[Lingtyp] "animal" / methods in lexical semantics

Tue Oct 16 00:45:45 UTC 2018

Dear all,

For some published discussions around these matters, we can for instance look at:

François, Alexandre. 2008. Semantic maps and the typology of colexification: Intertwining polysemous networks across languages. In Martine Vanhove (ed.), From polysemy to semantic change, 163–215. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

And also a related review article (which even mentions the question of animals, p. 192).

McConvell, Patrick & Maïa Ponsonnet. 2013. Review of From polysemy to semantic change (Vanhove 2008). Journal of Language Contact.

I have attached both pieces for convenience.

Kind regards,

Maïa

Dr Maïa Ponsonnet
Senior Lecturer in Linguistics
ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Fellow

Social Sciences Building, Room 2.36
Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Education
The University of Western Australia
35 Stirling Hwy, Perth, WA (6009), Australia
P.  +61 (0) 8 6488 2870 - M.  +61 (0) 468 571 030

________________________________
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Ian Maddieson <ianm at berkeley.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, 16 October 2018 5:45 AM
To: Östen Dahl; Martin Haspelmath
Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] query: "animal"

Hi Martin,

I find it a very bizarre claim to say that questionnaires are the ONLY way that cross-linguistic research can be carried out.
Sure, using a questionnaire can be a useful tool for certain purposes, but consulting dictionaries, articles and grammars,
analyzing texts, analyzing recordings, conducting experiments and so on are all possible ways of doing cross-linguistic
research.

In the context of the present discussion, the referential scope of "animal”-words might emerge more reliably from looking
at large bodies of text to infer actual usage than from even a very well-designed questionnaire. Of course, large bodies of
text are only available from a small sample of languages, and processing the data is non-trivial!

Ian

On Oct 15, 2018, at 2:21 PM, Östen Dahl <oesten at ling.su.se<mailto:oesten at ling.su.se>> wrote:

Dear Martin,
Since Hedvig did not really specify what the questionnaires should look like, could you make more precise what you mean by “questionnaires of the sort proposed by Hedvig”? Also, are you saying that one cannot carry out cross-linguistic research by corpus work or psycholinguistic experiments or by reading grammars?
I think that some caution is necessary when constructing a questionnaire to compare how words like “animal” are used. There may well be a conflict between perceived norms and actual usage. Direct questions such as “What does X mean?” or “Is X a Y?” may yield answers which are biased towards the former.
Östen

Från: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>> För Martin Haspelmath
Skickat: den 15 oktober 2018 15:40
Till: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] query: "animal"

In fact, questionnaires of the sort proposed by Hedvig and endorsed by David are the ONLY way in which cross-linguistic research can be carried out.

There is no contradiction at all between lists of comparison meanings (like David's original list of 8 organism types) and the recognition that languages "function" differently.

In order to express how a language "functions" (= in order to describe a language), one needs descriptive categories, and these may well involve prototypes.

In order to find out what languages have in common, one needs comparative concepts (for lexical concepts: comparison meanings, e.g. the concept-sets in the Concepticon https://concepticon.clld.org/parameters).

One should avoid the mistake of thinking that a mapping from language facts to comparative concepts is a description, or the opposite mistake of thinking that descriptive categories would necessarily be useful for comparison.

(Sorry for belabouring this methodological point, but it seems to come up again and again...)

Best,
Martin

On 15.10.18 15:03, David Gil wrote:

In response to the latest posting by Johanna, I think there is widespread agreement that the meanings of words exhibit the kind of internal structuring that is usefully represented in terms of prototypes.  But this does not preclude the need for adequate descriptions of what is included — protypically, less prototypically, marginally, or not at all — in the extension of words such as "animal" and its putative counterparts across languages.  And questionnaires have proven to be a useful tool for gathering this kind of data — it's quite easy to formulate a questionnaire in such a way that it will elicit judgements of prototypicality (as opposed to categorical "black-and-white" judgements).

