[Lingtyp] How typology has solved its “comparability problem”

[Martin Haspelmath]

Dear typologists,

The journal "Linguistic Typology" has recently published five papers on 
"comparability", closely related to the four talks at the ALT 2017 panel 
in Canberra. They are available online "ahead of print 
<https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/lity/ahead-of-print/article-10.1515-lingty-2020-2055/article-10.1515-lingty-2020-2055.xml>" 
(not yet part of a printed issue).

Nick Evans has written the introductory paper, in which he says that 
"comparability lies at the heart of linguistic typology", and that 
"problems of comparability will never go away". (Oddly, none of these 
five papers makes reference to the LINGTYP discussions 
<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/2016-January/subject.html#5038> 
on comparing categories that took place in 2016, and that were reflected 
by many papers in "Linguistic Typology", e.g. by Croft, Dahl, Dryer, 
Gil, LaPolla, Moravcsik).

I disagree with Nick, and in the blogpost linked below, I argue that we 
have solved our comparability problem (which was caused by naively 
following the Chomskyan idea of innate substantive universals):

https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2421

Best,
Martin

-- 
Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de)
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
&
Leipzig University
Institut fuer Anglistik
IPF 141199
D-04081 Leipzig

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