[Lingtyp] Structural congruence

Tue Jan 19 09:25:48 UTC 2016

Martin Haspelmath has written (Jan.18.): “I find it important to recognize that typology works with a heterogeneous class of comparative concepts, which may be defined in a variety of ways (formally, functionally, with respect to discourse, with respect to translation equivalence, etc.). Typology does not (necessarily) work in terms of the descriptive categories that are the most useful in analyzing languages, and it need not define its concepts in a uniform way.” 
I agree. All the subsequent interventions in the discussion seem to ignore the concepts of ‘prototype’ and ‘tertium comparationis’. As I tried to argue in my 1999 article on  Linguistic categories and linguists’ categorizations. “Linguistics” 37: 157-80, there are semantic/functional concepts which are universal (e.g. ‘attribution of a quality to an X’ : you may call it “ADJ”). These concepts (‘tertia comparationis’) may be implemented in different languages via different strategies (e.g. via a relative clause) and it is by no means said that the category ADJ is present in language A or B [see Rijkhoff’s ex. from Ross : 
Kiribati (Ross 1998: 90)

(1) te      uee      ae    e          tikiraoi         (relative clause)

     art  flower  rel  3sg.s   be.pretty       

     ‘a pretty flower’ (lit. ‘a flower that pretties’)   ]

On its turn a prototypical ADJ will be formally defined by a series of properties (‘features’ having different values), like +/- agreement with its head, Consequently, there are forms which are more or less adjectival, according to the grammars of  individual languages.

From: Martin Haspelmath 
Sent: Monday, January 18, 2016 9:20 PM
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org 
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Structural congruence

Jan Rijkhoff and Randy LaPolla are completely right that word order studies have sometimes been based on formally defined comparative concepts. This has long been recognized (but perhaps not emphasized sufficiently), e.g. in Dryer's (2005) WALS chapter on relative clauses, he defines a relative clause as follows: " A construction is considered a relative clause for the purposes of this map if it is a clause which, either alone or in combination with a noun, denotes something and if the thing denoted has a semantic role within the relative clause" (http://wals.info/chapter/90). Thus, relative clauses must be clauses, i.e. simple adnominal adjectives do not count. 

(This is in contrast with Comrie's (1981) definition of relative clause, which is purely semantic and thus (counterintuitively) includes adnominal adjectives. This worked for Comrie's purposes, because he was not interested in the ordering possibilities of relative clauses, and for the generalizations that he considered, the inclusion of adnominal adjectives did not make a difference.)

By contrast, Dryer indeed includes relative clauses in his chapter on the order of adjective and noun. For example, he says about Ojibwa, which lacks a dedicated class of adjectives: "Because words expressing adjectival meaning are really verbs iin Ojibwa, instances in which such words modify nouns, like (6a), are, strictly speaking, relative clauses" (http://wals.info/chapter/87).

Here it might have been better to use the term "property word" rather than "adjective", but in practice, it is often very hard to say whether a language has a "dedicated" class of adjectives (Dixon 2004 even claims that all languages have one, even if the distributional differences may be very small). Thus, it is not the terms that count, but the definitions, and these are generally very clear in Dryer's WALS chapters.

When Dryer says that adjectives are non-branching elements, as opposed to relative clauses which are branching elements, he evidently means the most frequent types of adnominal property words and adnominal clauses. Adjective phrases can be long ("very proud of his achievements"), and relative clauses can be short ("who left"), but it is clear that overall, relative clauses (a formally defined concept) tend to be longer than property-word modifiers (a semantically defined concept).

In general, I find it important to recognize that typology works with a heterogeneous class of comparative concepts, which may be defined in a variety of ways (formally, functionally, with respect to discourse, with respect to translation equivalence, etc.). Typology does not (necessarily) work in terms of the descriptive categories that are the most useful in analyzing languages, and it need not define its concepts in a uniform way.

Best wishes,
Martin

On 18.01.16 13:41, 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) te      uee      ae    e          tikiraoi         (relative clause)

       art  flower  rel  3sg.s   be.pretty       

       ‘a pretty flower’ (lit. ‘a flower that pretties’)              

  Makwe (Devos 2008: 136)

  (2)   muú-nu      w-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

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  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

-- 
Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10	
D-07745 Jena  
&
Leipzig University
Beethovenstrasse 15
D-04107 Leipzig    

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