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Yes, there's no real disagreement, so this is why I wrote a blog
post explaining why Nikolaus's paper does not indicate any deeper
issues: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2447">https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2447</a><br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:3e33e5f3-f329-fe5d-30ec-bf7e02256836@uni-koeln.de">
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">William Croft wrote: the
universals found in typological research both define and
constrain relations between language-specific constructions,
including their variation and evolution (see Croft 2001, 2013).
And I think that a lot of language description does much of this
in practice, even if the authors aren't particularly concerned
about these theoretical issues. (I think I am here largely
agreeing with Nikolaus Himmelmann's paper in review that was
cited by Erich.)</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:3e33e5f3-f329-fe5d-30ec-bf7e02256836@uni-koeln.de">
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"> </div>
Nikolaus Himmelmann wrote: <font size="+1">Yes, that
is exactly my point in <a
href="https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005705">Against
trivializing language description (and comparison)</a>. </font></blockquote>
<br>
More generally, we should stop opposing types of typologists
("Aikhenvald vs. Bickel vs. Corbett vs. Croft vs. Dahl vs. Dryer vs.
Gil vs. Haspelmath vs. Himmelmann vs. Lazard vs. Moravcsik vs.
Nichols vs. Round" etc.), because we are all doing more or less the
same kinds of good things.<br>
<br>
I'm less sure about generative grammar, where we keep seeing
something entirely different, e.g. extremely complex movement
operations (and odd concepts such as "vP" and "CP") that are meant
to describe fairly ordinary facts of grammar. I have long been
puzzled by these practices, and I suspect that the problem falls
under the following (uncontroversial) methodological point:<br>
<br>
<span data-offset-key="5067u-0-0"><span data-text="true"><font
size="-1">"Instead of adopting universal atomic notions of
subject and object, one considers all relevant
language-specific morphosyntactic properties of arguments
(i.e., all relevant constructions) without prioritizing among
them and without cherry-picking the ones that support the
linguist’s intuition." (Witzlack-Makarevich, Nichols,
Hildebrandt, Zakharko, Bickel (2021):
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://zenodo.org/record/4442706">https://zenodo.org/record/4442706</a>)</font><br>
<br>
It seems that in generative grammar, the "universal atomic
notions of vP and CP" are widely adopted without much
reflection, and that this is the source of the differences that
we observe. But I may be wrong, and I keep wondering whether I
should continue to try to understand generative grammar, or
whether it's better to try to understand languages...<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
Martin<br>
</span></span> <br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.shh.mpg.de/employees/42385/25522">https://www.shh.mpg.de/employees/42385/25522</a></pre>
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