<div dir="ltr">Just as an illustration of non-linguists (or even non-typologists) not understanding the short term "typology". Recently at an event for our research centre I did a short presentation of the field and there were non-linguists in the audience who found it very enlightening, because they had thought that "typology" was the study of how people type language.<div><br></div><div>/Hedvig</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="all"><div><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:9pt"><b><br></b></span></p><p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt"><font size="2" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Med vänliga hälsningar</b><b>,</b><br></font></p><div><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt"><b><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Hedvig Skirgård</font></b></p><p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt"><br></p><p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt"><font size="1"><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">PhD Candidate</span><br></font></p><p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Verdana,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt"><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1">The Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity</font></span></p><p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Verdana,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt"><font face="verdana, sans-serif" size="1">ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language</font></p><p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Verdana,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt"><font face="verdana, sans-serif" size="1">School of Culture, History and Language<br>College of Asia and the Pacific</font></p><p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Verdana,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt"><font face="verdana, sans-serif" size="1">The Australian National University</font></p><p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#666666" size="1"><a href="https://sites.google.com/site/hedvigskirgard/" target="_blank">Website</a><br></font></p><div><br></div><p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt"><br></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">2018-02-28 9:18 GMT+11:00 Siva Kalyan <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sivakalyan.princeton@gmail.com" target="_blank">sivakalyan.princeton@gmail.com</a>></span>:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word">I would point out that in English, the term “comparative linguistics” is typically used as a shorthand for “historical-comparative linguistics”, i.e. that part of historical linguistics that concerns itself with genealogical relatedness between languages, reconstruction etc., as opposed to diachronic change within a single language. (See e.g. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_linguistics" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/<wbr>Comparative_linguistics</a>.)<div><br></div><div>I see that in German (according to the corresponding Wikipedia entry), the term <i>vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft</i> has a broader meaning which encompasses both historical linguistics (<i>historisch-vergleichende S—</i>) and typology (<i>allgemein-vergleichende S—</i>); this makes sense of the name of the department in Zurich (otherwise a bit puzzling for an English-speaker).</div><div><br></div><div>Thus the use of “comparative linguistics” to refer to (only) linguistic typology would seem to be in competition with existing usage in both English and German. That said, I can see the utility of having a cover term that encompasses both historical linguistics and typology, and would support using “comparative linguistics” in the German sense. I’m not sure if this is within the scope of the current discussion, though.</div><div><br></div><div>Siva</div><div><br><div><blockquote type="cite"><span class=""><div>On 28 Feb 2018, at 8:10 am, Martin Haspelmath <<a href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de" target="_blank">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>> wrote:</div><br class="m_-6679970945402115793Apple-interchange-newline"></span><div><span class=""><span style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);float:none;display:inline!important">Dear all,</span><br style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);float:none;display:inline!important">What is the name of our subfield (or subcommunity):<span class="m_-6679970945402115793Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);float:none;display:inline!important"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br><br>“language typology”?<u></u><u></u></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span class="m_-6679970945402115793Apple-converted-space"> </span><br>“linguistic typology”?<u></u><u></u></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span class="m_-6679970945402115793Apple-converted-space"> </span><br>or maybe simply “comparative linguistics”?<br><br>Linguists know that there is no difference between the first two, and they also understand the shorter "typology", but this term is opaque for nonlinguists, and the duality of<span class="m_-6679970945402115793Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">“language typology”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"> and “linguistic typology” is inconvenient, because there is incomplete aggregation on sites like Google Scholar and<span class="m_-6679970945402115793Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://academia.edu/" target="_blank">Academia.edu</a>.<span class="m_-6679970945402115793Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span lang="EN-US"><br>(It seems that on<span class="m_-6679970945402115793Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://academia.edu/" target="_blank">Academia.edu</a>, 6354 people are followers of “language typology”, 8732 follow “linguistic typology”, and 7090 follow “typology”, though perhaps not all of the latter mean typology in the linguistics sense.)<span class="m_-6679970945402115793Apple-converted-space"> </span><br></span></span><br style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span>Historically, it seems clear that “language typology” is the older term, and has become current in the 1970s.<span class="m_-6679970945402115793Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);font-size:12pt;font-family:Cambria"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Since the 1990s, it got a competitor ("linguistic typology"), for unclear reasons.<br><br>(More on the history of these two terms can be found in the following blogpost:<span class="m_-6679970945402115793Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="m_-6679970945402115793moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://dlc.hypotheses.org/1022" target="_blank">https://dlc.<wbr>hypotheses.org/1022</a>)<br><br>So I'm wondering: Maybe we should consider switching to an entirely different, fully transparent term, namely "comparative linguistics"?<br></span><br style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">It seems that there are quite a few well-established fields with “comparative” in their names: comparative economics, comparative education, comparative law, comparative literature, comparative mythology, comparative psychology, and “comparative zoology” even has a famous museum on the Harvard campus.<u></u><u></u></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><u></u><span class="m_-6679970945402115793Apple-converted-space"> </span><br><br><u></u></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">(So far, at least one department of comparative linguistics in the relevant sense exists: at the University of Zurich,<a class="m_-6679970945402115793moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.comparativelinguistics.uzh.ch/en.html" target="_blank">http://www.<wbr>comparativelinguistics.uzh.ch/<wbr>en.html</a>).</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span class="m_-6679970945402115793Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class=""><br style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><div style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><div><div class="m_-6679970945402115793_1mj m_-6679970945402115793_1mf"><span><span><br>I feel that the term “comparative linguistics” for what used to be called “language/linguistic typology” has another big advantage: The term fails to signal association with a particular subcommunity – and this is good. After all, many comparative linguists work in a generative framework, and these do not usually associate with the term “typology”. However, much of what they do is clearly “typological” in the usually understood sense, so it is really odd to exclude this community terminologically.</span></span></div></div><div><div class="m_-6679970945402115793_1mj m_-6679970945402115793_1mf"><span><br></span></div></div><div><div class="m_-6679970945402115793_1mj m_-6679970945402115793_1mf"><span><span>In any event, the question of the name of our subfield of linguistics seems not gto have been discussed explicitly. Maybe it would not be a complete waste of time to engage in some discussion.</span></span></div></div><div><div class="m_-6679970945402115793_1mj m_-6679970945402115793_1mf"><span><br></span></div></div><div><div class="m_-6679970945402115793_1mj m_-6679970945402115793_1mf"><span><span>Martin</span></span></div></div></div><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><u></u><u></u></span><span style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);float:none;display:inline!important"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);font-size:12pt;font-family:Cambria"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br><u></u><u></u></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"></span><span style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);float:none;display:inline!important"></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Cambria;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Cambria;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Cambria;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"></p><div style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Cambria;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;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u><u></u></span></div></span><pre class="m_-6679970945402115793moz-signature" cols="72" style="font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a class="m_-6679970945402115793moz-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
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