[Lingtyp] animacy hierarchy: exceptions based on shape

Tue Nov 27 06:22:14 UTC 2018

Hi all, hi David!

I would think that overt grammatical categories largely reflect what
speakers talk about frequently in particular usage contexts (à la Du Bois
'grammars code best what speakers do most' or Bybee's ideas about the
emergence of constituent structure).

So what would the precursors be for a grammaticalized category of shape?
One might find some ideas by looking at the collocational properties of
shape-denoting terms in corpora of different languages, and also some clues
about why they don't develop into a grammatical category of 'shape.' Maybe
they don't have the right frequency properties - say, a small but very
frequent class of shape terms co-occurring frequently with a large class of
something else). A look into corpora might also give some clues as to why
they do end up entering into constructions that they do enter into, like
compounds.

Eitan

Eitan

On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 8:05 AM Amina Mettouchi <aminamettouchi at me.com>
wrote:

> Hi David, would Thomas the Tank Engine bring something to your reflection
> on animacy hierarchy ?
> https://goo.gl/images/yGy2mN
> It seems to me that languages are much less driven by what looks like
> real-world constraints on animacy than we think, having in mind the kind of
> language used in standard descriptive utterances among adults in western
> societies. What looks like violations (speaking to your computer, thinking
> that this special gift from your departed grandma protects you, reassuring
> your child that their teddy bear is not hurt etc) might just be evidence
> for the fact that animacy is an attribute, not an inalienable property of
> référents themselves (therefore that it is what we predicate of entities
> that makes them animate or not): a possible caption to the linked picture
> would be : Thomas the tank engine was so proud that the mayor of London had
> organized a welcome ceremony for him in Victoria station.
> And if this type of language use falls out of the scope of your enquiry, I
> guess looking at texts describing shamanic practice, or referring to
> animism or totemism by culturally-anchored speakers  of the corresponding
> languages would be relevant ?
> Best
> Amina
>
>
>
>
> On 27 Nov 2018, at 06:12, Randy J. LaPolla <randy.lapolla at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Hi David,
> In English the use of “inanimate”* it *as opposed to animate *he* or *she*
> is based to a large extent on familiarity with the gender of the referent,
> so babies where one doesn’t yet know the gender, or bugs and slugs, etc.,
> where it doesn’t matter, take *it* because the use of *he* or *she* would
> require the person to know the gender/sex of the referent, though in some
> cases one can use an unmarked conventionalised gender for some animals.
>
> All the best,
> Randy
> -----
> *Randy J. LaPolla, PhD FAHA* （羅仁地）
> Professor of Linguistics, with courtesy appointment in Chinese, School of
> Humanities
> Nanyang Technological University
> HSS-03-45, 14 Nanyang Drive | Singapore 637332
> http://randylapolla.net/
> Most recent books:
> *The Sino-Tibetan Languages, 2nd Edition (*2017)
>
> https://www.routledge.com/The-Sino-Tibetan-Languages-2nd-Edition/LaPolla-Thurgood/p/book/9781138783324
> *Sino-Tibetan Linguistics *(2018)
>
> https://www.routledge.com/Sino-Tibetan-Linguistics/LaPolla/p/book/9780415577397
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 27 Nov 2018, at 3:27 AM, David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de> wrote:
>
>
> I am looking for examples of exceptions to the animacy hierarchy that are
> motivated by the shape or other spatial configurational properties of the
> relevant referents.
>
>
> The animacy hierarchy is primarily of an ontological nature; shape doesn't
> usually matter.  A slug is animate even though its shape is ill-defined
> and amorphous, while a stone statue is inanimate even if it represents an
> identifiable person.
>
>
> What would such a shape-based exception to the animacy hierachy look like?
>   In Japanese (according to Wikipedia, I hope this is right), there are
> two verbs of existence, *iru* for animates, *aru* for inanimates, but
> *robotto* ('robot') can occur with either of the two: while *iru* entails
> "emphasis on its human-like behavior", *aru* entails "emphasis on its
> status as a nonliving thing".  This description seems to suggest that
> it's the robot's sentience that is of relevance, not its human shape:
> presumably, even if the robot assumed the form of a sphere with blinking
> lights, if its behaviour were sufficiently humanlike it could take *iru*(speakers
> of Japanese: is this correct?).  On the other hand, I'm guessing that a
> human-like statue could never take *iru *(is this correct?).  So if my
> factual assumptions about Japanese are correct, the distribution of *iru*
> and *aru* does not offer a shape-based exception to the animacy hierarchy.
>   A bona-fide shape-based exception to the animacy hierarchy would be one
> in which all human-shaped objects — robots, dolls, statues, whatever —
> behaved like humans with respect to the relevant grammatical property.  Or
> conversely, a case in which an animate being that somehow managed to assume
> the form of a typical inanimate object would be treated as inanimate.
>
>
> I would like to claim that such shape-based exceptions to the animacy
> hierarchy simply do not exist, but I am running this past the collective
> knowledge of LINGTYP members first, to make sure I'm not missing out on
> anything.
>
>
> More generally, it seems to be the case that grammar doesn't really care
> much about shapes.  The closest thing to grammaticalized shape that I can
> think of is numeral classifiers, which typically refer to categories such
> as "elongated object", "small compact object", and so forth.  But these
> straddle the boundary between grammar and lexicon, and, more importantly,
> are typically organized paradigmatically, rather than hierarchically, as is
> the case for animacy categories.
>
> --
> 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
> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20181127/948afe79/attachment.htm>