Concerning WALS

Sat Nov 8 02:01:00 UTC 2008

Matthew,
I am a little bit confused. In  your understanding: What is 'functional 
linguistics'? Does it have any meaning? Is it just a label? And how 
would you relate your own work to this term?
Bernd
>
> Tom,
>
> I think you're imagining a difference in belief where there isn't one. 
> There is no belief behind WALS that typology can be theory-neutral (in 
> any sense of "theory") and no sense in which WALS is based on 
> Bloomfieldian empiricism.  If there's a difference in anything, it's 
> simply a difference in taste and interest.
>
> But let me address one, ultimately terminological, issue.  You seem to 
> think that theory means explanation.  But the theoretical questions 
> that I'm most interested in are questions of the form "What are 
> languages like?" I'm interested in theories about the range of 
> typological variation and the limits on this variation.  I'm also 
> interested in theories about why languages are the way they are, but 
> for me those questions are more like a hobby than the core of what I 
> do as a linguist.  There are a number of reasons for this.  For one 
> thing, theories about why languages are the way they are "neigh 
> meaningless" if what they are explaining isn't true or even if what 
> they purport to explain is something that we don't know yet if it's 
> true or not.  There is a huge body of literature from the past 40 
> years that falls into this category.  Unfortunately, Tom, that 
> includes some of your work.  For another, even if the explanandum is 
> something that we can be fairly confident of, hypotheses about why 
> languages are the way they are ultimately just that, hypotheses.  All 
> too often, they are untestable and unfalsifiable and always will be.  
> Now I don't want to sound like a Martin Joos and say that we shouldn't 
> be asking such questions or trying to answer them.  I'm just 
> explaining why I personally am more interested in theoretical 
> questions about what languages are like.  But that's ultimately just a 
> matter of taste, not really any different from why I chose to be a 
> linguist rather than something else.  I'm glad that there are others 
> whose tastes have led them to devote their energy to questions of 
> explanation, especially you, I might add, since in my opinion no 
> linguist has come up with more interesting hypotheses over the past 35 
> years than you have.  But let's not confuse these differences in taste 
> with differences in belief.
>
> But I do object to your trying to use the term "theory" exclusively 
> for questions of explanation.  I think you do Greenberg a disservice 
> when you say "Greenberg's work in typology has been theoretical from 
> the very start, in at least three senses I am aware of: (a) the work 
> on markedness of categories; (b) The work on the diachronic 
> foundations of typology; (c) His later forays into diachrony and 
> evolution."  You miss a very important fourth sense: his work on what 
> languages are like. Greenberg loved reading grammars.  His unique 
> contribution to the field resulted from the fact that he was 
> interested in what languages were like in a way that none of his 
> contemporaries were.
>
> Of course, you're free to use the word "theory" as you wish and you're 
> free to object to how I use the word.  But that's not a substantive 
> issue either.
>
> Matthew
>
> --On Thursday, November 6, 2008 10:06 AM -0700 Tom Givon 
> <tgivon at uoregon.edu> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> I think Martin, perhaps inadvertently, articulated the concern that some
>> of us have felt about the WALS project from its very inception--it's
>> relentless a-theoretical perspective. To me, this project has chosen to
>> follow the old empiricist lisonception  (vis Bloomfield,  Carnap, etc.)
>> that facts are, somehow, theory- independent, and that one can do a
>> theory-free typology. This is done by two implicit moves: First, by
>> defining grammatical phenomena purely structurally, rather than grouping
>> them by the* grammaticalized functional domains* that underlie them And
>> second, by leaving *diachrony* out of the equation. To my mind, the
>> geographical distribution of grammatical phenomena is neigh meaningless
>> without considering the diachrony of the particular languages (or
>> families) in the region. It is of course true that a project could 
>> choose
>> to be less ambitious, and simply give us "pure facts", perhaps in
>> anticipation that theory-oriented people would later on use those facts
>> to build their theories. But I have to agree with Hanson (and, for that
>> matter, Chomsky, perish the thought...) that in science facts are never
>> theory-neutral, and that to propose to do a science of "pure facts", 
>> even
>> as a preliminary exercise to  subsequent theory-building, is the height
>> of self delusion.
>>
>> Cheers,  TG
>>
>> =========
>>
>>
>>
>> Martin Haspelmath wrote:
>>> Dear Esa,
>>>
>>> Thanks a lot for writing this detailed commentary on the World Atlas
>>> of Language Structures (WALS). This is the most detailed review that
>>> has been written, and we are very grateful for it. Many of the
>>> individual points of criticism are well-taken, and the WALS authors
>>> should take them into account in future editions. (We're planning
>>> future online editions of WALS, see the free online version at
>>> http://wals.info.)
>>>
>>> Just one comment, concerning one of your major points:
>>>
>>> You write (p. 1): "The reader of WALS is encouraged ... to seek
>>> *correlations* between the results of different chapters, and this
>>> clearly presupposes a high degree of compatibility between the views
>>> of different authors."
>>>
>>> Well, I would say: To find true correlations, the chapters must be
>>> sufficiently correct, but they don't necessarily have to be very
>>> compatible, certainly not in terminology. Suppose you want to link
>>> case-marking and plural marking, and ask whether affixal case-marking
>>> (as opposed to adpositional marking) correlates with affixal plural
>>> marking (as opposed to pluralization by number words). Then even if
>>> the two chapters use different definitions of "affixal", you might
>>> still get a true correlation. But it will of course be a correlation
>>> between affixal(1) case-marking and affixal(2) pluralization, not
>>> between "affixal (tout court) case-marking and pluralization".
>>>
>>> My view is that typological definitions are inherently
>>> linguist-specific, and as such the typological concepts of different
>>> linguists are bound to be different (unless a Chomsky-like figure
>>> comes along and imposes widespread "agreement by authority"). So care
>>> has to be taken in interpreting WALS correlations, of course. But this
>>> is not a flaw in the design of the project.
>>>
>>> Typology cannot be based on some kind of "definitive" set of
>>> grammatical concepts, because there is no such list (or if there is,
>>> i.e. if UG exists after all, we're so far away from knowing what it is
>>> that it's irrelevant for practical purposes). Each language has its
>>> own categories, so typologists necessarily have to make up their
>>> comparative concepts that give them the most interesting results.
>>>
>>> (For more on this, see my paper "Comparative concepts and descriptive
>>> categories in cross-linguistic studies", on my website under "Papers
>>> and handouts".)
>>>
>>> Martin Haspelmath
>>>
>>> Esa Itkonen wrote:
>>>> Dear Funknetters: By all accounts, World Atlas of Language Structures
>>>> (= WALS) is a monumental achievement. Still, two intrepid Finnish
>>>> linguists (= myself & Anneli Pajunen) have ventured to write a
>>>> 30-page commentary on it, available on the homepage below. Enjoy!
>>>>
>>>> Esa Itkonen
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>

-- 
Prof. Bernd Heine
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa
3-11-1, Asahi-cho, Fuchu-shi,
Tokyo, 183-8534 JAPAN
Phone: 042-330-5664
Fax:      042-330-5610