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<p>Dear all,</p>
<p>I sympathize with Adam Tallman's struggling with the notion of
"functional":<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 17/06/2020 10:22, Adam James Ross
Tallman wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAK0T6OhwFjnzJgBNjnsFPw0yVQYUxx6PyscD6YA3AQ+f2n-hrw@mail.gmail.com">
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<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:monospace,monospace;color:#4c1130">Dear
Juergen,</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:monospace,monospace;color:#4c1130"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:monospace,monospace;color:#4c1130">Just a
clarifying question (I'm interested because I've attempted to
develop a method to quantify the degree to which some set of
morphemes is morphologized and I have struggled with defining
"functional" in a consistent fashion, and actually I have just
given up)<br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>I have also struggled with the related notion of "grammatical".
In my 2015 paper (reference below), I argued that languages of the
Mekong-Mamberamo linguistic area are characterized by "Low
Grammatical Morpheme Density". While I remain convinced that this
is a really central core property of these languages, I was
painfully aware of the difficulties in objectively defining the
notion of grammatical morpheme. In an earlier draft of the paper
I proposed a semantically-based definition, but in the final
version it got whittled down to a single lengthy footnote (no.
26), which I have reproduced below for those who are interested.
It's a topic that I am hoping to work on more in the future.</p>
<p>Best,</p>
<p>David</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p class="ReferencesT"
style="margin-left:27.35pt;text-indent:-27.35pt"><span
style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"
lang="EN-US">Gil, David (2015)
"The Mekong-Mamberamo Linguistic Area", in N.J. Enfield and B.
Comrie
eds., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Languages of
Mainland Southeast
Asia, The State of the Art</i>, Pacific Linguistics, DeGruyter
Mouton, Berlin,
266-355.</span></p>
<p>
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<p><br>
</p>
<p>Footnote 26:<br>
</p>
<p class="footnote">
</p>
<p class="footnote" style="line-height:normal"><span
style="font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:
minor-latin;mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-latin">It must be
acknowledged that the
distinction between contentives and grammatical markers is
itself somewhat problematical,
not least because it conflates two orthogonal dimensions, formal
and semantic.
In part, the distinction is of a formal nature: whereas
contentives are
typically independent words or word stems belonging to open word
classes,
grammatical markers are usually either words or word stems
belonging to closed
classes or else bound morphemes, often exhibiting idiosyncratic
morphosyntactic
behaviour. Nevertheless, the formal distinction exhibits a
strong empirical correlation
to a logically-independent semantic distinction, between
different kinds of concepts.
For example, within the domain of time, days of the week are the
kind of
concept expressed by contentives such as English <i
style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal">Tuesday</i>, whereas past is the kind of concept
typically expressed by
grammatical morphemes such as English <i
style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">-ed</i>,
though exceptions do exist (e.g. the Riau Indonesian proximate
past expression <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">tadi,</i>
a separate word belonging to the
single open word-class of the language and exhibiting no
idiosyncratic
grammatical properties whatsoever). These two kinds of concepts
may be
characterized with reference to <i
style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">encyclopaedic
knowledge</i>, that is to say, our structured and highly
detailed understanding
of the way things are in the world around us. Particular
concepts may be said
to be encyclopaedic to the extent that they draw upon such
encyclopaedic
knowledge, resulting in a classification of concepts as either <i
style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">encyclopaedically-rich</i>
or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">encyclopaedically-poor</i>.
Examples of
encyclopaedically-rich concepts are <span class="msoIns"><ins
cite="mailto:Angela%20Terrill" datetime="2014-04-10T10:36">‘</ins></span>Tuesday’,
‘dog’, and ‘buy’, which make reference to complex and detailed
knowledge in
various domains of human activity and experience. In contrast,
encyclopaedically-poor concepts are ones like past, plural and
locative,
typically of a more abstract, logical and relational nature,
with little or no
reference to such detailed real-world knowledge. For the most
part,
encyclopaedically-rich concepts are expressed by words and
larger phrases,
while encyclopaedically-poor concepts are encoded by grammatical
markers, but
there are exceptions (e.g. the non-grammatical but
encyclopaedically-poor Riau
Indonesian <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">tadi</i>
above). This points
towards a possible alternative semantically-based
characterization of Mekong-Mamberamo
languages as displaying <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">low
encyclopaedically-poor-concept articulation</i>, in that the
expression of
encyclopaedically-poor concepts by means of overt morphemes is
impoverished,
that is to say, paradigmatically optional and syntagmatically
infrequent.</span></p>
<p class="footnote">
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<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAK0T6OhwFjnzJgBNjnsFPw0yVQYUxx6PyscD6YA3AQ+f2n-hrw@mail.gmail.com"></blockquote>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
David Gil
Senior Scientist (Associate)
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
Email: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:gil@shh.mpg.de">gil@shh.mpg.de</a>
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-556825895
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091</pre>
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