[Lingtyp] Structural congruence

Tue Jan 19 07:12:33 UTC 2016

Unfortunately, to many people (not only generativists) it isn't obvious 
at all that "classifying languages typologically does not entail that 
the terms employed in the typological classification correspond to 
categories in the language" (in other words, that comparative concepts 
are distinct from descriptive categories).

It seems that the default assumption of many people when they hear a 
term like "dative" or "clitic" is that they are concepts like "copper" 
or "red fox", i.e. natural kinds that exist independently of individual 
language systems, just as red foxes can be recognized independently of 
their habitats, and copper can even be recognized independently of the 
planet on which is occurs. This is false, but it hasn't been very widely 
recognized.

In the 1980s, typologists discovered the important differences between 
agents, topics, and syntactic pivots (as noted by Randy), but such more 
fine-grained categories are still not sufficient for describing any 
language. Agents can be different across languages, topics can be 
different, and syntactic pivots can be different. Thus, even "agent", 
"topic" and "pivot" can only be used as comparative concepts, not as 
universally applicable descriptive categories that would somehow have 
the same meaning in different languages.

Thus, it is not just confusing terminology (like Y.R. Chao's "subject"), 
but also the presupposition that categories can be carried over from one 
language to another that has confused linguists.

Martin

On 19.01.16 07:52, Matthew Dryer wrote:
> Randy says that calling Chinese SVO implies that Chinese has such 
> categories. I am surprised that he would say that. I would have 
> thought it was obvious that classifying languages typologically does 
> not entail that the terms employed in the typological classification 
> correspond to categories in the language. Nor does it mean that these 
> categories determine or are determined by word order. I have certainly 
> made that clear in my work that classifying a language as SVO makes no 
> claim about the categories in the language, nor that these categories 
> determine word order even if the language has such categories.
>
> Matthew
>
> On 1/18/16 7:42 PM, Randy John LaPolla (Prof) wrote:
>> Dan’s point is very important. For example, most people describing 
>> languages do not know how to distinguish agents, topics, and 
>> syntactic pivots (“subject”), and just call anything that occurs 
>> initially as “subject”. Sometimes even when the linguist is clear on 
>> the difference, they still use the word “subject”. E.g. Y. R. Chao, 
>> in his grammar of spoken Chinese, clearly stated there is nothing 
>> like what is referred to as “subject” in English, as all clauses are 
>> simply topic-comment, but he still used the term “subject” for what 
>> he said was purely a topic. This has confused generations of 
>> linguists, and they call Chinese SVO, which not only implies that 
>> Chinese has such categories, but also that these categories either 
>> determine or are determined by word order. See the following paper 
>> arguing against the use of such shortcuts, and arguing for more 
>> careful determination of the factors determining word order in a 
>> language:
>>
>> LaPolla, Randy J. & Dory Poa. 2006. On describing word order. 
>> /Catching Language: The Standing Challenge of Grammar Writing, /ed. 
>> by Felix Ameka, Alan Dench, & Nicholas Evans, 269-295. Berlin: Mouton 
>> de Gruyter.
>>
>> http://randylapolla.net/papers/LaPolla_and_Poa_2006_On_Describing_Word_Order.pdf
>>
>>
>> Randy
>> -----
>> *Prof. Randy J. LaPolla, PhD FAHA* （羅仁 地）| Division of 
>> Linguistics and Multilingual Studies | Nanyang Technological University
>> HSS-03-45, 14 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637332 | Tel: (65) 6592-1825 
>> GMT+8h | Fax: (65) 6795-6525 | 
>> <http://randylapolla.net/>http://randylapolla.net/
>>
>>
>>
>>> On 19 Jan 2016, at 10:21 am, Everett, Daniel <DEVERETT at bentley.edu 
>>> <mailto:DEVERETT at bentley.edu>> wrote:
>>>
>>> One of the biggest problems in this regard that I have noticed is in 
>>> grammars of individual languages. Fieldworkers sometimes confuse 
>>> semantic and formal categories in the grammars, classifying as a 
>>> syntactic structure a semantic category. If typologists are not 
>>> careful writers/readers of grammars they may bring such confusions 
>>> into their typological studies. Sounds obvious. But not always so.
>>>
>>> Dan
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>
>>> On Jan 18, 2016, at 21:11, Matthew Dryer <dryer at buffalo.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I agree entirely with Jan on the need to distinguish semantic 
>>>> categories and formal categories. In fact, in a paper of mine that 
>>>> is I have nearly completed revising, I have an entire section 
>>>> arguing that generative approaches fail to note the fact that a 
>>>> given semantic category often has many different formal expressions 
>>>> over different languages and that this is problematic for implicit 
>>>> assumptions that equate semantic categories with formal categories.
>>>>
>>>> But Jan seems to think that this presents some sort of problem for 
>>>> the work I have done in word order typology.He says “When these 
