[Lingtyp] grammaticalized v grammaticized

Dan I. SLOBIN slobin at berkeley.edu
Mon Jun 10 03:00:19 UTC 2019


Just to muddy the waters a bit further, in the two volumes emerging from
the 1988 Oregon conference (Traugott & Heine, 1991),
Jim Matisoff went even further in his paper, "Areal and Universal
Dimensions of Grammatization in Lahu (Matissof, 1991: 381):
"The term *grammaticalization*, despite its heptasyllabic cacophony (the
more concise *grammaticization*, or even* grammatization*
would be preferable) represents one of the most important phenomena in
diachronic linguistics.  Grammat(ic[al])ization is
inherently a diachronic concept."

Like Joan Bybee, I opted for *grammaticization* for its economy and
elegance, as I saw it; I continue to use that form, avoiding
the nuances that have emerged since between the erstwhile synonyms.

I appreciate Bernhard's placing of the emerging distinction between
*grammaticalization* and *grammaticization* in the context of
a general psycholinguistic process, citing Bréal and Eve Clark who
elaborated the point I made in an earlier posting.

The editors of the Oregon conference volume accepted all three variants as
titles of individual papers.

Dan

Elizabeth Closs Traugott & Bernd Heine (Eds.) (1991). *Approaches to
grammaticalization.  *Vol. 1: *Focus on theoretical and*
*methodological issues. *Vol. 2: *Focus on types of grammatical
markers.  *Amsterdam/Philadelphia:
John Benjamins.

James A. Matisoff (1991). Areal and universal dimensions of grammatization
in Lahu.  *Ibid., *383-454.

