[Lingtyp] comparative concepts

Wed Jan 27 20:35:01 UTC 2016

There are some cases where comparative concepts correspond to etic 
notions, but it is easy to find ones that are not. The most obvious type 
of exception is illustrated by Ian Maddieson’s chapters in WALS. For 
example, his chapter ‘Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives’ classifies 
languages according to whether they have a phonemic voicing contrast and 
if so, whether it is in plosives, fricatives, or both. That is clearly 
emic, not etic.

When I classify languages as ones where semantic adjectives are 
expressed by verbs, ones where they are expressed by nouns, and ones 
where they are expressed by a distinct word class (plus a variety of 
in-between cases), those comparative concepts are surely emic, not etic.

Matthew

On 1/27/16 11:54 AM, Everett, Daniel wrote:
> Good point, Doris. At the risk of harping on a single subject, in my
> forthcoming Chicago press book the etic/emic distinction plays a major
> role in the empiricist theories of language and culture that I try to
> develop. These are very important ideas that have been misunderstood and
> under-estimated for decades outside of some circles.
>
> Dan
>
>> On Jan 22, 2016, at 1:13 PM, Dlpayne at uoregon.edu
>> <mailto:Dlpayne at uoregon.edu> <dlpayne at uoregon.edu
>> <mailto:dlpayne at uoregon.edu>> wrote:
>>
>> It seems to me that "comparative concept" in Martin's usage is close
>> (if not identical) to what is called "etic " while language specific
>> "descriptve categories" are "emic cagegories" as discussed by Keneth
>> Pike abd used in anthropology long ago, with the additional
>> understanding that we are talking about conceptual notions of
>> potential relevance to morohosyntax / discourse (not just to sound or
>> eg. "marriage" in anthropology, etc.)
>>
>> Aren't these the same kind of distinctions just under new names by a
>> (somewhat) new generation?
>>
>> Doris Payne
>>
>>
>>
>> -------- Original message --------
>> Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] comparative concepts
>> From: Matthew Dryer <dryer at buffalo.edu <mailto:dryer at buffalo.edu>>
>> To:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>> <mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>> CC: Re: [Lingtyp] comparative concepts
>>
>>
>> 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
>>>
>>>
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