[Lingtyp] "Oceania" and "gender"

Fri Apr 7 07:32:22 UTC 2017

For reference for those who are not familiar with this part of the world, I
thought that a few maps might be handy. I've attached a few from ANU
cartography that outline the limits of Micronesia, Polynesia, Melanesia,
Remote Oceania, Near Oceania, Sahul, Sunda and Wallacea. I hope they might
prove helpful. They're of the public collection, my own and Andy Pawley's.

Also, for further assistance; we've compiled a list at HWRG over popular
repositories of technical terminology in linguistics:
http://humans-who-read-grammars.blogspot.com.au/p/help-linguistics-is-hard.html

Apologies again for being unclear. I've clearly been thinking too much in
my own head and I should have taken greater care before inviting others to
give suggestions. Thank you all for your helpful comments and patience.

My main interest for my PhD lies is Remote Oceania (Santa Cruz, Reef
Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji + Micronesia + Polynesia), but it
would be interesting for such a study to also contain contrastive examples
from Near Oceania cultures and languages. I'm familiar with the work of
Reesink, Dunn et al, and I'm partial to a similar sample of non-AN and AN
languages of Melanesia.

C.f. also the Standard Cross Cultural Sample and their region of "Insular
Pacific":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_cross-cultural_sample#Cultures_in_the_standard_cross-cultural_sample
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_cross-cultural_sample#/media/File:Insular_pacific.jpg

I agree with Martin, clearly we need to be explicit and geographical
delimitations need to be motivated in the context of the research question
and methods.

Thank you all for your time and patience. The suggestions have been helpful
to me in preparing for further discussions with my supervisors and
colleagues.

/Hedvig

*****

*Tōfā soifua,*

*Hedvig Skirgård*

PhD Candidate
The Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity

ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language

School of Culture, History and Language
College of Asia and the Pacific

Rm 4203, H.C. Coombs Building (#9)
The Australian National University

Acton ACT 2601

Australia

Co-chair of Public Relations

Board of the International Olympiad of Linguistics

www.ioling.org

Blogger at Humans Who Read Grammars
http://humans-who-read-grammars.blogspot.

On 7 April 2017 at 16:57, Martin Haspelmath <haspelmath at shh.mpg.de> wrote:

