<div dir="ltr">Sounds like continually shifting prototypes, with slop in both boundaries and core. Perhaps relative positions are more important than absolute ones? Something like matrix mechanics?<div><br></div><div>Jess Tauber</div></div><div id="DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2"><br>
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</table><a href="#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2" width="1" height="1"></a></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Dec 6, 2021 at 3:06 PM Martin Haspelmath <<a href="mailto:martin_haspelmath@eva.mpg.de">martin_haspelmath@eva.mpg.de</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
Thanks, Arnold and Peter, for the interesting critical comments!<br>
<br>
I completely agree with Peter Arkadiev that "if linguistics is to
deal with complexity and diversity of linguistic structures, its
terminological apparatus cannot be simplistic" – yes, we need a lot
of terms for all this complexity, in fact far more than most people
make use of (which is why I keep proposing new terms).<br>
<br>
But I do not fully agree with Arnold Zwicky that "Our job is to
discover what the relevant concepts are in the domain in question
and then to provide names for them" – we have tried this, but it
turns out that it doesn't work well for general linguistics.
Different languages have fairly different "relevant concepts" (=
language-particular categories), so the comparison of languages
requires a distinct set of comparative concepts. For example, we
cannot readily describe Arabic or Chinese with concepts derived from
Ancient Greek (such as "(en)clitic").<br>
<br>
De facto, however, linguists do use quite a few Latin-derived (and
Greek-derived) terms for (comparison of) languages from around the
world, i.e. as comparative concepts. What should we take these terms
(e.g. <i>accusative, plural, preterite, imperative, affix, passive</i>)
to mean? They have a fairly clear meaning in Latin, but what do they
mean *in general*?<br>
<br>
It does not seem to make sense to pose this as a research question –
we cannot study languages in order to find out what "accusative" or
"passive" means. We attach these labels to languages around the
world because we think that they are generally understood, but often
we are not particularly clear about what that meaning is. We know
what a stereotypical "accusative" or a stereotypical "passive" (or a
stereotypical "clitic") is, but if there are no boundaries, we
cannot decide what to do in non-stereotypical cases (e.g. in the
case of "odd clitic behaviours" in Quechua, as studied by Alexander
Rice).<br>
<br>
Though Peter Arkadiev says that "we do not need apparently "precise"
definitions which end up delimiting arbitrary classes of things
having nothing in common apart from the randomly chosen property
"defining" them", I do not see what the alternative is – simply
*avoiding* the use of tradional terms? In practice, this will not
happen, as people will continue to talk about <i>accusative,
plural, preterite, imperative, affix, passive</i>, etc. So I think
it's better to try to provide simple and clear definitions that can
be used in textbooks. (Often, of course, language-particular classes
will not map perfectly onto these definitions, as is illustrated by
Riccardo Giomi's example of the Italian promiscuous diminutive <i>-icchi-</i>.)<br>
<br>
Arnold Zwicky says "What I'd like to avoid is disputes over whether
some element E in some language variety L is *really, truly" a
clitic", and indeed, we have too many such fruitless disputes – I
have a long list in my 2007 paper on pre-established categories
(<a href="https://zenodo.org/record/1133882" target="_blank">https://zenodo.org/record/1133882</a>, §3.3). But why are such disputes
about "clitics" fruitless? I'd say it's because there is no clear
definition of "clitic", while at the same time, many people *think*
that there is some general concept (a building block of UG?) behind
this term. But this need not be the case: "Clitic" may not be more
than a term that has been handed down to us by tradition (Ancient
Greek grammar, and then Nida 1946, which shortened "enclitic" to
"clitic"). Since this term is an accident of the history of
linguistics, giving it an arbitrary definition seems just the right
step to me – in this way, its arbitrariness becomes apparent to
everyone. (If "clitic" is used as an "umbrella term", by contrast,
there is no way in which it can be used for precise communication,
and we might as well not use it at all.)<br>
<br>
It would be great if it turned out that "properties not listed in
the definition are predictable from the ones that are" (as Arnold
notes), and in my 2015 paper on clitics (which was greatly inspired
by Arnold's work), I do discuss this issue (§7, see
<a href="https://zenodo.org/record/4550427" target="_blank">https://zenodo.org/record/4550427</a>). But this is not necessary –
"clitic" is a commonly used technical term, and as such, it should
have a clear definition (or should not be used). Quite generally, I
do not think that vague and stereotype-based "umbrella terms" are
needed in science, though they are of course ubiquitous in everyday
language.<br>
<br>
Best wishes,<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
P.S. I have more discussion of the general issues of terminological
precision in my 2021 paper: <a href="https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005489" target="_blank">https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005489</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<div>Am 06.12.21 um 20:13 schrieb Arnold M.