On 15/10/2018 14:49, Johanna Laakso wrote:
Dear All,

to be honest, I don't believe that languages function with clear categories for concepts like "animal". More probably, there is something like a prototypical "core" for "animalness" (or many of them, if there are many categories corresponding to "animal"), surrounded by grey zones and depending on contexts, styles, subcultures, etc.

My own anecdotal experience (which first caught my attention years ago, when working on a translation job): in Estonian, "loomad ja linnud" (‘animals and birds’, implying that ‘birds’ are a category distinct from ‘animals’) seems to be a pretty frequent expression (more than 60,000 Google hits). As a native speaker of Finnish, I find the Finnish equivalent expression, "eläimet ja linnut", less natural or not as idiomatic and acceptable as the Estonian one; it does occur but clearly less frequently than in Estonian (13,700 Google hits), and according to my intuition, the Finnish ‘bird’ is a borderline case – birds might be "animals" or "not-animals", depending on context and use. I'm also pretty sure that many other Finnish speakers might see this differently.

Therefore, I have great doubts concerning the use of questionnaires for gathering data. Or, at least, the questionnaire should be very carefully planned, to accommodate vagueness and fuzzy or overlapping categories.

Best
Johanna

PS. Note also that terms for animals in many languages are greatly affected by taboos. And that the term ‘animal’ in itself is often a derivative (Finnish eläin = "living thing", Estonian loom = "creature", Hungarian állat = "standing thing") or a result of semantic extension or specification (cf. German "Tier" and its Scandinavian cognates with English "deer", or the fact that Hungarian "állat" a few centuries ago had a more general meaning, something like "entity" or "being") and that these developments might be connected to cultural changes.
--
Univ.Prof. Dr. Johanna Laakso
Universität Wien, Institut für Europäische und Vergleichende Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft (EVSL)
Abteilung Finno-Ugristik
Campus AAKH Spitalgasse 2-4 Hof 7
A-1090 Wien
johanna.laakso at univie.ac.at<mailto:johanna.laakso at univie.ac.at> • http://homepage.univie.ac.at/Johanna.Laakso/
Project ELDIA: http://www.eldia-project.org/

Hedvig Skirgård <hedvig.skirgard at gmail.com<mailto:hedvig.skirgard at gmail.com>> kirjoitti 15.10.2018 kello 13.55:

Dear everyone,

Queries like one David posed are often improved via more systematic data collection using a form. I suggested Google Forms because it's one of the most user friendly and familiar interfaces out there where David could set up a questionnaire and collect data on people's usage of words in their respective language, and also get systematic data on exactly what language they speaks.

I'm not going to set this up for anyone else or compile the information in this thread, I'm merely suggesting that it a Google Form may be a productive way of going about this.

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/>

P.S. If you have multiple email addresses, I kindly ask you to just use one with corresponding with me. Email threads and invites to get confusing otherwise. I will only email you from my gmail, even if other email addresses re-direct emails to them to my gmail (ANU etc).

Den mån 15 okt. 2018 kl 22:50 skrev Assibi Apatewon Amidu <assibi.amidu at ntnu.no<mailto:assibi.amidu at ntnu.no>>:
Dear Hedvig,

I am not myself into google, twitter, facebook, etc. beyond pressing 'like' buttons. If you wish to put the information on these platforms, too, please, do so, as long it does not distract from David's exploration.

Best regards,

Assibi

On 15. okt. 2018, at 13:21, Hedvig Skirgård <hedvig.skirgard at gmail.com<mailto:hedvig.skirgard at gmail.com>>
 wrote:

May I suggest a google form to be spread around facebook and twitter etc?

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/>

P.S. If you have multiple email addresses, I kindly ask you to just use one with corresponding with me. Email threads and invites to get confusing otherwise. I will only email you from my gmail, even if other email addresses re-direct emails to them to my gmail (ANU etc).