On Sun, Jun 9, 2019 at 10:32 AM MM Jocelyne Fernandez <
mmjocelynefern at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Paul,
>
>
> In Frenchspeaking linguistic circles, a difference is generally made
> between "grammaticalisation" and "grammaticisation": the second one is
> reserved to those situations (rare in Europe but relatively frequent in the
> world) where a language communication system changes from purely oral to
> written style, typically after an orthography and the accompanying means
> for preserving and teaching the language have been adopted.
>
>     I have found it adequate to analyse the effects of "grammaticisation"
> while following during 40 years the typological evolution of Northern Sami
> (a Northwestern Uralic language, nowadays culturally European) after a
> unified orthography was adopted (and effectively applied) in 1979,
> observing what André Martinet called "synchronic dynamics",  and I would
> rather distinguish it from "grammaticalisation"  based on older sources
> from a diachronical perspective.
>
>
> Best regards from Paris
>
>
> M.M.Jocelyne Fernandez-Vest
>
>
>
> Le 09/06/2019 à 16:27, Paul Hopper a écrit :
>
> In the Preface to the first edition of our book Grammaticalization
> (Cambridge UP 1993) we discussed our choice of the longer form as follows:
>
> "A word about the choice of the term “grammaticalization”. As we note in
> more detail in Chapter 2, the word seems to have been first used by Meillet
> (1912). In recent linguistics there is some variation between this word and
> the newer form “grammaticization”. In adhering to the older form of the
> word, we do not intend any theoretical point other than to maintain a
> continuity of terminology. We believe that a terminology can and should
> survive quite radical changes in the ways the terms that comprise it are
> understood by successive generations of scholars. Some linguists have told
> us that they avoid the longer term because “grammaticalization” could be
> understood as “entering the grammar of a language,” i.e., becoming
> “grammatical”. “Grammaticization”, by contrast, suggests a process whereby
> a form may become fixed and constrained without committing the linguist to
> a view of “grammar” as a fixed, bounded entity. A similar point is
> sometimes made in a different way: it is said that “grammaticalization”
> stresses the historical perspective on grammatical forms, while
> “grammaticization” focuses on the implications of continually changing
> categories and meanings for a synchronic view of language, thus placing the
> entire notion of synchrony into question. It is far from obvious that any
> such distinctions in usage exist between the two words, and our own choice
> does not reflect any particular theoretical position. We note that the
> titles of several recent major works contain the longer form
> “grammaticalization” (e.g., C. Lehmann 1985; Heine and Reh 1984; Traugott
> and Heine 1991; Heine, Claudi and Hünnemeyer 1991)."
>
>       I think by the time of the second edition (2003) we had concluded
> that the debate was no longer current, the form with -al having
> clearly prevailed. Surely we can agree that the two terms will exist
> amicably side by side, according to preference and with no valid claim of
> theoretical superiority on either side.
>
>
> - Paul
>
>
>
> __________
>
> Paul J. Hopper
>
> Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Humanities
>
> Department of English
>
> Carnegie Mellon University
>
> Pittsburgh PA 15213, USA
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Nigel Vincent
> <nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> <nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk>
> *Sent:* Sunday, June 9, 2019 8:58:07 AM
> *To:* Bernhard Wälchli; John Du Bois; Bill Palmer
> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] grammaticalized v grammaticized
>
> I think usage here is probably often based on individual choice. I have
> always avoided the term 'grammaticization' and have preferred
> 'grammaticalization' in the diachronic sense and I would avoid both in the
> synchronic sense. By contrast, Joan Bybee  generally uses
> 'grammaticization' in the diachronic sense (except in her chapter in The
> Oxford Handbook of Grammaticalization!), and even refers to it as the 'more
> elegant' term in her book with Perkins and Pagliuca 'The Evolution of
> Grammar' - see p.4, footnote 2, an aesthetic judgement with which I would
> personally disagree!
> And with apologies for self-promotion, I briefly discuss the interesting
> and important issue that Bernhard raises about semantic change affecting
> technical metalanguage in §6 of my article 'Conative' in 'Linguistic
> Typology 17 (2013) 269-289.
> Best
> Nigel
>
>
> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE
> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics
> The University of Manchester
>
> Linguistics & English Language
> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
> The University of Manchester
>
>
>
>
> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] on behalf of
> Bernhard Wälchli [bernhard at ling.su.se]
> *Sent:* Sunday, June 09, 2019 12:55 PM
> *To:* John Du Bois; Bill Palmer
> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] grammaticalized v grammaticized
>
> As suggested by Dan, this discussion seems to be a very nice case of
> Michel Bréal’s Loi de répartition (based on earlier work by Gilliéron):
> synonyms do not last for a long time, either they acquire different
> meanings or one of the terms disappears. Similar points have been made in
> psycholinguistics and first language acquisition, among other things by Eve
> Clark.
>
> Can we conclude from this that metalanguage for describing language change
> is subject to language change in the very same way as everything else in
> language?
>
> Bréal, Michel. 1897. Essai de sémantique. Science des significations.
> Paris: Hachette.
> Clark, Eve V. 1988. On the logic of contrast. Journal of Child Language
> 15.317–335.
> Gilliéron, Jules. 1880. Patois de la commune de Vionnaz (Bas-Valais).
> Paris: F. Vieweg. (= Bibliothèque de l’école des hautes études. Sciences
> philologique et historiques; Fasc. 40).
>
> Best,
> Bernhard Wälchli
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of John Du Bois
> <dubois at ucsb.edu> <dubois at ucsb.edu>
> *Sent:* Sunday, June 9, 2019 1:15:37 PM
> *To:* Bill Palmer
> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] grammaticalized v grammaticized
>
> This distinction accords well with how many people use the two terms, I
> think.
>
> The study of grammaticization focuses on  functionally motivated patterns
> that arise in synchronic language use (discourse profiles), defining the
> environment to which grammars adapt via emergence.
>
> Grammaticalization focuses on the historical processes that create new
> grammar, driven by the discourse profiles plus additional principles
> intrinsic to cultural evolution and historical change.
>
> The two are closely intertwined, of course. A key task for functional
> linguistics is to clarify how they interact to provide an explanation for
> why grammars are as they are.
>
> Best,
> John
>
> ==============================
> John W. Du Bois
> Professor of Linguistics
> University of California, Santa Barbara
> Santa Barbara, California 93106
> USA
> dubois at ucsb.edu
>
> On Sat, Jun 8, 2019, 9:11 PM Bill Palmer <bill.palmer at newcastle.edu.au>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear all
>>
>> Juergen's email prompts me to ask a question I'd be interested to get
>> people's thoughts on.
>>
>> What is the relationship between the terms grammaticalized and
>> grammaticized? I use them to refer to different things, but I don’t know to
>> what extent my usage corresponds to others' understandings.
