class="">discussion, of research methods. What I said is that there are no commonly</div><div class="">accepted standards that we could apply, for instance, when evaluating</div><div class="">journal articles, dissertations or research proposals. I assume that</div><div class="">everyone applies their own, personal standards.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">So here are some thoughts about standards in quantitative linguistic</div><div class="">typology:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">With regard to coding/annotation, we're dealing with a question of</div><div class="">reliability, which ultimately concerns replicability. Let's assume that</div><div class="">self-annotation cannot be avoided for financial reasons. What about</div><div class="">establishing a standard saying that, for instance, when you submit a</div><div class="">quantitative-typological paper to LT you have to provide the data in such</div><div class="">a way that the coding decisions are made sufficiently transparent for</div><div class="">readers to see if they can go along with the argument? And if you fail to</div><div class="">do so your submission will not even be taken into consideration? This</div><div class="">could include, in addition to the data itself, a description of the coding</div><div class="">process and operational tests for the levels of each variable.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The other questions that have been discussed are mainly questions of</div><div class="">validity (though the distinction has been made using other terms in this</div><div class="">discussion). From my point of view the most important insight from the</div><div class="">distinction between comparative concepts and descriptive categories is</div><div class="">that comparative concepts, our tertia comparationis, are analyst's</div><div class="">("observer-made") concepts, not participant's concepts. That means that we</div><div class="">need to think about operationalizations, as you (Bill) write. So there are</div><div class="">minimally two questions (and I'm not saying anything new here): (i) how</div><div class="">can we define comparative concepts, and (ii) how can they be</div><div class="">operationalized. If you define comparative concepts (e.g. 'word') in terms</div><div class="">of other comparative concepts (e.g. 'vowel harmony'), that doesn't really</div><div class="">help, obviously. What you're really doing is replace one tertium</div><div class="">comparationis with a list of tertia (and if the operationalization is</div><div class="">existential quantification over a set of comparative concepts, I have a</div><div class="">hard time seeing how this can lead to valid results). That's why I</div><div class="">think that functional definitions are better suited as the basis of</div><div class="">crosslinguistic comparison (to the extent that crosslinguistic comparison</div><div class="">situates itself in the functional paradigm, but there seems to be</div><div class="">consensus that this is actually the case). They need to be independent of</div><div class="">the actual operationalizations.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Once you have a proper definition of your comparative concept, you can</div><div class="">think about operationalizations; and obviously, you have to make sure that</div><div class="">the operationalizations, which 'measure out' the individual linguistic</div><div class="">systems, do in fact measure what you think you are measuring; they have to</div><div class="">match the (independent) definition of your tertium comparationis. As we</div><div class="">have seen, it's very hard to establish something like a common sense here.</div><div class="">My view is that minimally, definitions (of tertia/comparative concepts)</div><div class="">and operationalizations should be kept apart, and that authors should be</div><div class="">explicit about both -- which, I'm aware, they often are, as you (Bill)</div><div class="">write, though different terms are used. My point is that this should not</div><div class="">just be regarded as something that is done by 'most' typologists, it</div><div class="">should become a standard. Specifically, the degree of explicitness with</div><div class="">which the operationalizations are explained, and their plausiblity with</div><div class="">respect to the definition of the tertium comparationis (which is</div><div class="">subjective), should be evaluated in the review. This could be implemented</div><div class="">by sending LT-reviewers a list of questions including something like: "Is</div><div class="">the tertium comparationis clearly defined?", "Are the operationalizations</div><div class="">made explicit?", "To what extent do you consider the operationalizations</div><div class="">valid, with respect to the definition of the tertium</div><div class="">comparationis/comparative concept?"</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Such criteria could also be integrated into ALT-awards, to encourage young</div><div class="">scholars to apply them.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Best,</div><div class="">Volker</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">* * *</div><div class="">Prof. V. Gast</div><div class=""><a href="http://www.uni-jena.de/%7Emu65qev" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">http://www.uni-jena.de/~mu65qev</a></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">On Sat, 18 Nov 2017, William Croft wrote:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><blockquote id="MAC_OUTLOOK_ATTRIBUTION_BLOCKQUOTE" style="padding: 0px 0px 0px 5px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 5px;" class=""><div class="">Dear Volker,</div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I think most typologists are aware that (i) defining categories for coding is very hard, especially across languages -- hence all the discussions about comparative concepts on Lingtyp</div><div class="">(some of which have subsequently been published in some form in Linguistic Typology), of which this discussion of ‘word’ is only the latest; and (ii) that typologists must usually</div><div class="">operationalize those criteria and make the operationalizations as explicit as possible. I think that (i) and (ii) are fairly common practice in typology, despite my previous comments</div><div class="">about essentialism and methodological opportunism (cherry-picking of criteria).</div><div class=""> On the other hand, your point about mono-annotator annotation is well taken. Nevertheless, the operational factor is this one:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And I'm not saying that mono-annotator projects are useless, sometimes you just don't have the manpower for multi-annotator projects </div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I have recently been working on computational projects that involve annotation, and even there, where there is a lot more large-scale funding than in typology, it is very expensive to</div><div class="">hire and train annotators, and in the end there are maybe two annotators and a third person acting as adjudicator for a pilot annotation at most. (In fact, most of the effort in</div><div class="">computational linguistics is towards training classifiers to do the annotation automatically on large corpora, and in my small experience those are often worse than mono-annotator</div><div class="">annotations.)