universalism vs. particularism

[William Croft]

Yes, I have argued that grammatical categories are language-specific. But that was not a refusal of abstraction. That was an argument that it was the wrong abstraction, that is, it leads to empirically highly problematic generalizations.

I also have argued that grammatical categories are construction-specific, since categories are defined by constructions (known by many other names - "tests", "criteria", "behavior", "properties" etc.) and the categories defined by constructions don't match across constructions. This is also not a refusal of abstraction. It is an argument that category-based "generalizations within a single language" are the wrong abstractions as well.

In neither argument was I being particularist. There are other bases for crosslinguistic and cross-constructional comparison, and in fact most typologists use them, if not always explicitly. Many typological universals are robust, even if "only" in probabilistic terms (as Matthew argues in an old CLS paper). And the work of people like Mike Tomasello provides a good example of cross-species comparison.

I should add that the same cultural anthropologist who described cultural anthropology as committed to particularism and relativism also argued that anthropology should be, or is becoming, more like the humanities rather than the sciences. He did not take being particularist and relativist as another way of being "scientific".

Bill

On Mar 11, 2014, at 6:27 AM, Martin Haspelmath <haspelmath at EVA.MPG.DE> wrote:

> But even if you are a global particularist and relativist, i.e. if you think that languages or cultures are totally incommensurable, you can still be a scientist. Of course, all your generalizations will be within a single language or culture. Relativists have often come up with quite amazing within-language (or within-culture) generalizations.
> 
> I have argued for particularism of linguistic categories, following Matthew Dryer and William Croft. That was a "refusal of abstraction", for the reason Matthew gives: The abstractions used by other linguists (especially generative linguists, but not only) turned out to be wrong.
> 
> And from a still higher perspective, you could object to strongly universalist views on the grounds that they are speciesist, i.e. that they ignore the close connections between human language and the communication systems of other languages.
> 
> So I think it's not universalism or particularism per se that are good or bad, but the challenge is to find the right levels at which we need to differentiate and at which we can generalize.
> 
> Martin
> 
> 
> On 11/03/2014 05:11, William Croft wrote:
>> I didn't interpret Christian's statement this way at all. Particularism is an approach that argues that traits in different cultures (including language) are incommensurable, and is therefore strongly relativistic. It is predominant in cultural anthropology, and anthropologists I have spoken to use that specific term in that way.
>> 
>> Measuring diversity involves comparison, and comparison requires some degree of abstraction. That is how I understood Christian's characterization of seeking unity in diversity. To me, that is what is important in typology, exemplified for example in the implicational universal. This is the point that is often missed in discussions by non-typologists of "language universals", which frequently still assume that all such universals are (or must be) of the form "All languages have X".
>> 
>> Bill
>> 
>> On Mar 10, 2014, at 2:31 PM, Matthew Dryer <dryer at BUFFALO.EDU> wrote:
>> 
>>> I have often commented informally to other linguists that there are two kinds of typologists, those who are more interested in the way that languages are similar to each other and those who are more interested in the way that languages are different from each other.  Of course, many typologists fall in between, but at least many typologists “lean” more in one direction.
>>> 
>>> Frans is quite right of course, that the mission of LT is both enterprises.  It may, however, be the case that there is some imbalance in papers in LT, an imbalance that may reflect current fashion.  I read Frans’ email as lamenting this imbalance rather than a suggestion that one enterprise is more important than the other.
>>> 
>>> But I see no need for chauvinistic comments like those of Christian. The idea that the search for diversity is somehow less scientific than the search for similarity is nonsense.  Science is the pursuit of truth, whether that truth involves diversity or similarity.  Some of the recent swing toward diversity is precisely a reaction to a tendency for linguists to make false claims about similarity and hence is precisely making linguistics more scientific.
>>> 
>>> It is also very misleading to suggest that the search for typological diversity is similar to the famous view of Joos.  For one thing, the very question of how languages might differ with respect to some phenomenon was not a question that interested Joos.  Second, the search for typological diversity is, contrary to what Christian suggests, impossible without abstraction.  One cannot recognize that some phenomenon in a given language is unusual without abstracting over phenomena across languages.
>>> 
>>> I see nothing in Frans’ comments to suggest he thinks the search for diversity is unscientific or that that search is not an essential part of typology.  I read his email as lamenting that there is too little attention paid to similarities.
>>> 
>>> Matthew
>>> _______________________
>>> 
>>> Matthew Dryer, Professor
>>> Department of Linguistics
>>> 616 Baldy Hall
>>> University at Buffalo (SUNY)
>>> Buffalo NY 14260
>>> Phone: 716-645-0122
>>>    FAX: 716-645-3825
>>> dryer at buffalo.edu
>>> 
>>> On 3/10/14 11:30 AM, Prof. Dr. Christian Lehmann wrote:
>>>> Dear Frans and fellow typologists,
>>>> 
>>>> I would like to second Frans in every respect. Some specialists have
>>>> been confounding the theory of universal grammar with linguistic
>>>> universal research. As far as empirically based knowledge goes, there is
>>>> no universal grammar. But since grammar does not exhaust language, that
>>>> does not entail that nothing about language is universal.
>>>> 
>>>> Apparently the history of our discipline is doomed to follow the motion
>>>> of a pendulum: after North American structuralism ("languages could
>>>> differ from each other without limit and in unpredictable ways" [Martin
>>>> Joos 1957]), we have had Generative Grammar ("Grammatica una et eadem
>>>> est secundum substantiam in omnibus linguis, licet accidentaliter
>>>> varietur" [Roger Bacon 1244]); and apparently it is now time to swing
>>>> back to Joos. Wilhelm von Humboldt had already gotten it right: The task
>>>> of science in the field of the humanities, especially linguistics, is to
>>>> seek the unity in the diversity (thus, sinngemäß, Humboldt 1836). This
>>>> task requires abstraction. In some fundamental sense, linguistic
>>>> particularism alias relativism is a refusal of abstraction. Maybe some
>>>> colleages have to be asked to take our task as scientists more seriously.
>>>> 
>>>> Best wishes to all of you,
>>>> Christian Lehmann
>>>> -----
>>>> Prof. Dr. Christian Lehmann
>>>> Seminar für Sprachwissenschaft
>>>> Universität
>>>> D - 99092 Erfurt
>>>> 
>>>> www.christianlehmann.eu
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de)
> Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz 6	
> D-04103 Leipzig
> Tel. (MPI) +49-341-3550 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616