[Lingtyp] Probabilistic typology vs. typology-based grammatical theory

Tue Jan 26 14:52:26 UTC 2016

I've been sitting quietly through all of these exchanges, but now that
phonology is prominently cited in Eitan's message, I have to comment that I
don't think that closed syllables belong in the table. Everyone agrees that
open syllables are universal, there's no language without them, but closed
syllables are not rara in the way the other cited examples are. Perhaps
languages that have them are in the minority (has anyone done a count?),
and there are languages which have many more open syllables than closed,
but there are natural pathways to obtain closed syllables that are quite
frequent, especially syncope. Some languages allow closed syllables only
word-finally; others allow them only word-internally. A better example of a
phonological rarity is a velar implosive, which appears in only 5 of the
451 languages in the UPSID database. Of course I don't know how infrequent
something has to be to be thought of as "rare".

On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 6:29 AM, Eitan Grossman <
eitan.grossman at mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:

>
> Of course, rarity might have all sorts of reasons. In something I recently
> wrote, I try to list a few types of *diachronic *sources for
> cross-linguistic rarity. Here's a small chunk.
>
> For example, (i) a given feature may be (relatively) rare because there
> are fewer pathways that lead to the feature than away from it. Bybee (2001:
> 195-197) provides evidence for the argument that there are more open
> syllables than closed syllables, and only open syllables are (nearly)
> universal, because new open syllables are constantly being created by
> regular processes of language change (e.g., coda weakening and loss), while
> there are fewer processes that lead to closed syllables. Another
> possibility is that (ii) some rare features may necessitate numerous
> diachronic ‘steps’ that occur in a certain order in order to develop, as in
> Harris’ (2008) account of Georgian split case marking or Udi endoclitics.
> Yet another possibility is that (iii) a certain feature may require rare
> input structures, as in Grossman et al. (2015), which argues that adverbial
> subordinator prefixes are rare because they are facilitated by the
> relatively rare VSO order and case prefixes, and are inhibited by other
> word orders or case suffixes. Finally, Greenberg (1978) has proposed that
> (iv) some changes simply may be more frequent than others, a view adopted
> by Blevins (2009), who states that most languages have coronal segments
> because coronal maintenance and coronal creation are more frequent than
> ‘coronal annihilation.’
>
> Type
>
> Factor
>
> Rare feature
>
> Documentation
>
> pathway
>
> Few (vs. many) pathways
>
> closed syllables
>
> many languages
>
> stages
>
> Many (vs. few) stages necessary
>
> endoclitics
>
> Udi (Harris 2008)
>
> source
>
> Rare (vs. common) source construction
>
> adverbial subordinator prefixes
>
> Japhug (Grossman et al. submitted)
>
> type
>
> Rare type of change
>
> coronal annihilation
>
> Northwest Mekeo (Blevins 2009)
>
> Importantly, these types of factors that contribute to cross-linguistic
> rarity are not mutually exclusive, and all things being equal, one would
> assume that a feature that is characterized by more of the above factors
> would be rarer than one that is characterized by fewer of them.
>
>
> One could also add the controversial possibility of inherent (in)stability
> of a particular feature.
>
>
>
>
> Eitan Grossman
> Lecturer, Department of Linguistics/School of Language Sciences
> Hebrew University of Jerusalem
> Tel: +972 2 588 3809
> Fax: +972 2 588 1224
>
> On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 4:20 PM, Matthew Dryer <dryer at buffalo.edu> wrote:
>
>> Matthew writes: "The rara are relevant to typological work in that they
>> are crucial for demonstrating the range of ways that languages do things,
>> and in so far as that is theory, they are of theoretical importance. But
>> they are not particularly relevant to the theoretical goal of explaining
>> why languages are the way they are, which I think is primarily explaining
>> why the dominant patterns are dominant."  I think this issue is also
>> more complex, since, as we all know and as e.g. Elena Maslova (2000) has
>> argued, dominant patterns may be dominant for all sorts of non-linguistic
>> reasons, and therefore claiming that more frequent patterns are somehow
>> "better" than rare ones is a logical mistake. The same concerns rarities,
>> many of which might well have happened to become rare because of
>> non-linguistic factors. Moreover, as argued e.g. by Trudgill in his
>> "Sociolinguistic Typology", what is rare and what is common might have well
>> changed during the last millenia due to the changes in socioecological
>> settings. Therefore I would rather say that both dominant and rare patterns
>> are exlananda on their own right, and that sometimes it might be
>> instructive to forget about frequencies of certain patterns in language
>> samples so that these frequencies don't bias us.  Best,  Peter
>>
>>
>>
>> I have devoted considerable effort in my published research discussing
>> the problem that Peter describes, showing how it is often the case that a
>> particular language type may be more frequent for nonlinguistic reasons and
>> proposing ways to factor out these nonlinguistic factors. Thus what I mean
>> by “dominant” does not mean more frequent, but more frequent for what are
>> apparently linguistic reasons.
>>
>>
>>
>> Matthew
>>
>> On 1/26/16 7:10 AM, Peter Arkadiev wrote:
>>
>> Matthew writes:
>> "The rara are relevant to typological work in that they are crucial for demonstrating the range of ways that languages do things, and in so far as that is theory, they are of theoretical importance. But they are not particularly relevant to the theoretical goal of explaining why languages are the way they are, which I think is primarily explaining why the dominant patterns are dominant."
>>
>> I think this issue is also more complex, since, as we all know and as e.g. Elena Maslova (2000) has argued, dominant patterns may be dominant for all sorts of non-linguistic reasons, and therefore claiming that more frequent patterns are somehow "better" than rare ones is a logical mistake. The same concerns rarities, many of which might well have happened to become rare because of non-linguistic factors. Moreover, as argued e.g. by Trudgill in his "Sociolinguistic Typology", what is rare and what is common might have well changed during the last millenia due to the changes in socioecological settings. Therefore I would rather say that both dominant and rare patterns are exlananda on their own right, and that sometimes it might be instructive to forget about frequencies of certain patterns in language samples so that these frequencies don't bias us.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Peter
>>
>>
>>
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>
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-- 
Larry M. Hyman, Professor of Linguistics & Executive Director,
France-Berkeley Fund
Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/person_detail.php?person=19
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