cross-linguistic categorization

[Geoff Nathan]

If one doesn’t assume Aristotelian-flavoring for cross-linguistic substantive categories one can be much happier and retain the idea that languages actually have universals of some kind. As a (natural/cognitive) phonologist I am happy to say that pretty much all languages have consonants and vowels, syllables, probably feet and perhaps somewhat larger units (words, breath groups, some such...)
In any case we don’t have to say that all languages MUST have some particular structure, but we can note that, say, all languages that have syllables have CV syllables (Larry Hyman argued that one of ‘his’ languages actually didn’t have syllables, but there are few competitors), some subset have CVC syllables, and a smaller subset have more complex offerings.
Similarly, all languages have a vowel height contrast, and if they have a color contrast (labial/round vs. palatal/front) those vowels will tend to be high rather than mid.  But, although nothing is absolute, there are strong tendencies that have perceptual and/or motoric explanations (color contrasts are easy to perceive, stop contrasts that cluster in the three primary articulatory regions are easiest to make). This would lead us to expect that the distribution of categories will follow the typical radial prototype category structure, with central members that just about everybody has, with more peripheral members (say front rounded vowels, or CCVCCC syllables) being correspondingly more scarce and presupposing the existence of the expected more prototypical /i/ or /u/ and CV syllables.

Geoffrey S. Nathan
Faculty Liaison, C&IT
and Associate Professor, Linguistics Program
+1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)
+1 (313) 577-8621 (English/Linguistics)

----- "Daniel L. Everett" <dlevere at ilstu.edu> wrote:

> From: "Daniel L. Everett" <dlevere at ilstu.edu>
> To: "Martin Haspelmath" <haspelmath at eva.mpg.de>
> Cc: "Funknet" <funknet at mailman.rice.edu>
> Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 3:38:18 AM GMT -10:00 Hawaii
> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] cross-linguistic categorization
>
> As I read this discussion, including Tom G's and Martin H's, I think
> everyone is right. I am not seeing a conflict here.
> 
> Balthasar's use of multivariate analysis seems like exactly the right
> direction to me. Something the young whippersnappers get that would
> not have occurred to most field researchers 30 years ago.
> 
> Dan
> 
> On Mar 14, 2010, at 3:25 PM, Martin Haspelmath wrote:
> 
> > Thanks, Edith Moravcsik, for the systematization of the issues, and
> Tom Givón, for a historical perspective. Here are some reactions from
> me:
> >> (a)	THE LEGITIMACY OF CATEGORIZATION
> >> Following Bill C., Martin H. and Matthew Dryer, one might question
> the legitimacy of crosslinguistic grammatical categories on grounds
> that the members of any one of these categories differ from each
> other. I cannot see why this is a problem. ... The key to the idea is
> that things can be different in some respects but the same in other
> respect. Thus, as long as there is some likeness among entities, we
> are justified in assigning them to the same category without incurring
> a contradiction.
> >>  
> > Yes, of course -- such categories are what I call "comparative
> concepts". The crucial point is that they are not identical to the
> descriptive categories that we use to analyze languages. As Dan
> Everett points out, the IPA is very useful as a set of comparative
> concepts in phonetics/phonology, even though "no two phonemes and no
> two phonetic segments are exactly the same cross-linguistically").
> >    Many linguists (not just generativists) assume (often implicitly)
> that the notions that typologists work with are also the notions that
> descriptive linguists working on a single language should use, and
> that categories in different languages are not just similar, but can
> be equated. This is what I object to. (For phonology, Bob Ladd has
> pointed out that many phonologists have worked with the asumption that
> something like the IPA is a universal alphabet of segmental
> phonology.)
> >> (b)	CRITERIA FOR CATEGORIZATION
> >> In an absolute sense, criteria of classification are arbitrarily
> (or, in Bill C.’s terminology, opportunistically) chosen. However,
> there are two ways to justify them. First, if we choose criteria for
> categorization so that they serve a particular research goal, the
> choice becomes principled instead of being arbitrary. 
> > I think the choice of criteria for descriptive categories (for
> language-particular analyses) is much less arbitrary than the choice
> of criteria for comparative concepts, because the goal is simple: To
> describe the language in a consistent and complete way. There are
> different ways of doing this, but the possibilities are fairly
> limited, compared to the possibilities of comparing languages with
> different structures.
> >> (c)	LANGUAGE-SPECIFIC VERSUS COMPARATIVE CONCEPTS
> >> It seems to me that Martin H. is right in saying that there are
> categories that are useful in crosslinguistic comparison but that do
> not play a role in individual language descriptions; but I don’t think
> this is necessarily so. For example, in a crosslinguistic study, the
> concept of argument alignment varying over accusative, ergative, and
> other types is important but in the grammar of a language that is,
> say, purely ergatively structured, the concept will not play any role.
> However, another concept, such as of subject-verb agreement, may be a
> useful category both in single-language grammars and also in a
> crosslinguistic typology – even if the details of the construction
> differ across languages.   
> > "Agreement" is indeed a highly general concept that at first glance
> seems to be suited both for language-particular description and
> cross-linguistic comparison (but of course not "subject-verb
> agreement", because the meaning "subject" varies strongly across
> languages). But as Corbett (2006) has shown, the kinds of phenomena
> that linguists subsume under "agreement" are fairly diverse, and
> whatever precise definition one chooses, one will only capture part of
> what usually goes by the term.
> >    In any event, the main point is that a large number of
> comparative concepts are irrelevant in language description (such as
> alignment), and a large number of descriptive categories are
> irrelevant in language comparison, so the two kinds of entities need
> to be kept separate in principle.
> > 
> > T. Givón writes:
> >> So now a new coalition of alpha males are splitting off and, in a
> reprise of Bloomfield's maneuver [of splitting off from Hermann Paul],
> are narrowing the domain once again. This history is, leastwise to me,
> profoundly depressing. 
> > I don't see any narrowing of the domain anywhere. Hermann Paul and
> the neogrammarians were narrow in that they disregarded the true range
> of cross-linguistic variation, largely limiting themselves to the
> languages of the European nation states. Franz Boas's name is missing
> in Givón's historical narrative -- his lesson on the radical
> differences between languages needs to be re-taught again and again,
> because most linguists work on English or some other major language
> and forget the lesson too easily (not to mention the seductive
> simplicity of innate universal grammar).      The categorial
> particularist position advocated by Matthew Dryer, Bill Croft, Gilbert
> Lazard, Sonia Cristofaro and myself is fully consonant with Hermann
> Paul, Franz Boas, and Joseph Greenberg, and we were all strongly
> influenced by T. Givón as well, so I don't see any "coalition
> warfare". Just normal scientific debate, without any revolutionary
> rhetoric.
> >> So far, I have found "universal" categories such as noun/verb or
> subject/object, and  the complex theory behind them, to be
> indispensable in my own descriptive field work.
> > What is clear is that the Greenbergian typological approach has led
> to much more interesting (and transparent) descriptive grammars -- if
> one doesn't know at all what to expect, one cannot easily distinguish
> what is banal from what is special (cf. Dryer 2006). But as in Boas's
> time, a good grammar describes the language in its own terms, with
> precisely defined language-particular categories, not in terms of
> intuitive pretheoretical concepts of "noun/verb" or "subject/object",
> or in terms of vague prototypes (crucial as these often are for
> comparison and explanatory theory).
> > 
> > Greetings,
> > Martin Haspelmath
> > 
> >