> This discussion exemplifies a general problem: We use many terms that have
> very unclear reference, and as a result we don't understand each other.
>
> Semantic change is of course familiar from other aspects of language, so
> it's natural that it occurs with more technical terminology as well.
>
> But it shouldn't.
>
> The whole point of technical terminology is that it has the same meaning
> everywhere, and there are many standardization bodies. For geographical
> regions, it seems that the most authoritative terminology is the United
> Nations M.49 geoscheme (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_M.49).
>
> According to the UN standard, Oceania includes not only "Trinesia"
> (Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia), but also Australia (and New Zealand,
> which is anthropologically part of Polynesia, but politically probably best
> grouped with Australia as "Australasia").
>
> Thus, if we as linguists want a term that includes Melanesia, Micronesia
> and Polynesia, we should NOT use "Oceania", but perhaps come up with
> something new, such as "Trinesia". ("Pacific" is definitely too vague, as
> it also includes Japan etc.).
>
> Of course, these geographical groupings are not necessarily "natural", but
> mostly based on geographers' traditions, and they are fairly arbitrary –
> this of course reminds me of the term "gender", which is also a traditional
> term that seems to be definable only in a somewhat arbitrary way (unless we
> want to change its meaning and thus create even more confusion). It seems
> that we cannot do without such traditional and arbitrary terms, because the
> world is so complex that it does not lend itself to clear natural groupings
> at this level granularity.
>
> Best,
> Martin
>
> On 06.04.17 01:23, Hedvig Skirgård wrote:
>
> Apologies, I should have been clearer. This idea was conceived of within a
> group of colleagues and I failed to express myself clearly outside of that
> group. I just wanted some more suggestions as input for discussions later
> on in the project at ANU, and I know that the LINGTYP-crowd is often very
> helpful with commentary.
>
> The sample would include languages of the entire Oceania-region, i.e. also
> non-AN languages of Melanesia.
>
> Thank you all for your engagement and comments. I apologise if I'm not as
> responsive as usual these coming days, two colleagues and I wrote an
> article that is getting some media attention and I need to see to that.
>
> All the best,
> Hedvig
>
>
> *****
>
> *Tōfā soifua,*
>
> *Hedvig Skirgård*
>
>
> PhD Candidate
> The Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity
>
> ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language
>
> School of Culture, History and Language
> College of Asia and the Pacific
>
> Rm 4203, H.C. Coombs Building (#9)
> The Australian National University
>
> Acton ACT 2601
>
> Australia
>
> Co-chair of Public Relations
>
> Board of the International Olympiad of Linguistics
>
> www.ioling.org
>
> Blogger at Humans Who Read Grammars
> http://humans-who-read-grammars.blogspot.
>
> On 6 April 2017 at 03:49, Mary Walworth <maryewalworth at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Hedvig,
>>
>> Quick clarification question since "Pacific" could also be ambiguous: do
>> you mean to include only AN languages? or, do you mean to include all
>> indigenous languages, both AN and non-AN languages, of these three
>> geographic areas?
>>
>> Best,
>> Mary
>>
>> Mary Elizabeth Walworth, PhD
>> Postdoctoral Researcher in Linguistics
>> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
>> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
>> http://www.shh.mpg.de/employees/51452/25522
>>
>> Visiting Researcher and Instructor
>> Université de la Polynésie française
>> http://www.upf.pf/fr
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 5, 2017 at 10:37 AM, Hedvig Skirgård <
>> hedvig.skirgard at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello again!
>>>
>>> Thanks for those who have been sending comments and suggestions, let's
>>> keep the thread going.
>>>
>>> Just to clarify, when I wrote "oceania" above I did actually refer to
>>> the geographic area, i.e. Polynesia + Micronesia + Melanesia. Apologies for
>>> the confusion. (In fact, when I was growing up in Sweden, I was taught to
>>> also include Australia in this region, but I've since learned that that's
>>> not commonly done.) I realise that something like "pacific region" might
>>> have been better. Apologies.
>>>
>>> Either way, I'm interested to include languages of Melanesia, Polynesia
>>> and Micronesia in this set.
>>>
>>> I'll be working together with colleagues at ANU and in the Grambank
>>> project. I'm a PhD student at ANU and one of the researchers at Glottobank.
>>>
>>> /Hedvig
>>>
>>>
>>> *****
>>>
>>> *Tōfā soifua,*
>>>
>>> *Hedvig Skirgård*
>>>
>>>
>>> PhD Candidate
>>> The Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity
>>>
>>> ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language
>>>
>>> School of Culture, History and Language
>>> College of Asia and the Pacific
>>>
>>> Rm 4203, H.C. Coombs Building (#9)
>>> The Australian National University
>>>
>>> Acton ACT 2601
>>>
>>> Australia
>>>
>>> Co-chair of Public Relations
>>>
>>> Board of the International Olympiad of Linguistics
>>>
>>> www.ioling.org
>>>
>>> Blogger at Humans Who Read Grammars
>>> http://humans-who-read-grammars.blogspot.
>>>
>>> On 30 March 2017 at 16:34, Hedvig Skirgård <hedvig.skirgard at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear pacific linguists,
>>>>
>>>> What are interesting grammatical typological features for capturing the
>>>> diversity of Oceania? (Please respond with concrete examples, and respond
>>>> to the full list :).)
>>>>
>>>> I work with a grammatical survey of the world's languages, Grambank,
>>>> and I'm also personally interested in Oceania in particular for my PhD
>>>> project. I've been doing some thinking as to what features would be
>>>> interesting to cover to more accurately capture the grammatical diversity
>>>> of Oceania in particular, besides the feature set that we already have for
>>>> the world-sample.
>>>>
>>>> One guide are the features that Reesink, Dunn et al used in their
>>>> publications on Sahul and Melanesia (see attachments and references listed
>>>> below).  They've taken in input from a lot of previous literature and
>>>> commentary, so it's a good set.
>>>>
>>>> Besides those, do you have other suggestions?
>>>>
>>>> From a rather Samoan-centric perspective, I'd be inclined to add
>>>> features like these:
>>>>
>>>>    - Is there a "neutral" choice in attributive possession, i.e. not
>>>>    alienable/inalienable, dominant/subordinate?
>>>>    - Can the agent be expressed as the possessor of the verb instead
>>>>    of encoded in the more canonical ergative/nominative manner?
>>>>    - Can TA markers be entirely dropped in main clauses?
>>>>    - Is number of absolute arguments expressed by reduplication on the
>>>>    verb?
>>>>
>>>> Clearly these need further refinement, I just wanted to give some
>>>> examples. Looking forward to more suggestions!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *Tōfā soifua, **Hedvig Skirgård*
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> * References: *Dunn, Michael, Angela Terrill, Ger Reesink, Robert A.
>>>> Foley & Stephen C. Levinson. 2005. Structural phylogenetics and the
>>>> reconstruction of ancient language history. Science 309. 2072–2075.
>>>>
>>>> Dunn, Michael, Robert A. Foley, Stephen C. Levinson, Ger Reesink &
>>>> Angela Terrill. 2007. Statistical reasoning in the evaluation of
>>>> typological diversity in Island Melanesia. Oceanic Linguistics 46(2).
>>>> 388-403.
>>>>
>>>> Dunn, Michael, Stephen C. Levinson, Eva Lindström, Ger Reesink, &
>>>> Angela Terrill. 2008. Structural phylogeny in historical linguistics:
>>>> Methodological explorations applied in Island Melanesia. Language 84(4).
>>>> 710-759
>>>>
>>>> Reesink, G., Singer, R., & Dunn, M. (2009). Explaining the linguistic
>>>> diversity of Sahul using population models. PLoS Biology, 7(11), e1000241.
>>>> doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000241
>>>>
>>>> Reesink, Ger & Michael Dunn (2012) Systematic typological comparison as
>>>> a tool for investigating language history. in Nicholas Evans and Marian
>>>> Klamer (eds) Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication No.
>>>> 5 Melanesian Languages on the Edge of Asia: Challenges for the 21st
>>>> Century. pp. 34–71
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *****
>>>>
>>>> *Hedvig Skirgård*
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> PhD Candidate
>>>> The Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity
>>>>
>>>> ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language
>>>>
>>>> School of Culture, History and Language
>>>> College of Asia and the Pacific
>>>>
>>>> Rm 4203, H.C. Coombs Building (#9)
>>>> The Australian National University
>>>>
>>>> Acton ACT 2601
>>>>
>>>> Australia
>>>>
>>>> Co-chair of Public Relations
>>>>
>>>> Board of the International Olympiad of Linguistics
>>>>
>>>> www.ioling.org
>>>>
>>>> Blogger at Humans Who Read Grammars
>>>> http://humans-who-read-grammars.blogspot.
>>>>
>>>>
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>
>
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>
> --
> Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de)
> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
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