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Edith Moravcsik makes an intriguing point here:<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 21.03.19 20:14, Edith A Moravcsik
wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt">Crosslingustic
generalizations justifying categories may of course be of
different kinds. They may be EXISTENTIAL, such as that
“ideophones defined by such-and-such properties occur in
SOME languages”. Or they may be UNIVERSAL, such as
“ideophones defined by such-and-such properties occur in ALL
languages (sampled)”. <br>
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<br>
Is the first kind of statement ("Some language has ideophones")
really a generalization? <br>
<br>
In any event, it seems to me that perhaps the most common use of
(category-like) comparative concepts is in existence statements such
as:<br>
<br>
– Lithuanian has ideophones<br>
– Niuean has incorporation<br>
– Russian has a serial verb construction (Weiss 2012)<br>
– Proto-Slavic lacked an [f]<br>
<br>
These are fairly simple statements about particular languages, and
it may appear at first glance that they do not involve any
typological claims. But in fact, saying that "language L has
phenomenon P" implies that phenomenon P is a comparative concept – a
kind of phenomenon that other languages might have as well.<br>
<br>
This is why I have started proposing definitions for terms that are
not really needed for universal statements, e.g. "incorporation" (in
my 2018 paper on polysynthesis, DOI: 10.1515/lingty-2018-0011). I
don't know of a good universal that makes use of this concept, but
many people want to say things like "my language has/lacks
incorporation", and for this to make sense, we need a clear
definition of the term. So I have come to realize that in practice,
comparative concepts are even more important than I claimed in my
2010 paper (where I said that they were required fro
cross-linguistic studies).<br>
<br>
So while I would not regard existential statements as
"generalizations", I think we need comparative concepts not only for
explicit comparison, but also in many statements about particular
languages. Having clear definitions of well-known terms has thus
become even more important in my perception.<br>
<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10
D-07745 Jena
&
Leipzig University
Institut fuer Anglistik
IPF 141199
D-04081 Leipzig
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