[Lingtyp] language typology, linguistic typology, comparative linguistics

Wed Feb 28 07:00:11 UTC 2018

The first issue of *Linguistic Typology* (1997: 1(1)) provides a definition
which I still find sufficient and satisfying:

*Linguistic Typology **publishes original research on the diversity of
languages and on the patterns of variation within this universe.  The
essence of typology lies in structural traits--ranging from sound and
grammar to lexicon and discourse--that could vary independently from
language to language but actually do vary together, setting limits to
cross-linguistic variation and defining the groundplans on which languages
are constructed.  The discovery and the explanation of such
interdependencies and the informed discussion of results and methods in
typology are the subject matter of this journal.*

This definition allows for both synchronic and diachronic explanations..  I
would prefer to avoid theoretically (and often ideologically) loaded terms
such as "evoutionary" and "phylogenetic" in this linguistic enterprise.  I
agree with Juergen that "comparative" is not equivalent to "typological."
The quest, as laid out by the journal, is "explanation of
interdependencies.

Dan

On Tue, Feb 27, 2018 at 10:38 PM, David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de> wrote:

> Martin mentions "evolutionary linguistics", and indeed, from a descriptive
> point of view he is correct: people associated with the MPI-SHH in Jena do
> use "evolutionary linguistics" to refer to just about everything from
> whether Homo Erectus could speak to the nitty-gritty of the Northern Cities
> Vowel Shift in American English.  But this usage seems to me to be
> problematical.  Although there may indeed be common "evolutionary"
> principles applicable to both phylogeny and diachrony, there are also
> crucial differences, not just in the sociology of the respective
> subdisciplines but also with respect to their underlying principles.  In
> particular, whereas work in diachronic linguistics is typically guided by
> the uniformitarianist principle, stating, roughly, that reconstructed
> proto-languages should fall more or less within the range of observable
> contemporary languages, work in phylogeny by its very nature abandons
> uniformitarianism in order to ask how this range of variation emerged out
> of earlier systems that were qualitatively different and probably simpler
> than those of contemporary languages.  For this reason, we need distinct
> terms for these two very different concerns, and since for most of us
> "evolution" is indelibly associated with the former, phylogenetic
> enterprise, "evolutionary linguistics" is not an appropriate term to
> replace what has traditionally been referred to as "historical-comparative
> linguistics".
>
> An independent reason why calling everything "evolutionary linguistics" is
> problematical is that it leaves us without a term for the type of
> linguistics that is represented in Evolang conferences (i.e. Homo Erectus
> stuff but not Northern Cities Vowel Shift), which, as suggested by the name
> of the conferences, is traditionally  referred to as the "evolution of
> language".
>
>
>
> On 28/02/2018 14:59, Martin Haspelmath wrote:
>
> Yes, in the past (before Greenberg), "comparative linguistics" was
> primarily used for historical-genealogical linguistics, but this use seems
> to be long obsolete (as I note in my blogpost:
> <https://dlc.hypotheses.org/1022>https://dlc.hypotheses.org/1022).
>
> At MPI-SHH in Jena where I work now (perhaps currently the best-funded
> place where people are engaged in historical-genealogical studies), people
> use terms like "evolutionary linguistics" or "phylogenetic linguistics".
>
> Incidentally, there is no difference between "comparative linguistics" and
> "vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft" – the latter was used for
> historical-genealogical linguistics, but is now obsolete in this sense.
> Balthasar Bickel uses it in the broader sense that I have suggested.
>
> But there is an English-German contrast in that nobody uses "linguistische
> Typologie" – this sounds like a different meaning is intended, namely
> "typology of linguistics"; and who knows, maybe this is intended by the
> shift from "language typology" (= typology of languages?) to "linguistic
> typology" (= typology in linguistics?).
>
> Martin
>
> On 28.02.18 03:51, Dan I. SLOBIN wrote:
>
> 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>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>
>>> 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>https://dlc.hypothes
>>> es.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>
>>> 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
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>>
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Lingtyp mailing list
>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>
>>
>
>
> --
>
> *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> *
>
> *Dan I. Slobin *
>
> *Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics*
>
> *University of California, Berkeley*
>
> *email: <slobin at berkeley.edu>slobin at berkeley.edu <slobin at berkeley.edu>*
>
> *address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708*
>
> *http://ihd.berkeley.edu/members.htm#slobin
> <http://ihd.berkeley.edu/members.htm#slobin>*
>
> *<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> *
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
>
> --
> 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
>

-- 

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

*Dan I. Slobin *

*Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics*

*University of California, Berkeley*

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

*address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708*

*http://ihd.berkeley.edu/members.htm#slobin
<http://ihd.berkeley.edu/members.htm#slobin>*

*<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> *
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20180227/77cc8d3c/attachment.htm>