[Lingtyp] rare, or rervealing languages?

[Claude Hagège]

Dear all,

 

Whether a linguistic phenomenon is conceived of  as rare 1) as far as the
combination of features (not so rare by themselves) is concerned, or 2),
more interestingly, with respect to what meanings are grammaticalized, as
Walter says (I would rather say “what meanings are name-worthy in a language
and not in others), the notion I would propose to use instead of “rare
languages” is “revealing languages”. I  define a 

revealing language as one which 1) exhibits explicit correlations between
structures seemingly unrelated in other languages, and 2) thus reveals
significant properties of human language, and indicates thereby the limits
beyond which we think that no grammar can go are more extended than we
believe. To give two examples:

 

1)   Striking answer anticipation in conversational Lhassa Tibetan
interrogative sentences:

 

khyedrang-tsho  phebs-payin-pas ,

2              -PL     go      -1SG  -INTERR”

“did you go there?”.

 

In this example, there is a striking absence of co-reference between the
second person pronoun (khyedrang) and the intrafixed personal index
-----payin-, which is first SG (blended with Past): the speaker, here,
anticipates the answer by using, in the VP, the personal index corresponding
to the listener replying as ego. This is an effect of what I have called (C.
Hagège, La structure des langues, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France,
1982, 100) the egophoric system, here manifested as egophoric pressure.

 

2)   Unusual  gender and number agreement between totally unrelated elements
in the Italian dialect of Ripatransone (located in the Marchese):

 

a)   lu                        frIkí    å   ítu                          a
r:üma

ART.MASC.SG   boy     is  gone(MASC.SG)   to   Rome 

“the boy has gone to Rome”

 

b)    le                      frIkíne   å   íte                        a
r:üme

ART.FEM.SG    girl         is   gone(FEM.SG)    to        Rome

“the girl has gone to Rome”.

 

In these examples, we observe gender and number agreement between the
subject and the directional complement. Thus, one language at least gives
the lie to the principle according to which only functionally related
elements may agree. This revealing language therefore shows that, as far as
agreement is concerned, the limitations observed in most languages are not
universal, and thus cannot be retained as defining features.

 

(these examples are quoted, along with others, in C. Hagège, The Language
Builder, An essay on the Human Signature in Linguistic Morphogenesis,
Amsterdam/Philadelphia, CILT IV, vol. 94, 1993, 77 and 85)

 

 

Best

 

Claude

 

 

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