Zwicky:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre></pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>On 06/12/2021 16:25, Martin Haspelmath wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>Yes, Zwicky's 1994 idea that "clitic" is an "umbrella term" was adopted by Spencer & Luís (2012) – but this is not a CLAIM.
If the question is how to use a term, we make *terminological choices* – and my proposal was to make the choice that a clitic is defined as "a non-affix non-root bound form". This would give the term "clitic" a precise meaning (as a general-typological concept).
</pre>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<pre>This seems incomprehensively bizarre to me. Our job is to discover what the relevant concepts are in the domain in question and then to provide names for them (which could be more or less arbitrary, taken from familiar terms, created via metaphor, or whatever). But I'm baffled by your apparent position that history provides us with a term that has been more or less useful in the past, so our job is to arbitrarily assign it to one of the relevant concepts, with the consequence that this term is then *inapplicable* to -- inappropriately used for -- every one of the other relevant concepts.
If this is an (arbitrary) prescription about how the term should be used within the community of linguists (the relevant set of language users in ths case), it's just terrible -- guaranteed to sow confusion and misunderstanding. It's Humpty-Dumpty's "[a word] means justi what I choose [that is, what *I* choose] it to mean -- more more and no less". I, Arnold Zwicky, am free to declare that what "clitic" means is ''hoofed mammal', so that if you want to talk to me you have to use it that way too. (Actually, I use "ungulate" for that purpose, and some people use "hoofed mammal" and even more people, faced with the task of explaining the concept they're talking about, give an ostentive definition ending with the ominous "etc.". But nobody's going to buy my insistence that these creatures taken together are called, technically, "clitics" and that the Tagalog second-position elements are *not* clitics.)
I coined the technical term "umbrella term" to provide some sort of continuity with the history of our field for terms like "clitic", covering an assortment of loosely similar concepts -- each of which deserves its own label.
Perhaps you mean to claim that all the things under the "clitic" umbrella are in a family-resemblance relationship with one another (like things under the "game" umbrella) and that there are central members of the family -- clitics *par excellence*, as iit were. But that's an analysis designed for ordinary language, not technical language, so I'm not sure how the *cognitive* significance of centrality would carry over.
What I'd like to avoid is disputes over whether some element E in some language variety L is *really, truly" a clitic -- with reference to the Martin Haspelmath definition of what a clitic really, truly is.
Perhaps you want to claim that your choice of a definition is not arbitrary, not "merely terminological", but signals that the particular definition you have chosen is one for a concept that is empirically rich, in the sense that ("interesting") properties not listed in the definition are predictable from the ones that are. But you haven't actually claimed that.
I'm afraid that I'm going to have to stop here, with the comments above. At this point in my life I don't have the time for extended dialogue on *anything*, even if it might be fruitful.
Arnold
******</pre>
<div>No, Martin, we do not need apparently "precise" definitions
which end up delimiting arbitrary classes of things having
nothing in common apart from the randomly chosen property
"defining" them. I find this approach neither productive nor
scientific. If linguistics is to deal with complexity and
diversity of linguistic structures, its terminological apparatus
cannot be as simplistic as that. I apologise for putting it so
bluntly.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Best wishes,</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Peter</div>
<pre></pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<pre cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
<a href="https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/" target="_blank">https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/</a></pre>
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