[Lingtyp] Structural congruence as a dimension of languagecomplexity/simplicity

Wed Jan 20 10:03:48 UTC 2016

Dear colleagues,

Thnaks for the nice discussion. I agree very much with David Beck's "I find discussions about whether or not grammatical category X "exists" in a given language to be fundamentally misguided." This is a good exemplification  of a mild constructivist perspective (cf. "constructive realism"). And I want to add that we linguists should take earnest what we teach our students about the prototypical organisation/usage of every single word's meaning. This is also valid for the linguistic categories we use. To vary Wittgenstein's sentence: "The meaning of a word can only be analyzed by the analysis of its use".

My experiences with sign language research strengthened my conviction that we have to apply a bundle of methods for comparing languages: We need a "standard of comparison" though it is questionable in itself. This standard includes the cautious use of "translation/scenic equivalents"and the establishment of a complete cross-classification of coding elements with functions. I think we can agree about a phenomenon-oriented, analytic description of coding elements as well as about their language/communicative functions. Martin Haspelmath's "maps" were always a good demonstration for such cross-classifications. What we learn from them is that e.g. the same class of coding elements may differ related to functions in different languages or that different classes of elements may overlap with respect to functions. Though simple abstractions over catgegories alone, not respecting the different functions always will hae as their results that we can only find "typological trends" instead of "universals" because the functions (or the extension of use) are not identical over the languages compared. Whenever we get such "statistical trends", we have to investigate at leas those languages which follow the "trend" only partially or not at all. My assumption is that these cases can be cleared up by a "fine-grained cross-classification".

Coming back to sign langauge: The "problems" here are even methodological and very enlightening: Is it "allowed" to apply the minimal pair analysis also for simultaneously appearing elements? Is it possible to assume a verbal phrase containing two simultaneosly moving objects (also simultaneously coded)? How exact has the "translation equivalent" to be, assuming that acoustic and visual coding are somteimes very far from each other? For me phenomena called "classifier" or "agreement" are good examples for the need o cross-classification as they cover different functions, normally separated in many spoken languages. E.g. pointing has not only the function of pointing but also codes personal pronouns and anaphora.

Best Regards

Franz Dotter

________________________________________
Von: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> im Auftrag von Paolo Ramat <paoram at unipv.it>
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 20. Jänner 2016 10:51
An: Peter Arkadiev; Matthew Dryer; lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
Betreff: Re: [Lingtyp] Structural congruence as a dimension of  languagecomplexity/simplicity

Peter A. writes: "If the categories of a particular language can be totally
at variance with those notions which typologists employ for comparative
purposes, then the fact that a given language happens to be classified as
SVO appears to be completely arbitrary and non-informative"  But the point
is just this: IFF the categories etc. I don't think that the categories of a
particular language can be totally at variance: there are limits to the
variability among human languages. I agree with Chao's statement that in
Chinese there is nothing like what is referred to as “subject” in English,
as all clauses are simply topic-comment . Using S and O symbols for Chinese
can be misleading --but this does not entail that  S and O do not exist
cross-linguistically as syntactic roles and cannot be employed for
comparative purposes. As Coseriu said, the existence of a category does not
implies its presence everywhere. "…si l’on définit universellement un
adjectif, ceci ne signifie aucunement que l’on attribue l’adjectif à toutes
les langues, puisqu’une définition n’est pas un jugement d’existence,
Coseriu  1974:49. Thus , as I  noted in my previous letter, it is possible
to define in general terms what aprototypical S or a prototypical ADJ are,
without assuming that all languages make use of Ss and ADJs.

Best,
Paolo

-----Messaggio originale-----
From: Peter Arkadiev
Sent: Tuesday, January 19, 2016 8:58 PM
To: Matthew Dryer ; lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Structural congruence as a dimension of
languagecomplexity/simplicity

Then I can't help asking a very naive question, appearing as though I
haven't read the relevant literature (I have): 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? If the categories of a particular
language can be totally at variance with those notions which typologists
employ for comparative purposes, then the fact that a given language happens
to be classified as SVO appears to be completely arbitrary and
non-informative. Even worse, given this stance regarding the correspondence
between comparative concepts and language-particular categories, word order
correlations just can't follow, let alone be explained. Correlations
between, say, OV and NPost in a given language are and have to be stated in
terms of the categories relevant for this language, aren't they? And if such
language-particular correlations can be mapped on robustly observed
cross-linguistic patterns subject to well-articulated processing
explanations such as those advanced by Hawkins, then, by necessity, this
mapping cannot be just arbitrary, and vice versa.
Again, I admit that I don't understand something.

Best,

Peter

--
Peter Arkadiev, PhD
Institute of Slavic Studies
Russian Academy of Sciences
Leninsky prospekt 32-A 119991 Moscow
peterarkadiev at yandex.ru
http://www.inslav.ru/ob-institute/sotrudniki/279-peter-arkadiev

19.01.2016, 09:53, "Matthew Dryer" <dryer at buffalo.edu>:
> 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/
>>
>>> On 19 Jan 2016, at 10:21 am, Everett, Daniel <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) 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
>>>>>
>>>>> ----------------------------------------
>>>>>
>>>>> 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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