</div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In typology, there is virtually no funding for any sort of multi-annotator annotation whatsoever. This is especially true for graduate students doing typological dissertations, but</div><div class="">also for faculty doing typological research. I would guess that many typologists are aware that multi-annotator annotation is preferable, but impractical. But we don’t normally add a</div><div class="">statement like “We are aware that engaging multiple annotators would improve the reliability of our coding and hence of the results of our crosslinguistic study; but due to lack of</div><div class="">funding, all annotation of the data was performed by the author.” Perhaps we typologists should starting adding such statements.</div><div class="">Best wishes,</div><div class="">Bill</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>On Nov 18, 2017, at 6:32 AM, Volker Gast <<a href="mailto:volker.gast@uni-jena.de" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">volker.gast@uni-jena.de</a>> wrote:</div><div class="">Hi Johanna, even if I could do this diplomatically, I wouldn't, and I think it wouldn't make much sense, as my point is not about specific publications or authors; it's about</div><div class="">common practice (and common practice is reflected in the publications of 'major authorities'). But I think I get your point; so let me be a bit more specific.</div><div class="">A lot of (quantitative) typological work relies on 'coding': Information is extracted from grammars and transformed into a data matrix. Now, it is common practice (and I'm not</div><div class="">excluding myself here) for the coding to be done by the analyst him/herself, and by no one else. But that's considered bad practice in other fields. Ideally, you'd need a team of</div><div class="">annotators coding independently, on the basis of annotation guidelines. The team codes a sample, determines inter-annotator agreement, and adjusts/specifies the annotation</div><div class="">guidelines where necessary. This is done until the inter-annotator agreement is satisfactory. And then you can start with the actual coding. Ideally, the analyst shouldn't be</div><div class="">involved in the coding process, as her annotation decisions might be (subconsciously) influenced by her working hypotheses. (Note that this might be a viable solution to the</div><div class="">question of how comparative concepts can reliably be defined, for a given study; you can just measure how much inter-annotator variation there is; whether or not the</div><div class="">operationalizations make sense is a different question, of course, one of validity. When you use a set of criteria disjunctively, the question is what exactly your</div><div class="">operationalizations are intended to represent.)</div><div class="">Note that I'm not saying that there are no multi-annotator projects in typology (I'm actually involved in two such projects, though one of them is actually a comparative corpus</div><div class="">linguistics project); but as far as I can tell, it is 'basically' comon practice for analysts to code the data themselves. And I'm not saying that mono-annotator projects are</div><div class="">useless, sometimes you just don't have the manpower for multi-annotator projects (and one of the multi-annotator projects I'm involved in was really painful; but it was instructive</div><div class="">to see that even for categories that we thought we had defined rather clearly, inter-annotator agreement was rather low in some cases). But as I said earlier, it would be nice to</div><div class="">have some standards or at least general guidelines for coding typological data. Minimally, I think, the data should be published, along with at least some information on the</div><div class="">operational tests that were applied, even if done by a single annotator.</div><div class="">I hope this clarifies my (too general) remarks in my previous post.</div><div class="">Volker</div><div class="">Am 18.11.2017 um 13:27 schrieb Johanna NICHOLS:</div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Volker, </div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">sections those comments are refereed, edited, brief, and focused on factual and methodological matters, i.e. about empirical fundamentals and not debate on theoretical</div><div class="">frameworks.</div><div class="">If there's no way to do it diplomatically, never mind.</div><div class="">Johanna</div><div class="">On Sat, Nov 18, 2017 at 12:37 PM, Volker Gast <<a href="mailto:volker.gast@uni-jena.de" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">volker.gast@uni-jena.de</a>> wrote:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Matthew -- are you saying that "one cannot rule out disjunctively defined comparative concept" because this is what you did?</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>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</div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>ALT/2015-talk) who doesn't buy your conclusions because he doesn't accept your operationalizations.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>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</div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>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</div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>their standards at the "lower" level -- for instances, wrt how data is gathered, processed and classified, how hypotheses are operationalized, etc., to make sure</div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>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</div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>convention).</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>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</div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>basic questions of empirical research -- like the traditional 'quality criteria' -- e.g. (external, internal) validity, objectivity, reliability -- and then, in</div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>typology, we read important publications by major authorities of the field where these criteria are simply not applied, sometimes the statistics are faulty, and</div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>students do enquire about this. What can I say? There are no research standards in typology? There is an ongoing discussion about</div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>"arbitrary/subjective/random/disjunctive comparative concepts" on the Lingtype-list? I'm afraid it wouldn't convince them. What I say is that typology still has</div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>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</div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>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</div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>criterion in our methodological choices, and the choices shouldn't be made in such a way to legitimize our own research 'ex post'.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Volker</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Am 18.11.2017 um 07:36 schrieb Dryer, Matthew:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>With respect to Martin’s comment</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> </div><div class="">“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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">confirming my impression).”