<div dir="ltr"><div>Hi Juergen,</div><div><br></div><div>I think this is often associated
with choice of terminology, which might facilitate a quantitative
study, by comparing terminology used in descriptions to distributions of
features based on (consistently applied) comparative concepts. I'll be
presenting something related to this at ALT this year ("The effects of
terminological variation for large-scale typology"). For now I will summarize three examples as case studies based on my
dissertation research (Ross 2021a). As with Jeremy's comment I don't have statistics directly addressing your question, and terminology is not an exact way to measure what you're asking about, but I think it's possible to make some relevant quantitative observations this way, and this issue does seem to be one of concern for objective typology in general.<br></div><div><br></div><div>1. Associated Motion (Guillaume & Koch 2021; Ross 2021a, 2021b)</div><div>Until recently there was no widely known term for this phenomenon. "Associated motion" comes from descriptions of Australian languages in the 1980s and has been used elsewhere only within the past couple decades. Most descriptions follow regional traditions for terminological choices (Ross 2021b:32), and there is also often no explicit distinction (at least with regard to the terminology itself) between associated motion and directionals. Itive/andative and ventive/venitive are common for Africa, or centrifugal and centripetal for Chadic specifically, and translocative and cislocative (and sometimes dislocatives) for North American languages, for example. Other terms, especially just "directionals" are often used elsewhere. Interestingly the term "aspect" is sometimes used as well to include this type of verbal morphology even though it's not temporal, apparently just as a "closest" familiar label. Familiarity with these regional descriptive traditions also probably has an impact on whether researchers expect to find these features, in addition to how they label them. On the other hand, I believe that the variation in terminology has also impeded broader awareness of associated motion as a cross-linguistic phenomenon because it was not obvious that "directionals" or "itives" or "centripetals" or "translocatives" here and there were actually referring to the same thing, so researchers (field workers as well as typologists) weren't aware of something to document and compare.</div><div><br></div><div>2. Serial Verb Constructions (Ross 2021a)</div><div>Definitions of SVCs are notoriously inconsistent, to the point that it isn't rare for authors of descriptive grammars or other papers to be explicitly hesitant to use the term for a new language, while others use the term loosely for related but distinct phenomena, and some authors have even questioned whether there is such as thing as SVCs at all (e.g. Delplanque 1998; Paul 2008). Usage of the term spread from West Africa to several other groups of languages (especially Southeast Asia, as well as for creoles and pidgins), but is not widely used in some other places such as North America. For this reason it is common for grammars of West African languages, for example, to explicitly discuss SVCs, including sometimes extending the term to other similar constructions, or to report that the language lacks SVCs. But in North America, although some recent research has shown some languages feature SVCs, the topic is rarely discussed, and some researchers are hesitant to apply the label. See for example Nakayama (2001:115) and Davidson (2002:152, 352) on Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka; North America). Or similarly Besnier (2000:538) didn't "unequivocally" identify any SVCs in part due to the expectation that Polynesian languages (vs. the rest of Oceanic) typically lack SVCs (with some purported exceptions). The point is not whether these constructions are "really" SVCs but that authors are hesitant due to descriptive traditions and familiarity with tendencies in related and/or regional languages. Another example from my ongoing research is that SVCs appear to be extremely common in sign languages (even more than in pidgins and creoles, for example), but they are discussed relatively little in descriptive work (though recently have been mentioned more and more), given other more traditional topics of focus for research on sign languages. The inverse applies as well, where terms are borrowed from one neighboring language to another even if it's not an exact match (e.g. "SVCs" in Supyire, Niger-Congo, West Africa, despite there being a "serial verb connective" linking element between the verbs which Carlson 1994:289 recognizes as not being "prototypical" for SVCs). (Overuse and underuse of the term SVCs is not limited to particular groups of languages, of course; cf. Ross 2021a, 2022).