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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">Many thanks to Daniel, Jeremy, Mark, Stef, and Volker (and to Matthew Dryer, Elke Nowak, and Maïa Ponsonnet, who responded off-list)! I agree with everything that’s been said. And, I don’t want to preempt
further discussion of this topic at all, but I would like to add a few points:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<ol style="margin-top:0in" start="1" type="1">
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">I do think it would be possible in principle to ballpark the magnitude of areal/phylogenetic researcher bias (APRB) in description and typology.
But since I’m not a modeler myself, I’ll have to leave it to others to attempt implementations of the following idea: Fit mixed-effects regression models predicting the occurrence of particular properties in particular languages, with areal and phylogenetic
random factors (as is done for example in Jäger & Wahle 2021; Guzmán Najaranjo & Becker 2022; Skirgård et al. 2023; and Shcherbakova et al. 2023, 2024). But also include random factors for the sources of the data, such as in particular decade of publication
and perhaps theoretical orientation of the author. If one wanted to really knock oneself out, one could include a pairwise factor for academic ancestry, where researchers who share their advisor would be academic siblings, researchers whose advisors shared
their advisor would be academic niblings, etc. If such models converge, we should get estimates of the significance and size of APRB effects. And, if such effects should be significant, we would know that we’d need to add the inclusion of random source factors
to the best practices for future regression modeling of secondary typological data.<o:p></o:p></span></li></ol>
<p class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<ol style="margin-top:0in" start="2" type="1">
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">If APRB effects are real (and everybody who has weighed in so far seems to think that they are), I see a particularly tricky issue arising for
the compilation of typological databases: On the one hand, to minimize the risk of APRB, one would want to firewall the coders off from one another as much as possible. Yet, this seems to directly conflict with the need to assure maximum uniformity in coding
policies, which in practice seems hard if not impossible to implement without the coders talking to one another about their practices.<o:p></o:p></span></li></ol>
<p class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<ol style="margin-top:0in" start="3" type="1">
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">I think this last one is becoming a bit of a
<i>ceterum censeo</i> of mine: if the available evidence regarding a certain phenomenon doesn’t strongly tip the scales in favor of Analysis A or B, it is preferable in my opinion to report just that, rather than to pick A or B. And the potential of APRB effects
suggests that it may not necessarily be a good idea to allow oneself to be influenced by existing descriptions of the same or related languages in deciding between A and B. (However, if AB-indeterminate analyses rise in frequency, regression modeling of typological
data would also become computationally more tricky as a result.)<o:p></o:p></span></li></ol>
<p class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">Best – Juergen<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-US" style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">Guzmán Naranjo, M., & L. Becker.
</span><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">(2022). Statistical bias control in typology.
<i>Linguistic Typology</i> 26(3): 605-670.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="DE" style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="DE" style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">Jäger, G. & J. Wahle. (2021). Phylogenetic typology.
<i>Frontiers in Psychology</i> 12: 682132<i>. </i>doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.682132.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="DE" style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="DE" style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">Shcherbakova, O., S. M. Michaelis, H. J. Haynie, S. Passmore, V. Gast, R. D. Gray, S. J. Greenhill, D. E. Blasi, & H. Skirgård.
</span><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">(2023). Societies of strangers do not speak less complex languages.
<i>Science Advances </i>9, eadf7704(2023). DOI:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adf7704">10.1126/sciadv.adf7704</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">Shcherbakova, O., D. E. Blasi, V. Gast, H. Skirgård, R. D. Gray, & S. J. Greenhill<i>.</i> (2024). The evolutionary dynamics of how languages signal who does what to whom. <i>Scientific Reports</i> 14,
7259. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-51542-5.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">Skirgård, H., Haynie, H. J., Blasi, D. E., Hammarström, H., Collins, J., Latarche, J. J., ... & Gray, R. D. (2023). Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity
and highlights the impact of language loss. <i>Science Advances</i>, <i>9</i>(16), eadg6175.