</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">in stems they attach to (pp 54, 72, 74, 79).</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">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</div><div class="">nonsyllabic allomorphs) or that it exhibits phonologically allomorphy or triggers phonologically conditioned allomorphy in adjacent stems. But in many grammars,</div><div class="">it is only in the discussion of phonology that it becomes clear that a given affix exhibits phonologically conditioned allomorphy or that it triggers</div><div class="">phonologically conditioned allomorphy in adjacent stems. But because I wanted to include a large sample of languages and because it is often unclear from</div><div class="">discussions of phonology whether particular rules apply to particular affixes or stems such affixes combine with, I adopted the procedure of not consulting the</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">inappropriate. This illustrates how comparative concepts are specific to particular typological studies.</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">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</div><div class="">evidence from allophonic rules, but it is often very unclear from grammatical descriptions whether particular allophonic rules apply to particular ortho-affixes</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">apply to a particular affix. For example, careful examination of Macdonald’s description of Tauya implies that the benefactive ortho-affix -pe that Martin</div><div class="">mentions is attached phonologically, since she gives examples of phonetic representations of forms containing this morpheme where it takes the form [-be] after</div><div class="">/m/ ([tembe] on page 54).</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">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,</div><div class="">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.</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">rule out disjunctively defined comparative concepts. I sympathize with Martin’s objecting to disjunctive comparative concepts as a way to continue to use</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">disjunctive comparative concepts.</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">a label for a comparative concept for grammatical morphemes that are phonologically attached but attach to stems of more than one stem class.]</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">Matthew</div><div class="">From: Lingtyp <<a href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>> on behalf of Martin Haspelmath <<a href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>></div><div class="">Date: Thursday, November 16, 2017 at 7:14 PM</div><div class="">To: "<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>" <<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>></div><div class="">Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] wordhood: bonded vs. bound</div><div class="">Matthew Dryer thinks that wordhood is generally understood by grammar authors in terms of bondedness (= phonological weakness, as shown by nonsyllabicity and</div><div class="">phono-conditioned allomorphy), not in terms of boundness (= inability to occur in isolation). </div><div class="">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</div><div class="">“phonological weakness” (or bondedness) features. </div><div class="">For example, Tauya (a language of New Guinea) is said to have (syllabic) case suffixes, but these never show any allomorphy, e.g. </div><div class="">fena’a-ni [woman-ERG]</div><div class="">na-pe [you-BEN]</div><div class="">wate-’usa [house-INESS]</div><div class="">Aresa-nani [Aresa-ALL]</div><div class="">Tauya-sami [Tauya-ABL] (MacDonald 1990: 119-126) </div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">confirming my impression). </div><div class="">For this reason, I have suggested that the stereotypical “affix” notion should perhaps be captured in terms of boundness together with single-root-class</div><div 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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">if it is bound (= does not occur in isolation; English "for" does not). </div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">characterized in terms of boundness, i.e. inability to occur in isolation. </div><div class="">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</div><div class="">large number of very short utterances, so at least positive evidence for free status (=non-bound status) is not difficult to obtain. </div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">traditional stereotypical notions of “case”, “adposition”, “agreement marker”, and “pronominal clitic”. (For bound person forms, this was a major lesson of Anna</div><div class="">Siewierska’s 2004 book “Person”.) </div><div class="">Best,</div><div class="">Martin</div><div class="">On 14.11.17 07:02, Dryer, Matthew wrote:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I have a number of problems with Martin’s proposal:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> </div><div class="">"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:</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">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</div><div class="">bound form."</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">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</div><div class="">(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</div><div class="">differs considerably from the stereotype.</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">Martin’s definition of “free and “bound” from his 2013 paper is as follows:</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">"But distinguishing in a general way between bound elements and free elements is quite straightforward, because there is a single criterion: Free forms are</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">criterion of contrastive use: Only free forms can be used contrastively."</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">would not count as affixes since they lack other properties in his definition of “affix”.</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">Second, many languages have grammatical morphemes that must occur adjacent to an open class word but which behave as separate words phonologically. These</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">affix deviates considerably from the stereotype.</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">Third, Martin says that his criterion “correlates very highly with the criterion of contrastive use”. But by my intuitions, the ability to occur as complete</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">in this sentence!), as can some morphemes that are conventionally treated as affixes, like un- in “I’m not happy, I’m UNhappy”. Of course, Martin might</div><div class="">argue that un- is more like so-called function words and less like morphemes conventionally treated as affixes. But the fact remains that un- is easily the</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">utterance and the ability to be the locus of contrast.