[Lingtyp] language typology, linguistic typology, comparative linguistics

Wed Feb 28 02:51:12 UTC 2018

And I've lectured to confused non-linguists who wonder what all of these
strange phenomena have to do with "topology."  All of this back and forth
shows that there's no rubric that a complex set of questions can fit
under.  I share Martin's misgivings--but do remember that we have a journal
and an association dedicated to "linguistic typology" --as much as I wish
there was an English equivalent of *vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft.*

Indeed, in the historical framework, typological and taxonomic studies are
precursors to more systematic science.  That was, for example, the
contribution of Linnaeus.  We're still at the stage when we need good
descriptive work, and we don't have to be apologetic about that.  Sometimes
I see us as a collection of Linnaeus's waiting for Darwin, not knowing what
Darwin will need.

Dan

On Tue, Feb 27, 2018 at 4:49 PM, Hedvig Skirgård <hedvig.skirgard at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Just as an illustration of non-linguists (or even non-typologists) not
> understanding the short term "typology". Recently at an event for our
> research centre I did a short presentation of the field and there were
> non-linguists in the audience who found it very enlightening, because they
> had thought that "typology" was the study of how people type language.
>
> /Hedvig
>
>
> *Med vänliga hälsningar**,*
>
> *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
>
> The Australian National University
>
> Website <https://sites.google.com/site/hedvigskirgard/>
>
>
>
> 2018-02-28 9:18 GMT+11:00 Siva Kalyan <sivakalyan.princeton at gmail.com>:
>
>> I would point out that in English, the term “comparative linguistics” is
>> typically used as a shorthand for “historical-comparative linguistics”,
>> i.e. that part of historical linguistics that concerns itself with
>> genealogical relatedness between languages, reconstruction etc., as opposed
>> to diachronic change within a single language. (See e.g.
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_linguistics.)
>>
>> I see that in German (according to the corresponding Wikipedia entry),
>> the term *vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft* has a broader meaning which
>> encompasses both historical linguistics (*historisch-vergleichende S—*)
>> and typology (*allgemein-vergleichende S—*); this makes sense of the
>> name of the department in Zurich (otherwise a bit puzzling for an
>> English-speaker).
>>
>> Thus the use of “comparative linguistics” to refer to (only) linguistic
>> typology would seem to be in competition with existing usage in both
>> English and German. That said, I can see the utility of having a cover term
>> that encompasses both historical linguistics and typology, and would
>> support using “comparative linguistics” in the German sense. I’m not sure
>> if this is within the scope of the current discussion, though.
>>
>> Siva
>>
>> On 28 Feb 2018, at 8:10 am, Martin Haspelmath <haspelmath at shh.mpg.de>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> What is the name of our subfield (or subcommunity):
>>
>> “language typology”?
>> “linguistic typology”?
>> or maybe simply “comparative linguistics”?
>>
>> Linguists know that there is no difference between the first two, and
>> they also understand the shorter "typology", but this term is opaque for
>> nonlinguists, and the duality of “language typology”  and “linguistic
>> typology” is inconvenient, because there is incomplete aggregation on sites
>> like Google Scholar and Academia.edu <http://academia.edu/>.
>>
>> (It seems that on Academia.edu <http://academia.edu/>, 6354 people are
>> followers of “language typology”, 8732 follow “linguistic typology”, and
>> 7090 follow “typology”, though perhaps not all of the latter mean typology
>> in the linguistics sense.)
>>
>> Historically, it seems clear that “language typology” is the older term,
>> and has become current in the 1970s. Since the 1990s, it got a
>> competitor ("linguistic typology"), for unclear reasons.
>>
>> (More on the history of these two terms can be found in the following
>> blogpost: https://dlc.hypotheses.org/1022)
>>
>> So I'm wondering: Maybe we should consider switching to an entirely
>> different, fully transparent term, namely "comparative linguistics"?
>>
>> It seems that there are quite a few well-established fields with
>> “comparative” in their names: comparative economics, comparative education,
>> comparative law, comparative literature, comparative mythology, comparative
>> psychology, and “comparative zoology” even has a famous museum on the
>> Harvard campus.
>>
>> (So far, at least one department of comparative linguistics in the
>> relevant sense exists: at the University of Zurich,
>> http://www.comparativelinguistics.uzh.ch/en.html).
>>
>> I feel that the term “comparative linguistics” for what used to be called
>> “language/linguistic typology” has another big advantage: The term fails to
>> signal association with a particular subcommunity – and this is good. After
>> all, many comparative linguists work in a generative framework, and these
>> do not usually associate with the term “typology”. However, much of what
>> they do is clearly “typological” in the usually understood sense, so it is
>> really odd to exclude this community terminologically.
>>
>> In any event, the question of the name of our subfield of linguistics
>> seems not gto have been discussed explicitly. Maybe it would not be a
>> complete waste of time to engage in some discussion.
>>
>> Martin
>>
>> --
>> Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de)
>> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
>> Kahlaische Strasse 10	
>> D-07745 Jena
>> &
>> Leipzig University
>> IPF 141199
>> Nikolaistrasse 6-10
>> D-04109 Leipzig
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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-- 

*<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> *

*Dan I. Slobin *

*Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics*

*University of California, Berkeley*

*email: slobin at berkeley.edu <slobin at berkeley.edu>*

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