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This is a great project – I have long thought that somone should
come up with a standard list of "comparative sentence meanings" of
this sort, analogous to the "comparative word meanings" as found in
Swadesh-type lists (the Concepticon brings together 353 lists of
this kind: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://concepticon.clld.org/contributions">https://concepticon.clld.org/contributions</a>).<br>
<br>
Parallel-word studies have enormously profited from standard word
meaning lists, and likewise, parallel-text studies will profit from
standard sentence meanings in many languages.<br>
<br>
We already have quite a few parallel texts, but they are typically
unglossed – so if linguists started to collect such "mini parallel
sentence sets" (also from smaller languages), this would be very
useful, I think.<br>
<br>
Of course, there are many individual ways in which Ian Joo's list
could be improved, and there are also many larger issues (of the
sort mentioned by Sandra). But maybe we should think of these as
limitations that are inherent in the method, not as problems that
make the method unsuitable. So I think it would be nice if a project
like this got off the ground. (It was actually suggested to me by
Michael Cysouw over 15 years ago, and I have kept thinking about
something of this sort on and off.)<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Am 09.05.21 um 09:25 schrieb Sandra
Auderset:<br>
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<div> Hi Ian,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Following up on Hartmut, Yunfan and others, I have some
questions:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>What do you do with variation? I’m not familiar with the
languages you work on, but ’Tense Future’ in German could
be translated as “Ich werde morgen gehen” or “Ich gehe
morgen”. The latter would be more frequent in spoken
language, but you might get the former because of
translation bias. Would you include both? You say that
your method accounts for the choice of the speaker, but
again I wonder if this isn’t just translation bias.</li>
<li>You say that this method has the advantage of including
more frequently observed features. I wonder how you know
whether that’s the case or not? Do you mean in spoken or
written language? As Yunfan pointed out, with 50 sentences
you might easily miss some common features.</li>
<li>How do you standardize the glosses? For example, how do
you decide whether something should be glossed as ‘be’ or
copula? That seems important to me, since glossing is very
subjective and you might inadvertendly bias the whole
calculation. Especially since you already wrote up the
conclusion.</li>
<li>Lastly, I find it odd that Example 2) is calculated as
having distance 1. To me, there are two differences:
presence/absence of nominative and the presence/absence of
a copula. How do you determine that the copula is in the
same slot as the nominative for calculation?</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Best,</div>
<div>Sandra</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
<div id="CanarySig">
<div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica;">—<br>
<b><span class="" style="font-size: 12px;"><font
face="Tahoma"> <a href="https://sauderset.github.io/"
moz-do-not-send="true"><span class=""
style="font-size: 12px;">Sandra Auderset</span></a></font></span></b>
<div><span class="" style="font-size: 12px;"><span class=""
style="font-size: 12px;"><font face="Tahoma">PhD
Candidate | [she/her]</font></span></span></div>
<div><span class="" style="font-size: 12px;"><span class=""
style="font-size: 12px;"><font face="Tahoma">Department
of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution</font></span></span></div>
<div><span class="" style="font-size: 12px;"><span class=""
style="font-size: 12px;"><font face="Tahoma">MPI for
Evolutionary Anthropology</font></span></span></div>
<div><span class="" style="font-size: 12px;"><span class=""
style="font-size: 12px;"><font face="Tahoma">&</font></span></span></div>
<div><span class="" style="font-size: 12px;"><span class=""
style="font-size: 12px;"><font face="Tahoma">Department
of Linguistics</font></span></span></div>
<div><span class="" style="font-size: 12px;"><span class=""
style="font-size: 12px;"><font face="Tahoma">University
of California Santa Barbara</font></span></span></div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id="CanaryDropbox"> </div>
<blockquote id="CanaryBlockquote">
<div>
<div>On Saturday, May 08, 2021 at 19:16, Hartmut Haberland
<<a href="mailto:hartmut@ruc.dk" moz-do-not-send="true">hartmut@ruc.dk</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<div link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72" lang="DA">
<div class="WordSection1">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"
lang="EN-US">Dear Ian,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"
lang="EN-US">I have a few comments.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"
lang="EN-US">I was wondering about<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<table class="MsoNormalTable"
style="width:197.0pt;border-collapse:collapse" width="0"
cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0">
<tbody>
<tr style="height:14.0pt">
<td style="width:96.0pt;padding:0cm 3.5pt 0cm
3.5pt;height:14.0pt" width="128" nowrap="nowrap">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Courier
New";color:black">Genitive<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
<td style="width:101.0pt;padding:0cm 3.5pt 0cm
3.5pt;height:14.0pt" width="135" nowrap="nowrap">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Courier
New";color:black">Alienable<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height:14.0pt">
<td style="width:96.0pt;padding:0cm 3.5pt 0cm
3.5pt;height:14.0pt" width="128" nowrap="nowrap">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Courier
New";color:black">Genitive<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
<td style="width:101.0pt;padding:0cm 3.5pt 0cm
3.5pt;height:14.0pt" width="135" nowrap="nowrap">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Courier
New";color:black">Inalienable<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"
lang="EN-US">Is it a good idea to use ‘genitive’?
Would ‘possessive’ not be better?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"
lang="EN-US">Also I wonder about languages like
Finnish which express contrast between definiteness
and indefiniteness by word order:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"
lang="EN-US">Auto on kadulla. ‘<u>The car</u> is in
the street.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"
lang="EN-US">Kadulla on auto. ‘There is <u>a car</u>
in the street.’ (-ulla is inessive case.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"
lang="EN-US">Also think of Italian<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"
lang="EN-US">La macchina è rotta.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"
lang="EN-US">È rotta la machina. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"
lang="EN-US">both ‘The car is broken’, but are answers
to different questions (Where is your car?, Why are
you late?, resp.); same (SV vs. VS) in Greek. How
would you get these results?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"
lang="EN-US">Best, Hartmut<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"
lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<div>
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1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0cm 0cm 0cm">
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Fra:</span></b><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">
Lingtyp
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org"><lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org></a>
<b>På vegne af </b>JOO, Ian [Student]<br>
<b>Sendt:</b> 8. maj 2021 15:08<br>
<b>Til:</b> LINGTYP
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org"><lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org></a><br>
<b>Emne:</b> [Lingtyp] A list of 50 basic
sentences<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<div name="messageBodySection">
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal">Dear all,<br>
<br>
I am trying to make a list of 50 basic sentential
meanings.<br>
The goal is to make parallel corpora of different
languages based on this list of sentences.<br>
Each sentence on the list serves to check whether a
language has a given grammatical feature, and if so,
in what form the language expresses it.<br>
When creating each sentence, I tried to limit its
vocabulary to basic words that are found in most
languages, avoiding culture-specific words.<br>
I would appreciate it if you could have a look at
the attached file and advise what I should
add/remove/modify.<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
</div>
<div name="messageSignatureSection">
<p class="MsoNormal"><br>
From Hong Kong, <o:p></o:p></p>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal">Ian<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
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