Den mån 15 okt. 2018 kl 21:31 skrev Assibi Apatewon Amidu <assibi.amidu at ntnu.no<mailto:assibi.amidu at ntnu.no>>:
Dear David and all,

Your exploration is very educative. I cannot claim to be able to answer your questions, but here is a take from Kiswahili. In Kiswahili, the categorization is as follows:

1. Mtu/Watu 'being/s' (Classes 1/2 M/WA) includes human and other animates. They are superordniate terms which subsume (2-3).
2. Mnyama/Wanyama 'animal/s, ±live' (Classes 1/2 M/WA) , (historically undifferentiated as nyama/nyama of classes 9/10, N/N up to ends of the 19th century) which subsume (3), hence hypernym to (3).
3. Mdudu/Wadudu 'insect/s, crawler/s, parasite/s, and others, ±live' (Classes 1/2 M/WA).

This gives us three generic terms for referring to humans, animal, insects and other species all the way to microbes. (2-3) are co-hyponyms of (1). These are not sharp mutually exclusive categories. Thus, centipede, scorpion, etc. are also types of  (3), and human, and other animals, e.g. hippo, can be described as wadudu, or better still with the augmentative dudu/madudu, depending on the communication intention of the speaker, e,g, how monstrous they perceive the entity. Returning to your list of words, they would fall under (1-2), but specifically under (2) in everyday usage. For a quick, not too detailed, discussion, kindly look at chapter 2 of

Amidu, A. A. (2007). Semantic Assignement Rules in Kiswahili Bantu Classes. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

Best wishes,

Assibi

On 14. okt. 2018, at 08:11, David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de<mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de>>
 wrote:

Randy,
So which of the items in (1-8) are covered by Chinese dòngwù (動物), ‘moving thing’?
David

On 14/10/2018 03:59, Randy LaPolla wrote:
Hi David,
The categories as you have them (1-8) reflect certain cultural conceptions, and so won’t be the same for other cultures. For example, in Chinese bats were traditionally seen as flying mice, and lizards were seen as four-legged snakes.
The word in Chinese that we translate as ‘animal’ is dòngwù (動物), ‘moving thing’.

Randy
Sent from my iPhone

On 14 Oct 2018, at 12:33 AM, David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de<mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de>> wrote:

Dear all,

I am interested in exploring, cross-linguistically, the semantic range of words that correspond more or less to the English word "animal".

Here are examples of the things that English "animal" refers to:

1. dog, kangaroo, lizard, frog ...
2. eagle, sparrow, chicken, bat ...
3. bee, scorpion, spider, centipede ...
4. crab, shrimp ...
5. worm, leech ...
6. starfish, jellyfish, squid, octopus ...
7. oyster, clam ...
8. sponge (?) ...

I am looking for examples of languages in which the basic word closest to English "animal" is nevertheless different in its coverage.  In particular, I would like to find instances — if such exist — of languages in which there is a basic word that covers the examples in 1-4 (or maybe 1-5) to the exclusion of those in 5-8 (or maybe 6-8).   (Note that the question concerns every-day words that reflect our naive folk biological knowledge, not with scientific terms in those few languages that have such terminology.)

Some words of background:  A colleague and I working in experimental cognitive science have found (non-linguistic) empirical evidence for the psychological reality of an ontological category that consists roughly of animals of the kind exemplified in 1-4 (and possibly also 5).  We are calling this category "higher animals".  The characteristic prototypical features of higher animals include a single axis of symmetry, the existence of head, torso and limbs, a face in the front of the head that includes sensory organs such as eyes, and a mouth for eating, and the ability to move forward in the direction that the head is facing.  A challenge that we face is that, in the (few) languages that we are familiar with, there is no simple word for higher animals.  But we are hoping that other languages might have such a word.  in addition, we would also welcome grammatical evidence for the category of higher animals, for example in the form of grammatical rules that are sensitive to the animacy hierarchy by making reference to a cut-off point between higher and other animals.

I look forward to your responses.  Thanks,

David

--

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<mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de>

Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834

Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816

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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<mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de>

Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834

Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816

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--

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<mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de>

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Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816

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Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de<mailto:haspelmath at shh.mpg.de>)

Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

Kahlaische Strasse 10

D-07745 Jena

&

Leipzig University

Institut fuer Anglistik

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D-04081 Leipzig

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Ian Maddieson

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University of New Mexico
MSC03-2130
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