[Lingtyp] comparative concepts

[David Gil]

Three unrelated comments on three reactions to my earlier posting:

On 23/01/2016 00:09, Martin Haspelmath wrote:
> P.S. Re David's posting: I agree that describing languages from a 
> cross-linguistic perspective (using comparative concepts) is often 
> useful, but before engaging in this kind of two-tiered description, 
> one should have understood the essential differences.
I agree wholeheartedy.  It's only because I assumed that most people 
engaged in this discussion are fully aware of the importance of 
describing each language on its own terms that I felt free to take this 
point for granted and address the role of universally-motivated 
comparative concepts in the description of individual languages.

On 23/01/2016 00:28, Paolo Ramat wrote:
> actually, bats don’t have wings but a kind of membrane that FUNCTIONS 
> like wings
As has already been pointed out, whether bats have wings or not is a 
matter of definition.  I would just add that from at least one 
ethnoculinary perspective that I am familiar with, bats are considered 
to have wings; this is the case here in Manokwari, in Tanah Papua, where 
speakers of the local Malay refer to those black rubbery weblike bits in 
their bat stew using the same word that they use for the corresponding 
appendages of birds and bees.

On 23/01/2016 11:27, William Croft wrote:
> Languages A and B are described as having "well-defined Ss and Os". But if the languages have these categories, they are language-specific, and hence not S and O in the comparative sense that the languages are SVO. And so Language A's "well-defined Ss and Os" are not the same as Language B's "well-defined Ss and Os". That is, in this description S and O are being used to describe both language-specific categories of languages A and B (and hence should not even be compared to each other), and to describe comparative concepts, presumably something like A and P respectively.
Of course Bill is completely right, and I plead guilty accordingly. Like 
most of us do most of the time, I loosely used the same term to denote 
language-specific categories and their "corresponding" (whatever that 
means) comparative categories.  I should have used terms such as 
"Language-A-Subject" etc., but even then my terminology would have 
presupposed that Language-A-Subject is an instantiation (or whatever, I 
defer to the Martin/Östen debate here) of the comparative concept of 
"subject", a presupposition which some might still find objectionable, 
so actually I should have used completely arbitrary terms like "banana" 
— which would have made the discussion virtually unreadable.  So what to 
do?  I agree with Martin that the field of linguistics suffers from too 
few technical terms (as opposed to too many, as is often assumed).  But 
until our inventory of technical terms is suitably enlarged, we have to 
plod on with what we have, use our terms in ways that are clear, and 
plea for understanding.  In the case at hand, I think that, in spite of 
Bill's well-taken comments, the intention of my example is clear, and 
the point that it makes remains valid.

-- 
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

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