[Lingtyp] Structural congruence

[Martin Haspelmath]

On 19.01.16 20:58, Peter Arkadiev wrote:
> if, as Matthew says, "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", what's the point of classifying the given language as SVO in the first place?

Yes, this does sound paradoxical, but as Matthew says, "describing or 
analyzing a particular language is a completely different enterprise 
from classifying the language typologically". This point needs to be 
more widely recognized.

When a typologist uses comparative concepts such as "ergative 
construction", or "serial verb construction", there is a real potential 
for confusion, because these labels can also be used for 
descriptive/analytical purposes. In fact, the labels of these 
comparative concepts were of course borrowed from the descriptive labels.

But there are other cases where there is no such confusion, for example 
when someone bases their comparison on parallel texts (as in Bernhard 
Wälchli's pioneering work), or on translation questionnaires, as in 
Östen Dahl's (1985) book on tense and aspect. In parallel-text typology 
and questionnaire-based typology, each text passage or each sentence is 
a (lower-level) comparative concept, but nobody would think that 
individual sentences should be used as descriptive categories. Still, 
most people agree that it is useful to compare languages on the basis of 
parallel texts or translation questionnaires.

The broader point is that there is no other way of doing rigorous 
typology than via separate comparative concepts, i.e. that we need to 
give up the hope that the categories that we find in individual 
languages will in the end converge on something universal. This hope is 
being pursued in generative linguistics, but not with significant 
success, it seems.

Best wishes,
Martin

-- 
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