[Lingtyp] wordhood: responses to Haspelmath

Sat Nov 11 18:53:22 UTC 2017

Can someone please give me a list of all of the structural constituents we
regularly rely on in linguistics which have an automatic and
non-problematic ("valid") cross-linguistic application?
Syllable? morpheme? clitic? word? sentence? They all leak.

I am reminded of the time in 1973 when I submitted two draft chapters to
the publisher for review of what would ultimately become my 1975 phonology
textbook. I'll never forget the opening line from one of the reviewers:

"In a word this book is not for you--or for anyone else for that matter,
for in it the author invokes the syllable and the word, two of the
slipperiest notions in all of
linguistics."

I remember the first two reactions I had to the review:

1. Although generative phonology was centered around the morpheme then (and
denied the syllable, for instance), the morpheme also has its slipperiness.
2. Wow! You can add -est to "slippery"!

I frequently cite this anecdote when teaching the English
comparative/superlative in intro classes.

I'm looking forward to David's paper... although I wonder if the word that
might be defined for the isolating/polysynthetic contrast will work for
everything else we need the word to do.

On Sat, Nov 11, 2017 at 10:38 AM, David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de> wrote:

> Contrary to Östen (below), I am not quite ready to concede to Martin the
> impossibility of defining a comparative concept of "word" that will enable
> typologists to distinguish between isolating and polysynthetic languages
> (as well as various intermediate types).  I am currently working on a paper
> that will provide such a definition.  An extended abstract of the paper is
> attached here.
>
> David
>
>
> On 12/11/2017 02:23, Östen Dahl wrote:
>
> OK, we should forget about word boundaries in typology, but should we also
> do so when writing grammars? Could you write a grammar of a stereotypical
> polysynthetic grammar and make it look like an isolating one without using
> procrustean methods?
>
> (Didn’t Skalička have a rather idiosyncratic definition of polysynthesis?)
>
> Östen
>
>
>
> *Från:* Martin Haspelmath [mailto:haspelmath at shh.mpg.de
> <haspelmath at shh.mpg.de>]
> *Skickat:* den 11 november 2017 19:01
> *Till:* Östen Dahl <oesten at ling.su.se> <oesten at ling.su.se>
> *Kopia:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> *Ämne:* Re: SV: [Lingtyp] wordhood: responses to Haspelmath
>
>
>
> It's not crazy at all to say that isolating languages could be described
> as polysynthetic, and vice versa. (In fact, Skalička described Modern
> Chinese as polysynthetic in 1946.)
>
>
>
> The problem is that archetypes like isolating and polysynthetic are mostly
> stereotypes. They are not clearly defined, at least not without reference
> to a "word" concept (itself only based on intuition, i.e. stereotypes).
>
>
>
> Of course, morphosyntactic patterns are often more complex than simple
> strings of morphemes. But we don't really know in which ways these
> complexities cluster. Is it the case that languages with tense-person
> cumulation (to give just one example of a complexity) also tend to show
> case-number cumulation? Is it the case that languages with special
> bare-object constructions ("incorporation") tend to show phonological
> interactions between object and verb? We don't know yet, I think. By merely
> labeling languages according to a few archetypes, we won't find out.
>
>
>
> So yes, let's forget about word boundaries in typology until we have a
> very good way to draw them consistently (using the same criteria in all
> languages).
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Martin
>
>
> Am 11.11.2017 um 18:40 schrieb Östen Dahl < <oesten at ling.su.se>
> oesten at ling.su.se>:
>
> Martin, I wonder if your views on these matters imply that a polysynthetic
> language could equally well be described as being an isolating one, and
> vice versa. That is, one should just forget about word boundaries and
> describe utterances as consisting of strings of morphemes. If you think
> this is not feasible, why?
>
> Best,
>
> Östen
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
>
> --
> 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
> Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834 <+49%203641%20686834>
> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816 <+62%20812-8116-2816>
>
>
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>

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