>>>> authors subsequently formulate rules and principles on the basis of 
>>>> the data they collected, the semantic category labels (Adjective, 
>>>> Genitive, Relative Clause, but also e.g. Demonstrative and Numeral) 
>>>> appear to stand for _formal_ categories, i.e. categories whose 
>>>> members are defined on the basis of structural or morphosyntactic 
>>>> criteria”. But this is false. They stand for semantic categories.
>>>>
>>>> Jan seems to think that it is somehow a problem that a given 
>>>> semantic category may have many different formal realizations 
>>>> across different languages. However, neither in his email nor in 
>>>> his 2009 paper in LT does he explain why he sees this as a problem.
>>>>
>>>> There is, I admit, a /potential/ problem.Namely, it might be the 
>>>> case that for the purposes of word order correlations, the 
>>>> syntactic realization of a semantic category makes a major 
>>>> difference and that lumping the different syntactic realizations 
>>>> together is obscuring these differences. That is why I have spent 
>>>> considerable time over the years collecting data, not only on word 
>>>> order in particular languages, but also on the syntactic 
>>>> realization in these languages, precisely to examine empirically 
>>>> whether the syntactic realization makes a difference. The result is 
>>>> that while the syntactic realization sometimes makes a small 
>>>> difference, it is overall irrelevant: by and large, generalizations 
>>>> over semantic categories apply the same, regardless of the 
>>>> syntactic realization.
>>>>
>>>> Matthew
>>>>
>>>> On 1/18/16 4:41 AM, Jan Rijkhoff wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> I think the last word has not been said about Greenbergian word 
>>>>> order correlations, mainly because semantic categories and formal 
>>>>> categories have not always been clearly distinguished in 
>>>>> post-Greenberg (1963) word order studies (Rijkhoff 2009a).* For 
>>>>> example, both Hawkins (1983: 12) and Dryer (1992: 120) claimed 
>>>>> that they followed Greenberg (1963: 74) in ‘basically applying 
>>>>> semantic criteria’ to identify members of the same category across 
>>>>> languages, but in practice these semantically defined forms and 
>>>>> constructions are treated as formal entities.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> If Hawkins and Dryer applied semantic criteria in their 
>>>>> cross-linguistic studies, this implies, for example, that their 
>>>>> semantic category Adjective must also have included verbal and 
>>>>> nominal expressions of adjectival notions (such as relative 
>>>>> clauses and genitives), which are typically used in languages that 
>>>>> lack a dedicated class of adjectives:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _Kiribati _(Ross 1998: 90)
>>>>>
>>>>> (1)///teueeaeetikiraoi/(relative clause)
>>>>>
>>>>> artflower rel 3sg.s be.pretty
>>>>>
>>>>> ‘a pretty flower’ (lit. ‘a flower that pretties’)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _Makwe_(Devos 2008: 136)
>>>>>
>>>>> (2)/   muú-nuw-á=ki-búúli/(genitive)
>>>>>
>>>>> nc1-person pp1-gen=nc7-silence
>>>>>
>>>>>     ‘a silent person’ (lit. ‘person of silence’)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Relative Clause and Genitive are, however, also semantic 
>>>>> categories in their own right in word order studies by Dryer and 
>>>>> Hawkins.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> When these authors subsequently formulate rules and principles on 
>>>>> the basis of the data they collected, the semantic category labels 
>>>>> (Adjective, Genitive, Relative Clause, but also e.g. Demonstrative 
>>>>> and Numeral) appear to stand for _formal_ categories, i.e. 
>>>>> categories whose members are defined on the basis of structural or 
>>>>> morphosyntactic criteria. This apparent change of category is not 
>>>>> explained, but can be seen in the case of the ‘Heaviness 
>>>>> Serialization Principle’ (Hawkins 1983: 90-91) and the ‘Branching 
>>>>> Direction Theory’ (Dryer 1992).
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Hawkins defined ‘heaviness’ in terms of such non-semantic criteria 
>>>>> as (a) length and quantity of morphemes, (b) quantity of words, 
>>>>> (c) syntactic depth of branching nodes, and (d) inclusion of 
>>>>> dominated constituents.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> (3)// /Heaviness Serialization Principle/: Rel≥_R Gen≥_R A≥_R Dem/Num
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Thus a member of the (semantic? formal?) category Relative Clause 
>>>>> is ‘heavier’ than a member of the (semantic? formal?) category 
>>>>> Adjective. But Hawkins’s semantic category Adjective must also 
>>>>> have included members of the ‘heavy’ formal categories Genitive 
>>>>> and Relative Clause (see (1) and (2) above). It is not clear 
>>>>> whether the original members of the single semantic category 
>>>>> Adjective were later ‘re-categorized’ and distributed over the 
>>>>> formal categories Adjective, Genitive and Relative Clause in the 
>>>>> /Heaviness Serialization Principle/.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Dryer’s ‘Branching Direction Theory’ refers to a structural 
>>>>> feature of the internal syntactic organization of a constituent. 
>>>>> According to the ‘Branching Direction Theory’, relative clauses 