<a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adg6175">https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adg6175</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;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-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><a href="mailto:jb77@buffalo.edu" title="mailto:jb77@buffalo.edu"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:#0078D4">jb77@buffalo.edu</span></a></span><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><br>
Web: </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><a href="http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/" title="http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:#0563C1">http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/</span></a></span><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"> <br>
<br>
</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;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:9.0pt;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-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">-- <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="DE" style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="DE" style="font-family:"CMU Serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<b><span style="color:black">From: </span></b><span style="color:black">Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Spronck, Stef via Lingtyp <lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org><br>
<b>Date: </b>Sunday, September 29, 2024 at 09:50<br>
<b>To: </b>lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org>, Volker Gast <volker.gast@uni-jena.de><br>
<b>Subject: </b>Re: [Lingtyp] Areal and phylogenetic *researcher* biases<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="color:black">Dear Jürgen and all,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="color:black">Thanks a lot for starting this important discussion. My thoughts about Jürgen's query were very much along the lines of Volker's reply, although his formulation was a lot better than mine
would have been..<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="color:black">Probably just stating the obvious, but of course Volker's levels 2 and 3 of behavioural data each involve two processes that introduce further uncertainty into the analysis: the language
data a researcher actually manages to record and the language descriptions that become influential enough to make it into typological samples. I'd say that that results in (at least) five layers at which typological data is 'behavioural' and each of these
is shaped by a psychosocial context and (imagined) communities:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<![if !supportLists]><span style="color:black"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">1.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span><![endif]><span style="color:black">What speakers happen to say or do<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<![if !supportLists]><span style="color:black"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">2.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span><![endif]><span style="color:black">What the researcher happens to record (i.e. what speakers happen to say or do when the researcher is observing)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<![if !supportLists]><span style="color:black"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">3.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span><![endif]><span style="color:black">What happens to make it into the descriptive analysis (and how)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<![if !supportLists]><span style="color:black"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">4.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span><![endif]><span style="color:black">What happens to make it into the typological sample<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<![if !supportLists]><span style="color:black"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">5.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span><![endif]><span style="color:black">What happens to make it into the typological analysis (and how)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="color:black">Obviously much of the methodological work in Linguistic Typology is exactly about constraining these levels of uncertainty, but I, for one, am skeptical about whether they can be eliminated
in any meaningful way. The best we can hope for most of the time is to make the choices operating at each of these levels as explicit and motivated as possible (only to gloss over them for ultimate generalisations).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="color:black">The best argument for why a typologist should at least once do a little bit of fieldwork is because it immediately confronts you with the reality that your recorded language is not the
same as the language spoken in the community and that your description, even for the most basic phenomena, is a collection of editorial and authorial choices.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="color:black">Best,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="color:black">Stef<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black"> Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org>
on behalf of Volker Gast via Lingtyp <lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Sunday, September 29, 2024 10:41 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Lingtyp] Areal and phylogenetic *researcher* biases</span> <o:p>
</o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"> <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p style="margin-left:.5in">Dear Jürgen and others,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in">I think this is one of the major methodological problems of linguistic typology (which, if I remember correctly, has been discussed on this list before). There's no single 'correct' way of analysing a language. Two linguists working
on the same language will often provide very different analyses, and both may be right in their own ways. It starts with phonology, where you have a lot of degrees of freedom in, for instance, minimizing or maximizing phoneme inventories (e.g. by [not] introducing
phonological domains and features operating on these domains), and it gets worse in morphology, specifically if there is distributed exponence and other complexities of this type. At the level of syntax the impact of the specific theoretical background can
be seen, for instance, in publications using the UD corpora. These corpora were annotated with a specific version of dependency grammar, I think essentially for pragmatic reasons (dependency grammar was very popular among computational linguists for a while).
The theorerical assumptions of the annotation model obviously have an impact on the results (just think of the very old discussion of what a 'subject' is, represented as the 'nsubj' relation in the UD annotations).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in">For many languages we only have one description, and the linguist describing it comes from a specific background or 'school' (and these schools are often associated with particular areas and particular phylogenetic groupings, introducing
further biases of the type you mention). Again, the effects are visible at the level of phonology already. For example, the Papuan language Idi could be described as having just three vowels, or as having nine vowels (perhaps even more), depending on your
assumptions about phonotactics etc. (There's a published analysis of that language, by D. Schokkin, N. Evans, C. Döhler and me, but the analysis really reflects some kind of compromise between the authors, and it leaves a few non-trivial questions open.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in">The specific linguist and their school or background is a source of statistical non-independence. Even relying on exactly one description per language, and having the data coded by several researchers, often leads to low inter-annotator
agreement in my experience.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in">I think we need to be aware that typological data is behavioural data at three layers: (i) language is a behavioural activity, (ii) describing a language is a behavioural activity, and (iii) extracting information from descriptions
is another behavioural activity. Variance occurs at all levels and is multiplied in the process from (i) to (iii).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in">Approximately determining the amount of variance of that type would be a major project. For instance, we could have five undocumented (unstandardized) languages described by five linguists each, using data from five different speakers
per language. Many will think that this would be a waste of resources, given the number of (varieties) of languages that still await description.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in">What follows from all this, in my view, is that we need to be careful in applying statistical analyses "blindly". Linguistics is not a natural science. Given the large amount of inherent variance in typological data we linguists
should remain in the driver's seat and use quantitative typological evidence as an assistance system, being aware of its limits and possibilities, rather than take a back seat and let the autopilot drive.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in">Best,<br>
Volker<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in">Am 28.09.2024 um 20:17 schrieb Juergen Bohnemeyer via Lingtyp:<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="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:</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="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.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="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.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="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.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="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.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="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.)</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="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.)</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif"">Thanks! – Juergen</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-family:"CMU Serif""> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;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-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:#0078D4"><a href="mailto:jb77@buffalo.edu" title="mailto:jb77@buffalo.edu"><span style="color:#0078D4">jb77@buffalo.edu</span></a></span><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><br>
Web: </span><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:#0563C1"><a href="http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/" title="http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/"><span style="color:#0563C1">http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/</span></a></span><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"> <br>
<br>
</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;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:9.0pt;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-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">-- </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<o:p></o:p></p>
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<pre style="margin-left:.5in">_______________________________________________<o:p></o:p></pre>
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