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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Dear all,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">In support of Östen’s note.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">In several Chadic languages the same lexical item denotes entities denoted by English ‘father’ and ‘mother’s brother’.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Zygmunt<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><b><span style="color:black">From:
</span></b><span style="color:black">Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Östen Dahl via Lingtyp <lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org><br>
<b>Date: </b>Saturday, February 1, 2025 at 9:18 AM<br>
<b>To: </b>lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org><br>
<b>Subject: </b>Re: [Lingtyp] Universal constraints on lexicalisation<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">[External email - use caution]<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Dear all,</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">With regard to the claim that 'father' and 'mother's brother' cannot be colexified, consider the following quotation from the Wikipedia article on "Matrilineality":</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">"While a mother normally takes care of her own children in all cultures, in some matrilineal cultures an "uncle-father" will take care of his nieces and nephews instead: in other words *social fathers* here
are uncles."</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">That is, fathers and maternal uncles are similar in that they can both play the role of "social fathers"; it is not unthinkable that a language spoken in a society on the borderline between patrilineality
and matrilineality will lexify the concept "social father". What this shows is that the criterion of cognitive complexity can lead you in the wrong direction. In fact, kinship terms sometimes unite relationships which are tricky to give a common definition,
such as "brother-in-law" in English.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Östen</span><o:p></o:p></li></ul>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="SV" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Från:</span></b><span lang="SV" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org>
<b>För </b>Martin Haspelmath via Lingtyp<br>
<b>Skickat:</b> den 1 februari 2025 16:40<br>
<b>Till:</b> lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org<br>
<b>Ämne:</b> Re: [Lingtyp] Universal constraints on lexicalisation</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p>Dear Masha and others,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>In addition to "cognitive complexity", one may also consider frequency of use as constraining lexification.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>For example, 'female wolf' is not more cognitively complex than 'female horse' (English
<i>mare</i>, contrasting with <i>stallion</i>), but gender/sex is less commonly mentioned in connection with wild animals than with domestic animals, so English does not dislexify 'male wolf' and 'female wolf'.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>In my 2023 <i>Frontiers</i> paper, I suggested that some important lexification tendencies can be explained with reference to root length possibilities: Roots are typically 1-2 syllables long, so when a meaning is not frequent enough, it needs more syllables
and hence multiple morphs:<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:-24.0pt">Haspelmath, Martin. 2023. Coexpression and synexpression patterns across languages: Comparative concepts and possible explanations.
<i>Frontiers in Psychology</i> 14. (doi:<a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1236853">https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1236853</a>)<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p>(The paper also cites David Gil's 1992 paper.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>Incidentally, it seems that "lexification" is clearer than "lexicalization", because the latter is used in multiple meanings (see my 2024 paper, §7:
<a href="https://www.peren-revues.fr/lexique/1737">https://www.peren-revues.fr/lexique/1737</a>).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>Best,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>Martin<o:p></o:p></p>
<p> <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">On 01.02.25 12:40, David Gil via Lingtyp wrote:<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Hi Masha,<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Some examples from the semantic domain of quantification can be found here:<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Gil, David (1992) "Scopal Quantifiers: Some Universals of Lexical Effability", in M. Kefer and J. van der Auwera eds.,
<i>Meaning and Grammar, Cross-Linguistic Perspectives</i>, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 303-345.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Best wishes,<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">David<o:p></o:p></p>
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<span style="font-family:Times"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">On Sat, Feb 1, 2025 at 5:29<span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"> </span>PM Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm via Lingtyp <<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>> wrote:<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Dear all, <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">I am involved in a handbook chapter in which I would like to give a few examples of suggested universal constraints on lexicalisation, e.g., those primarily concerning meanings that should not be expressible in a word (a stem, root or whatever),
preferably not from the domain of colour terms. To give an example, Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010) argue that no verb encodes both manner and result simultaneously, which has been contested by Beavers and Koontz-Garbodens.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Or, a definition of a term covering both ‘father’ and ‘mother’s brother’ would be cognitively very complex since it will require disjunction (‘father’ or ‘mother’s brother’, cf. ‘male relative of one’s patriline’ for ‘father’ and ‘father’s
brother’) (Evans 2001) – I don’t know if this constraint still holds.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Many thanks and all the best,<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Masha<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black">Prof. Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm<br>
Dept. of linguistics, Stockholm university, 106 91, Stockholm, Sweden<br>
Editor-in-chief of “Linguistic Typology”</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><span style="color:black">President-Elect of Societas Linguistic Europaea<br>
<a href="http://www.ling.su.se/tamm" target="_blank">www.ling.su.se/tamm</a><br>
<a href="mailto:tamm@ling.su.se" target="_blank">tamm@ling.su.se</a></span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">_______________________________________________<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><br clear="all">
<o:p></o:p></p>
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<span class="gmailsignatureprefix">-- </span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<pre>David Gil<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre> <o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Senior Scientist (Associate)<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre> <o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Email: <a href="mailto:dapiiiiit@gmail.com" target="_blank">dapiiiiit@gmail.com</a><o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-082113720302<o:p></o:p></pre>
<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<pre>_______________________________________________<o:p></o:p></pre>
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<pre>-- <o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Martin Haspelmath<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>Deutscher Platz 6<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre>D-04103 Leipzig<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><a href="https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/">https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/</a><o:p></o:p></pre>
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