>>>>> and genitives are phrases, i.e. members of a branching category, 
>>>>> whose position relative to the noun correlates with the relative 
>>>>> order of Verb and Object, whereas adjectives are non-branching 
>>>>> elements, whose position relative to the noun does not correlate 
>>>>> with OV or VO order (Dryer 1992: 107-8, 110-1). In this case, too, 
>>>>> one may assume that the semantic category Adjective also included 
>>>>> members of the formal categories Genitive and Relative Clause (see 
>>>>> examples above). Again we do not know what happened to the 
>>>>> branching/phrasal members of the erstwhile(?) semantic category 
>>>>> Adjective (relative clauses, genitives) when this category was 
>>>>> turned into the formal (non-branching) category Adjective that is 
>>>>> part of the ‘Branching Direction Theory’.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> So as to avoid categorial confusion in cross-linguistic research 
>>>>> (and so as to make it possible to produce more reliable results), 
>>>>> it is necessary to keep formal and semantic categories apart, as 
>>>>> members of these two categories have their own ordering rules or 
>>>>> preferences. I also think it is an illusion to think we can give a 
>>>>> satisfactory account of the grammatical behaviour of linguistic 
>>>>> units -including word order- without taking into consideration 
>>>>> functional (interpersonal) categories or ‘discourse units’ 
>>>>> (Rijkhoff 2009b, 2015).
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> * Greenberg (1963: 88) made it clear that he sometimes used formal 
>>>>> criteria to remove certain members of a semantic category before 
>>>>> he formulated a universal, as in the case of his Universal 22.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> *References*
>>>>>
>>>>> Devos, M. 2008. /A Grammar of Makwe/. München: Lincom Europa.
>>>>>
>>>>> Dryer, M. S., 1992. The Greenbergian word order correlations. 
>>>>> /Language/ 68-1, 81-138.
>>>>>
>>>>> Greenberg, J. H. 1963. Some universals of grammar with particular 
>>>>> reference to the order of meaningful elements. In J. H. Greenberg 
>>>>> (ed.), /Universals of Language/, 73-113. Cambridge MA: MIT.
>>>>>
>>>>> Hawkins, J. A., 1983. /Word Order Universals: Quantitative 
>>>>> analyses of linguistic structure/. New York: Academic Press.
>>>>>
>>>>> Rijkhoff, J. 2009a. On the (un)suitability of semantic categories. 
>>>>> /Linguistic Typology/ 13-1, 95‑104.
>>>>>
>>>>> Rijkhoff, Jan. 2009b. On the co-variation between form and 
>>>>> function of adnominal possessive modifiers in Dutch and English. 
>>>>> In William B. McGregor (ed.), /The Expression of Possession/ (The 
>>>>> Expression of Cognitive Categories [ECC] 2),51‑106. Berlin and New 
>>>>> York: Mouton de Gruyter.
>>>>>
>>>>> Rijkhoff, J. 2015. Word order. In James D. Wright 
>>>>> (editor-in-chief), /International Encyclopedia of the Social & 
>>>>> Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition)/, Vol. 25, 644–656. Oxford: 
>>>>> Elsevier.
>>>>>
>>>>> Ross, M. 1998. Proto-Oceanic adjectival categories and their 
>>>>> morphosyntax. /Oceanic Linguistics/ 37-1, 85-119.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Jan Rijkhoff
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>> *From:* Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] on 
>>>>> behalf of Alan Rumsey [Alan.Rumsey at anu.edu.au]
>>>>> *Sent:* Monday, January 18, 2016 12:23 PM
>>>>> *To:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>>>> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] Structural congruence as a dimension of 
>>>>> language complexity/simplicity
>>>>>
>>>>> Many thanks to all of you who responded to my posting on this 
>>>>> topic, both online and off. All the readings you have pointed me 
>>>>> to have indeed been highly relevant and very useful, including an 
>>>>> excellent recent publication by Jennifer Culbertson that she 
>>>>> pointed me to in her offline response, at 
>>>>> http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01964/abstract
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks especially to Matthew Dryer for pointing out that the 
>>>>> Greenbergian ‘universal’ I had used as an example – the putative 
>>>>> association between VSO and noun-adjective order — had been 
>>>>> falsified by his much more thorough 1992 study “The Greenbergian 
>>>>> Word Order Correlations”.  My reading of that article and further 
>>>>> correspondence with him has confirmed that, by contrast, 
>>>>> Greenberg’s universals no 3 and 4 were solidly confirmed by his 
>>>>> study, namely that SOV languages are far more likely to have 
>>>>> postpositions than prepositions and that the reverse is true for 
>>>>> VSO  languages.
>>>>>
>>>>> Drawing on all your suggestions, Francesca and I have now finished 
>>>>> a draft of the paper referred to in my posting, called 'Structural 
>>>>> Congruence as a Dimension of Language Complexity: An Example from 
>>>>> Ku Waru Child Language’.**If any of you would like to read it 
>>>>> please let me know and I’ll send it to you.
>>>>>
>>>>> Alan
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>>>
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-- 
Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
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