[Lingtyp] comparative concepts

Fri Jan 22 17:55:12 UTC 2016

Paolo’s comment here illustrates very well how wings is a comparative 
concept.

The primary motivation for my arguing against crosslinguistic categories 
in my 1997 paper was that linguists would debate for marginal cases 
whether a category in a particular language was an instance of the 
crosslinguistic category, but I argued that such debates were merely 
terminological, not substantive.

Claiming that bats don’t have wings is an example of the same 
phenomenon: it all depends on how you define wings.Paolo is assuming one 
definition, but many people would assume a different definition.There is 
no “right” definition.

Matthew

On 1/22/16 10:28 AM, Paolo Ramat wrote:
> Hi David,
> your comparison of linguistic facts with bats helps me to clarify (and 
> this will be the end of my interventions!) my point: actually, bats 
> don’t have wings but a kind of membrane that FUNCTIONS like wings 
> which prototypically are formed by an ordered collection of plumes. 
> Similarly, in the Lat. construct /me poenitet /the accus. /me /has the 
> same FUNCTION as Engl. /I /in /I‘m sorry /or Germ./mir /in /Es tut mir 
> leid /(call it Patient or Experiencer). Once we have established what 
> wings, PAT or EXP are, we can draw more or less narrow comparisons 
> between bats, bees, eagles etc. and between  the theta roles 
> implemented by /me, I, mir /etc.
> Consequently, I agree with your conclusions thet “comparative concepts 
> [build on linguists’ analysis of languages] have a place in the 
> grammatical descriptions of individual languages” and that “the 
> ontological diversity of language-specific categories and comparative 
> concepts should be present within the grammatical descriptions of 
> individual languages” .  The process is twofold : from the empirical 
> observation of bats, bees, eagles etc. and Lat.,Engl.,Germ etc. to the 
> creation of comparative concepts (call them abstract /tertia 
> comparationis/) back to the analysis of flying objects and of 
> linguistic extant data.
> Best,
> Paolo
> °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
> Prof.Paolo Ramat
> Academia Europaea
> Università di Pavia
> Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori (IUSS Pavia)
> *From:* David Gil <mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de>
> *Sent:* Friday, January 22, 2016 3:14 PM
> *To:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org 
> <mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] comparative concepts
>
> I've greatly enjoyed following this high-quality discussion: thank you 
> all.
>
> In particular, I think the discussion has helped me to articulate an 
> unease that I've always felt about the distinction between 
> language-specific categories and what Martin calls comparative 
> concepts.I agree wholeheartedly that we need to distinguish between, 
> say, the Latin Dative, and a typologically-informed concept of dative 
> that the Latin Dative may or may not instantiate to whatever degree.(I 
> also agree that it's unfortunate that we don't have enough distinct 
> terms to assign to all of these different things, and that we 
> sometimes end up falling prey to the resulting terminological 
> confusion.)Where I think I part ways with some of my colleagues is 
> that I do not accept that language-specific categories and comparative 
> concepts constitute two distinct and well-defined ontological types.
>
> Let's take the wing analogy.I agree that a statement such as "bats 
> have wings" may be of more interest for somebody interested in 
> comparative evolution than for a specialist in bats — in that sense it 
> resembles a comparative concept in linguistics.But still, bats do have 
> wings, even though they may differ in many ways from those of birds or 
> bees.And yes, ontologically bat wings are a very different type of 
> thing than, say, whatever feature of bat DNA it is that "generates" 
> those wings.However, these different ontological types all have a 
> place within a description of bats, even though a bat specialist might 
> be more interested in the DNA while the comparative evolutionist will 
> be more interested in the wings.
>
> Getting back to languages, let's consider three hypothetical (and 
> somewhat simplistic cases of) languages that Matthew would classify as 
> having SVO basic word order:
>
> Language A:has well-defined Ss and Os, and specific linearization 
> rules that put the S before the V and the O after it.
>
> Language B:has well-defined Ss and Os, but no linearization rules that 
> refer to them; instead it has specific linearization rules that put 
> the A before the V and the P after it.
>
> Language C:does not have well-defined Ss and Os, but has specific 
> linearization rules that put the A before the V and the P after it.
>
> In Matthew's WALS chapter, all three languages are characterized as 
> SVO; this is an example of what Martin and others call a comparative 
> concept.And as we have found out over the last several decades, basic 
> word order is a very useful comparative concept for us to 
> have.However, our three hypothetical languages arrive at their SVO 
> order in very different ways, giving rise to the impression that the 
> respective bottom-up language-specific descriptions of the three 
> languages will share no common statement to the effect that they have 
> SVO word order.And indeed, adequate bottom-up language-specific 
> descriptions of these three languages should look very different, 
> reflecting the very different provenances of their SVO word orders.
>
> However, I would like to suggest that there is also a place within the 
> bottom-up language-specific description of each of the three languages 
> for some kind of statement to the effect that the language has SVO 
> word order (in the sense of Matthew's WALS chapter).Of course this is 
> a different kind of statement to the ones previously posited, making 
> reference to different levels of description.But we're already used to 
> multiple levels of description within language-specific descriptions, 
> for example when we talk about Ss and Os but also As and Ps, topics 
> and comments, and so forth.So there is no good reason not to allow for 
> a WALS-style word-order category such as SVO not to be written into 
> the grammatical descriptions of each of our hypothetical three 
> languages, even if in some cases it may be "derivative" or 
> "epiphenomenal", and even if in some cases it is of relatively little 
> interest to language specialists. (Though as Matthew pointed out 
> earlier on in this thread, the basic word order facts of a language 
> have implications regarding other properties of the language in 
> question even in those cases where the basic word order is 
> "derivative" of other factors.)
>
> So what I'm suggesting, then, is that so-called comparative concepts 
> have a place in the grammatical descriptions of individual 
> languages.This is not to deny that comparative concepts are different 
> kinds of creatures, which — by definition — are of greater relevance 
> to cross-linguistic comparison than to the understanding of individual 
> languages.It follows that the ontological diversity of 
> language-specific categories and comparative concepts should be 
> present within the grammatical descriptions of individual 
> languages.Some will object to this, but I have no problem with the 
> proposition that a good description of a language will be 
> ontologically heterogeneous, e.g. containing some statements that are 
> psychologically real and others that are not.(I note here Eitan's 
> suggestion earlier in this thread that some comparative concepts may 
> also be cognitively real.)
>
> Finally, and somewhat tangentially, a practical consideration:a good 
> reference grammar, while describing a language on its own terms 
> without imposing categories from outside, should at the same time 
> maintain a parallel reader-friendly typologically-informed narrative, 
> one of whose major tasks is to mention all of those 
> cross-linguistically familiar typological categories — e.g. case 
> marking, agreement, gender, and so forth — that are absent from the 
> language, if only to reassure the reader that the author didn't just 
> omit mention of them for reasons of space, lack of interest, or whatnot.
>
>
> -- 
> David Gil
>
> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
> Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
>
> Email:gil at shh.mpg.de
> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-812-73567992
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list 
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org 
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20160122/814712f3/attachment.htm>