15.203, Disc: Re: Gil & Borodistky, Indonesian Linguistics

[LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List:  Vol-15-203. Tue Jan 20 2004. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 15.203, Disc: Re: Gil & Borodistky, Indonesian Linguistics

Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Wayne State U.<aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Dry, Eastern Michigan U. <hdry at linguistlist.org>

Reviews (reviews at linguistlist.org):
	Sheila Collberg, U. of Arizona
	Terence Langendoen, U. of Arizona

Home Page:  http://linguistlist.org/

The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, Wayne
State University, and donations from subscribers and publishers.

Editor for this issue: Sarah Murray <sarah at linguistlist.org>
 ==========================================================================
To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at
http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.html.
=================================Directory=================================

1)
Date:  Tue, 20 Jan 2004 09:54:55 +0100
From:  Martin Haspelmath <haspelmath at eva.mpg.de>
Subject:  Re: Disc: Gil & Borodistky, Indonesian Linguistics

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Tue, 20 Jan 2004 09:54:55 +0100
From:  Martin Haspelmath <haspelmath at eva.mpg.de>
Subject:  Re: Disc: Gil & Borodistky, Indonesian Linguistics


Whitney Anne Postman (LINGUIST 15.163) comments on David Gil's
claim that Riau Indonesian lacks a noun-verb distinction: "It seems
impossible to get around the interpretation of 'makan' ('eat') as a
predicative (hence verbal) item, and 'ayam' ('chicken') as a referential
(hence nominal) item". However, in various works, Gil shows that this is
possible, and he argues forcefully that it is necessary. (See below for
a short list of relevant papers.)

Postman instead recommends Mark Baker's "inspired" (2003) book "Lexical
Categories: Verbs, Nouns and Adjectives'' (which, incidentally, does not
refer to Gil's work). I agree that this is an impressive work, but it
suffers from the problem that it simply assumes a large amount of the
Chomsykan machinery of "Universal Grammar" as given. There are many
readers who will follow Baker (and Chomsky) in these assumptions, but
those who are more skeptical will find David Gil's arguments very
interesting.

Martin Haspelmath,
Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Leipzig

**********************
References

Gil, David. 1994. "The structure of Riau Indonesian." Nordic Journal of
Linguistics 17: 179-200.

Gil, David, 2000. Syntactic categories, cross-linguistic variation and
universal grammar. In: Vogel, Petra M. & Bernard Comrie [eds.],
Approaches to the typology of word classes, pp. 173 - 216. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter.

Gil, David, 2001a. Escaping Eurocentrism: fieldwork as a process of
unlearning. In: Newman, Paul & Martha Ratliff [eds.], Linguistic
fieldwork, pp. 102 - 32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gil, David, 2001b. Creoles, complexity, and Riau Indonesian. Linguistic
Typology 5, 325 - 70.

Gil, David. 2003. "Word order without syntactic categories: How Riau
Indonesian does it."
http://linguistics.arizona.edu/~carnie/papers/V1Volume/Gil.pdf


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-15-203