<br></div><div><br></div><div>3. Switch-Reference (Ross 2021a)</div><div>Switch-reference has a more strongly regional distribution than SVCs, with regions for previous research and worldwide distribution being closely associated (especially North America, Papua New Guinea, Australia and to some degree South America). Researchers working on languages of these areas typically expect to find this feature, and researchers elsewhere may not address the topic. This is often accurate given the regional distribution. However, cases have been reported elsewhere such as in part of north/eastern Eurasia (Nichols 1983; Nedjalkov 1998; Hock 2014), and this has had relatively little impact on studies of switch-reference in general. Similarly, so-called "echo subject" constructions in South Vanuatu languages resemble switch-reference but have been mostly rejected by scholars of switch-reference (e.g. de Sousa 2016). Although some of these cases may be marginal, similarly marginal instances would often be labeled as "switch-reference" in regions where the feature is typical. So again it isn't about which is "really" switch-reference or not, but inclinations of researchers working on different groups of languages.</div><div><br></div><div>I will discuss the issue of variation in terminology, including what I believe is an impact on Grambank entries, in my ALT talk this year.<br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>References<br></div><div>Besnier, Niko. 2000. Tuvaluan, a Polynesian Language of the Central Pacific. London: Routledge. <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203027127">https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203027127</a></div><div>Carlson, Robert. 1994. A grammar of Supyire. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110883053">https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110883053</a></div><div>Davidson, Matthew. 2002. Studies in Southern Wakashan (Nootkan) Grammar. State University of New York at Buffalo Ph.D. dissertation.</div><div>de Sousa, Hilário. 2016. Some non-canonical switch reference systems and the fundamental functions of switch reference. In Rik van Gijn & Jeremy Hammond (eds.), Switch Reference 2.0, 55–92. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.114.02des">https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.114.02des</a></div><div>Delplanque, Alain. 1998. Le mythe des “séries verbales.” Faits de langues 6(11). 231–250. <a href="https://doi.org/10.3406/flang.1998.1212">https://doi.org/10.3406/flang.1998.1212</a></div><div>Guillaume,
Antoine & Harold Koch (eds.). 2021. Associated Motion. Berlin: De
Gruyter Mouton. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110692099">https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110692099</a></div><div>Hock, Hans Henrich. 2014. Switch reference in South Asian languages. Presented at South Asian Language Analysis Roundtable (SALA) 30, University of Hyderabad, February 6, 2014.</div><div>Nakayama, Toshihide. 2001. Nuuchahnulth (Nootka) morphosyntax. Berkeley: University of California Press.</div><div>Nichols, Johanna. 1983. Switch-Reference in the Northeast Caucasus. In John Haiman & Pamela Munro (eds.), Switch Reference and Universal Grammar: Proceedings of a symposium on switch reference and universal grammar, Winnipeg, May 1981, 245–265. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.2.14nic">https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.2.14nic</a></div><div>Nedjalkov, Igor V. 1998. Converbs in the languages of Eastern Siberia. Language Sciences 20(3). 339–351. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0388-0001(98)00008-4">https://doi.org/10.1016/S0388-0001(98)00008-4</a></div><div>Paul, Waltraud. 2008. The serial verb construction in Chinese: A tenacious myth and a Gordian knot. The Linguistic Review 25(3–4). 367–411. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/TLIR.2008.011">https://doi.org/10.1515/TLIR.2008.011</a></div><div>Ross, Daniel. 2021. Pseudocoordination, Serial Verb Constructions and Multi-Verb Predicates: The relationship between form and structure. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Ph.D. dissertation. <a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5546425">https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5546425</a></div><div>Ross, Daniel. 2021b. A cross-linguistic survey of Associated Motion and Directionals. In Antoine Guillaume & Harold Koch (eds.), Associated Motion, 31–86. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110692099-002">https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110692099-002</a></div><div>Ross, Daniel. 2022. Pseudocoordination and Serial Verb Constructions as Multi-Verb Predicates. In Giuliana Giusti, Vincenzo Nicolò Di Caro & Daniel Ross (eds.), Pseudo-Coordination and Multiple Agreement Constructions, 315–335. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1075/la.274.14ros">https://doi.org/10.1075/la.274.14ros</a></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Daniel Ross</div><div>ALT webmaster</div><div>University of California, Riverside<br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Sep 28, 2024 at 11:45 AM Jeremy Bradley via Lingtyp <<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</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"><u></u>
<div>
<p>This doesn't really touch upon any guesstimates / numbers, but it
strongly reminds me of the bias there esp. historically was in the
description of differential object marking in Finnic languages
(e.g. Finnish: <i>hän jo-i maido-n</i> s/he drink-PST.3SG
milk-ACC 's/he drank the milk' ~ <i>hän jo-i maito-a</i> s/he
drink-PST.3SG milk-PART 's/he drank (some) milk') before that was
a salient analysis dimension. "This is clearly just a way to
express definiteness", say scholars whose frame of reference is
Germanic languages. "No, this is clearly just how verbal aspect is
expressed in these languages", say scholars whose frame of
