[Lingtyp] query: "animal"
David Gil
gil at shh.mpg.de
Tue Oct 16 11:13:24 UTC 2018
Hedvig and others,
CLICS is a great resource, and not (only) because it is housed almost
directly across the corridor from my own office here in Jena. And I
have found it profitable to use in other contexts.
However, it is not clear to me how it might be of help in the present
case. The problem is, when I click (pun unintended) on, say, the
"animal" link below, and see a range of concepts that are supposedly
colexified with "animal", I simply have no idea which understanding of
the term "animal" was made use of by each of the various sources that
the CLICS database relies on, and little confidence that they all made
use of the same purported meaning of the word "animal".
The problem is actually a more general one that just "animal" and
CLICS. Martin and other similarly-minded typologists have argued that
meaning provides a more solid basis for the formulation of
cross-linguistically valid comparative concepts than does form. My own
feeling is that such arguments significantly overestimate the validity
of supposedly universal concepts (a la Wierzbicka, or the
"CONCEPTICON"), while underestimating the degree to which languages may
differ also with respect to their semantic structures. But that's a
topic for a different conversation ...
David
On 16/10/2018 03:56, Hedvig Skirgård wrote:
> I think that Ian and Martin may be talking past each other somewhat
> here. I think that they have different meanings of "questionnaire"
> (reading grammars or searching through corpora and systematically
> cataloguing the information into a sheet could be seen as filling out
> a questionnaire), but I'll leave that to Ian and Martin to work out. I
> also appreciate Östen's attention to the impact of the phrasing of
> questions to informants, I think that's a very good point.
>
> Another resource that David could make use of is the recently released
> Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications (CLICS) from the
> CLLD-project and CALC/DLCE group at MPI-SHH. It contains info on
> co-lexification, and can display information in network graphs. Here
> are some relevant graphs:
>
> Animal
> https://clics.clld.org/graphs/subgraph_619
>
> Insect
> https://clics.clld.org/graphs/subgraph_620
>
> Bird
> https://clics.clld.org/graphs/subgraph_937
>
> *
> *
>
> *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 tis 16 okt. 2018 kl 08:46 skrev Ian Maddieson <ianm at berkeley.edu
> <mailto:ianm at berkeley.edu>>:
>
> 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
>> Concepticonhttps://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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>> <mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
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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>
>>
>> Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834
>>
>> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
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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
>> IPF 141199
>> D-04081 Leipzig
>>
>>
>>
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>
> Ian Maddieson
>
> Department of Linguistics
> University of New Mexico
> MSC03-2130
> Albuquerque NM 87131-0001
>
>
>
>
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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
Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816
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