</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">Finally, it is my experience that languages differ in their conventions regarding what can be a complete utterance. Imagine two closely related languages</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">is an affix so dependent on the grammatical rules in the language for what constitutes a complete utterance.</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">Matthew</div><div class="">From: Lingtyp <<a href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>> on behalf of Martin Haspelmath <<a href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>></div><div class="">Date: Sunday, November 12, 2017 at 10:47 PM</div><div class="">To: "<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>" <<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>></div><div class="">Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] wordhood</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">linguistic analysis – few linguists would disagree here, not even generativists (who otherwise liberally assume natural-kind catgeories).</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">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</div><div class="">that linguists use routinely – e.g. “gender”, which is typically defined in terms of “agreement” (which is defined in terms of inflectional marking on</div><div class="">targets; and inflection is defined in terms of “word”).</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">“gender” or “polysynthesis”). So I’ll be happy to contribute to a discussion on how to make progress on defining “word”.</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">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</div><div class="">distinguish two situations of “slipperiness”:</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">(1) “Leakage” of definitions due to vague defining notions</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">(2) Incoherence of definitions due to the use of different criteria in different languages</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">The first can be addressed by tightening the defining notions, but the second is fatal.</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">these.</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">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</div><div class="">often do all family members have meals together?”). So the use of different criteria for different cultures is fatal here.</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">What I find worrying is that linguists often seem to accept incoherent definitions of comparative concepts (this was emphasized especially in my 2015 paper</div><div class="">on defining vs. diagnosing categories). Different diagnostics in different languages would not be fatal if “word” were a Platonic (natural-kind) concept,</div><div class="">but if we are not born with a “word” category, typologists need to use the SAME criteria for all languages.</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">So here’s a proposal for defining a notion of “simple morphosyntactic word”:</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">A simple morphosyntactic word is a form that consists of (minimally) a root, plus any affixes.</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">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:</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">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</div><div class="">bound form.</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">These definitions make use of the notions of “root” and “root-class” (defined in Haspelmath 2012) and “bound (form)” vs. “free (form)” (defined in</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">Hammarström for a helpful discussion that helped me to come up with the above definitions, which I had not envisaged in 2011.)</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">(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</div><div class="">from phrases comparatively; and I don’t know what to do with “phonological word”.)</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">telling which phenomena should count as measuring bond strength.</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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</div><div class="">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,</div><div class="">or for bond strength?</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">Best,</div><div class="">Martin</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">--</div><div class="">Martin Haspelmath (<a href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>)</div><div class="">Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History</div><div class="">Kahlaische Strasse 10<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div class="">D-07745 Jena<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div class="">&</div><div class="">Leipzig University<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div class="">IPF 141199</div><div class="">Nikolaistrasse 6-10</div><div class="">D-04109 Leipzig<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div class="">--</div><div class="">Martin Haspelmath (<a href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>)</div><div class="">Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History</div><div class="">Kahlaische Strasse 10<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div class="">D-07745 Jena<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div class="">&</div><div class="">Leipzig University<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div class="">IPF 141199</div><div class="">Nikolaistrasse 6-10</div><div class="">D-04109 Leipzig<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div class="">_______________________________________________</div><div class="">Lingtyp mailing list</div><div class=""><a href="mailto:Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a></div><div class=""><a href="http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp</a></div><div class="">--</div><div class="">Prof. Volker Gast</div><div class="">English and American Studies</div><div class="">Ernst-Abbe-PLatz 8</div><div class="">D-07743 Jena</div><div class="">Fon: ++49 3641 9-44546</div><div class="">Fax: ++49 3641 9-44542</div><div class="">_______________________________________________</div><div class="">Lingtyp mailing list</div><div class=""><a href="mailto:Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a></div><div class=""><a href="http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp</a></div><div class="">--</div><div class="">Prof. Volker Gast</div><div class="">English and American Studies</div><div class="">Ernst-Abbe-PLatz 8</div><div class="">D-07743 Jena</div><div class="">Fon: ++49 3641 9-44546</div><div class="">Fax: ++49 3641 9-44542</div><div class="">_______________________________________________</div><div class="">Lingtyp mailing list</div><div class=""><a href="mailto:Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a></div><div class=""><a href="http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp</a></div><div class=""><br class=""></div></blockquote></div></div></span><br class=""><fieldset class="mimeAttachmentHeader"></fieldset><br class=""><pre wrap="" class="">_______________________________________________
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