>>
>> I use grammaticized to refer to a synchronic situation, and
>> grammaticalized to refer to a diachronic process. For example, I would say
>> that the category of auditory evidentiality ("I heard [X happen]") is
>> grammaticized in language X, meaning that the category is expressed in the
>> language by a grammatical form; and I would say that the verb 'hear' has
>> grammaticalized as an evidential marker in language X, meaning that a form
>> with a lexical meaning has developed into a grammatical marker of some kind.
>>
>> Does this accord with anyone else's understanding of these terms?
>> Apologies if there's some obvious literature on this I have missed.
>>
>> Best
>> Bill Palmer
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> On Behalf Of
>> Bohnemeyer, Juergen
>> Sent: Saturday, 8 June 2019 12:26 AM
>> To: David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de>
>> Cc: Stephanie Evers <saevers at buffalo.edu>;
>> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>> Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Glossed corpora of languages w/o grammaticalized
>> definiteness marking
>>
>> Dear David — Good point! We use ‘definiteness’ to denote a variety of
>> similar language-specific semantic categories that characterize the
>> discourse status of a nominal in terms of its referent being discourse-old,
>> previously mentioned (etc.), and/or otherwise uniquely identifiable to the
>> interlocutors. Since unique identifiability may be conferred by the speech
>> situation, we require that candidate devices not be restricted to exophoric
>> (spatial) reference in their regular uses.
>>
>> What we mean by ‘grammaticalized’ is that the language has a particle,
>> function word, or inflection that is routinely used by the speakers of the
>> language to express the semantic category in question. For illustration, I
>> would assume (perhaps wrongly so) that it is possible in any language to
>> use demonstratives to indicate ‘definiteness’, including in Russian - but
>> Russian speakers, so far as I know (and so far as Stephanie Evers, the
>> student working on this project, was able to show in her Qualifying Paper),
>> do not regularly use demonstratives for this purpose, at least not unless
>> they wish to place contrastive narrow focus on the nominal in question.
>>
>> Why the restriction to particles, function words, and inflections? Well,
>> it is hard for me to see how expressions that are for all intents and
>> purposes regular content words could be used to indicate the ‘definiteness’
>> of another expression. But, the ultimate goal of the project is to test
>> hypotheses about the conditions under which dedicated definiteness marking
>> emerges vs. does not emerge in a language (family) or area. So if such
>> borderline cases exist, I suppose they would in fact be of great interest
>> to the project, even if they do not meet the criteria laid out above.
>>
>> Best — Juergen
>>
>> > On Jun 7, 2019, at 1:32 AM, David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de> wrote:
>> >
>> > Dear Juergen,
>> >
>> > Ian Joo mentioned our Indonesian corpus; a better way of accessing a
>> more complete version is described at
>> https://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-2007.html.
>> >
>> > However, I am puzzled by your criteria, specifically by the notion of
>> "grammaticalized definiteness (marking)", and a bit surprised nobody so far
>> in this thread has picked up on it.
>> >
>> > Both terms are problematic, as can be exemplified via Indonesian.
>> "Definiteness": well, Indonesian has a couple of nominal markers, =nya and
>> itu, that are sometimes described as marking definiteness, though I believe
>> that they are more appropriately analyzed otherwise, namely as marking
>> possession/association and deixis respectively.  So does Indonesian fail to
>> meet criterion 1, or does it in fact offer a nice example of "alternative
>> strategies" for marking definiteness?  Depends on your analysis.
>> >
>> > Then there's the notion of "grammaticalized":  what does it mean to say
>> that  =nya and itu are grammaticalized?  The former marker, =nya, exhibits
>> some properties that suggest that it might be a clitic, but otherwise,
>> these markers would seem to exhibit grammatical behaviour similar to most
>> other content words in the language.  So are they "grammaticalized"?  Well
>> it depends on what you mean by "grammaticalized".
>> >
>> > I use Indonesian here merely as an illustration; similar issues arise
>> in very many other languages.
>> >
>> > Best,
>> >
>> > David
>> >
>> >
>> > On 06/06/2019 22:02, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote:
>> >> Dear colleagues — An advisee of mine is looking for glossed texts to
>> investigate the use of strategies alternative to grammaticalized
>> definiteness marking. Basically, she’s trying to identify about half a
>> dozen genealogically and areally unrelated languages each of which meets
>> all of the following criteria:
>> >>
>> >> 1. The language lacks grammaticalized definiteness marking.
>> >>
>> >> 2. A text or corpus of texts is available for the language that has
>> Leipzig-standard interlinear glosses and translations in English or Spanish.
>> >>
>> >> 3. The text (corpus) comprises at least about 1000 clauses, but
>> ideally twice that or more.
>> >>
>> >> 4. The individual texts should be long-ish and their referring
>> expressions shouldn’t be predominately proper names.
>> >>
>> >> If you’re aware of a language so resourced, please let me know!
>> >>
>> >> Many thanks! — Juergen
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Juergen Bohnemeyer, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
>> >> Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University
>> >> at Buffalo
>> >>
>> >> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus * Mailing address: 609 Baldy
>> >> Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260
>> >> Phone: (716) 645 0127
>> >> Fax: (716) 645 3825 * Email:
>> >> jb77 at buffalo.edu * Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Office hours M 12:30 – 1:30pm / W 1:00 – 1:50 / F 12:30 – 1:50pm
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard
>> >> Cohen)
>> >>
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> Lingtyp mailing list
>> >>
>> >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>> >> http://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 Mobile Phone (Indonesia):
>> > +62-81281162816
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Lingtyp mailing list
>> > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>> > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>
>> Juergen Bohnemeyer, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department
>> of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo
>>
>> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus * Mailing address: 609 Baldy
>> Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260
>> Phone: (716) 645 0127
>> Fax: (716) 645 3825 * Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu * Web:
>> http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/
>>
>> Office hours M 12:30 – 1:30pm / W 1:00 – 1:50 / F 12:30 – 1:50pm
>>
>>
>> There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In (Leonard
>> Cohen)
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
> --
> M.M.Jocelyne FERNANDEZ-VEST
> Professor Emerita
> CNRS & Université Sorbonne Nouvelle
> _______________________________________________
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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>*

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

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

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