reference is Slavic languages. I never encountered Hungarian
scholars presenting a third option, that it's clearly just how
Finnish verbalizes the difference between subjective and objective
conjugation, but it would not shock me if that has happened too!<br>
</p>
<p>Best,<br>
Jeremy<br>
</p>
<div>On 28/09/2024 20:17, Juergen Bohnemeyer
via Lingtyp wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"CMU Serif"">Dear
all – I’m wondering whether anybody has attempted to
estimate the size of the following putative effect on
descriptive and typological research:<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"CMU Serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"CMU Serif"">Suppose
there is a particular phenomenon in Language L, the known
properties of which are equally compatible with an analysis
in terms of construction types (comparative concepts) A and
B.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"CMU Serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"CMU Serif"">Suppose
furthermore that L belongs to a language family and/or
linguistic area such that A has much more commonly been
invoked in descriptions of languages of that family/area
than B.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"CMU Serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"CMU Serif"">Then
to the extent that a researcher attempting to adjudicate
between A and B wrt. L (whether in a description of L, in a
typological study, or in coding for an evolving typological
database) is aware of the prevalence of A-coding/analyses
for languages of the family/area in question, that might
make them more likely to code/analyze L as exhibiting A as
well.
<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"CMU Serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"CMU Serif"">So
for example, a researcher who assumes languages of the
family/area of L to be typically tenseless may be influenced
by this assumption and as a result become (however slightly)
more likely to treat L as tenseless as well. In contrast, if
she assumes languages of the family/area of L to be
typically tensed, that might make her ever so slightly more
likely to analyze L also as tensed.
<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"CMU Serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"CMU Serif"">It
seems to me that this is a cognitive bias related to, and
possibly a case of, essentialism. (And just as in the case
of (other forms of) essentialism, the actual cognitive
causes/mechanisms of the bias may vary.)<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"CMU Serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"CMU Serif"">But
regardless, my question is, again, has anybody tried to
guestimate to what extent the results of current typological
studies may be warped by this kind of researcher bias? (Note
that the bias may be affecting both authors of descriptive
work and typologists using descriptive work as data, so
there is a possible double-whammy effect.)<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"CMU Serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"CMU Serif"">Thanks!
– Juergen<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"CMU Serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"CMU Serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">Juergen
Bohnemeyer (He/Him)<br>
Professor, Department of Linguistics<br>
University at Buffalo <br>
<br>
Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus<br>
Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 <br>
Phone: (716) 645 0127 <br>
Fax: (716) 645 3825<br>
Email: </span><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><a href="mailto:jb77@buffalo.edu" title="mailto:jb77@buffalo.edu" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:rgb(0,120,212)">jb77@buffalo.edu</span></a></span><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><br>
Web: </span><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><a href="http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/" title="http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:rgb(5,99,193)">http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/</span></a></span><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"> <br>
<br>
</span><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black">Office
hours Tu/Th 3:30-4:30pm in 642 Baldy or via Zoom
(Meeting ID 585 520 2411; Passcode Hoorheh) </span><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><br>
<br>
There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light
Gets In <br>
(Leonard Cohen) </span><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">-- <u></u><u></u></span></p>
</div>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="DE"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
</div>
<br>
<fieldset></fieldset>
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</blockquote>
<pre cols="72">--
Jeremy Bradley, Ph.D.
University of Vienna
<a href="http://www.mari-language.com" target="_blank">http://www.mari-language.com</a>
<a href="mailto:jeremy.moss.bradley@univie.ac.at" target="_blank">jeremy.moss.bradley@univie.ac.at</a>
Office address:
Institut EVSL
Abteilung Finno-Ugristik
Universität Wien
Campus AAKH, Hof 7-2
Spitalgasse 2-4
1090 Wien
AUSTRIA
Mobile: +43-664-99-31-788
Skype: jeremy.moss.bradley</pre>
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