[Lingtyp] papers on non-uniqueness in tone and stress
Adam James Ross Tallman
ajrtallman at utexas.edu
Sat Feb 6 08:42:23 UTC 2021
Thanks for all of the replies,
While I certainly appreciate the sources provided (Natalia's paper is right
on the nose regarding my question), Erich's comments seem to assume that it
is possible to do language comparison without any simplifying assumptions.
It's as if the logical space that emerges from canons provides an unbiased
Archimedean vantage point, with no potential to reify traditional
categories (I would really question this - consider Spencer and Luis'
notion of canonical clitic). There also seems to be an exaggeration of our
ability to directly get at the reality of individual languages ("cut
languages at the joints"), trivializing all the difficulties in getting the
facts right, the real difficulty that many data gathering techniques
themselves have biases that result in dangers of misinterpretation (calques
from the contact language in the case of elicitation, misinterpretation of
the context with naturalistic speech, top-down hallucinations in the domain
of the phonetics-phonology interface, an inability to untangle or measure
confounds in phonetic measurements), and the fact that (unbeknownst to the
well meaning typologist) many of the posited 'diagnostics', 'typological
variables' and even 'comparative concepts' are ambiguous in their
interpretation and descriptivists are sometimes pushed towards "just
picking one" of these interpretations lest we be called out as
misunderstanding the literature.
Here I would endorse the work by philosopher William Wimsatt, who has
worked on developing a philosophy of heuristics for scientific inference,
and the anthropologist Matei Candea. I think the points made in these works
resonate with Martin's views to a certain extent.
Wimsatt, William. 2007. Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings:
Piecewise approximations to reality. Harvard University Press.
Candea, Matei. 2019. Comparison in Anthropology: The Impossible Method.
Cambridge University Press.
best,
Adam
On Fri, Feb 5, 2021 at 6:24 PM Martin Haspelmath <
martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de> wrote:
> Thanks, Erich! Yes, it's true that comparative concepts "do not address
> the issue of non-unique analysis", because they are not about analysis, but
> about classification.
>
> Linguists often conflate these two things – they say things like "I
> *analyze* phenomenon X as Y", where "Y" is a category known from some
> other language. But this works only if Y is assumed to be an innate
> building block.
>
> So if one invokes phenomena that are also found in other languages, one
> should say "I *classify* X as Y". And I think that classification can and
> should be unique (unlike analysis), because the classificatory categories
> are defined in such a way that they apply equally everywhere. (They are
> "cookie-cutters" whose shape and size is not dependent on the dough, to use
> Erich's apt metaphor.)
>
> What Round (2019) apparently attempts to do is to have it both ways:
> "carve languages at their joints", but in a way that still allows
> comparison, by "choosing judiciously" among different (equally possible)
> analyses. I fear that such "judicious choices" may introduce too much
> subjectiveness (criteria selection bias, as Tallman 2021 calls it:
> https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005720).
>
> Erich is absolutely right that by choosing "cookie-cutter"-type
> comparative concepts (e.g. WALS-type category-like concepts, or parallel
> text passages, or Nijmegen-style visual stimuli), one incurs "the cost of
> losing sight of the systems being characterised" – except that "losing
> sight" suggests that one could do both things simultaneously.
>
> I'm not sure whether there is a "growing consensus", though. I replied to
> Himmelmann's 2019 paper here: https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2447, and I will
> reply to the critical comments on my "General linguistics" paper (mostly by
> generative linguists such as David Adger:
> https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005691) next month. It still seems to me
> that the main lack of consensus is between advocates of innate building
> blocks and everyone else.
>
> Martin
>
> Am 05.02.21 um 08:37 schrieb Erich Round:
>
> Hi all,
>
>
>
> Martin Haspelmath writes,
>
>
>
> different issues here: … (iii) how one links language-particular phenomena
> to comparative concepts; Erich Round's paper on “Australian Phonemic
> Inventories Contributed to PHOIBLE 2.0”
> https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3464333 is a clear example of this last
> type.
>
>
>
> This misconstrues what the study does altogether, but it also raises a
> point worth delving into, so thanks to Martin in the spirit of zigzagging
> towards the light:
>
>
>
> Round (2019) considers the language-internal analyses of a large sample of
> Australian languages. Relevant to Adam’s topic, phonemic analysis is
> famously non-unique, and a given language typically allows multiple
> possible analyses. To put it another way, there are multiple ways to carve
> a sound system at its joints. Round (2019) chooses among these multiple,
> possible, language-internal analyses, endeavouring to ensure that the
> principles of the analysis are comparable across languages. Thus, when
> languages in the dataset do differ, those differences are more likely to
> reflect empirical differences in the languages themselves, rather than
> artifactual differences due to linguists doing phonemicisation differently.
> As Larry Hyman (2017:144) puts it so well, “we aim to typologize the
> linguistic properties, not the linguists”. Discussion of this kind of
> typological data preparation is relatively prominent within phonology: see
> Hyman (2017), van der Hulst (2017), Kiparksy (2018), and of course Ian
> Maddieson’s (1984) classic study which treats the issue with great care.
>
>
>
> In contrast, Comparative Concepts (CC’s) do not seem to me to address the
> issue of non-unique analysis, because they don’t seek to characterise
> languages in their own terms. CC’s, in Haspelmath’s sense, are like
> cookie-cutters that slice through languages, picking out a predetermined
> shape chosen by the analyst (so that we can ask what we find within it);
> they deliberately don’t carve languages at their joints. Round (2019) does
> carve languages at their joints, only it admits that there are many ways to
> do so, and attempts to choose judiciously among them, given the aim of
> constructing a dataset that aids insightful comparison and typologising.
>
>
>
> Why is this important to many typologists? Because we regard languages as
> organised systems, and want to understand them as such. A challenge,
> though, is that complex systems admit of multiple different
> characterisations. Typological methods which attend to this challenge of
> multiple analysis / non-uniqueness seek to ameliorate the distractions and
> illusions that can be thrown up by different choices of analysis, while
> still remaining committed to studying the system. CC’s in Haspelmath’s
> sense offer the promise of reducing variation in analysis, but at the cost
> of losing sight of the systems being characterised. Whether that is a cost
> worth bearing is evidently still a matter of contention in current-day
> typology.*
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Erich
>
>
>
>
>
> * Though the growing consensus is, it’s perfectly possible to do good
> typology without paying it. Bickel 2021, Round & Corbett 2020, Spike 2020
> and Himmelmann 2019 all make this point from separate angles.
>
>
>
> New references (other references are in my earlier post, below):
>
> Bickel, Balthasar. 2021. “Beyond Universals and Particulars in Language: A
> Reply to Haspelmath (2021).” *https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005707
> <https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005707>*.
>
> Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 2019. Against trivializing language description
> (and comparison). Under review.
> https://ifl.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/prof-himmelmann/publikationen
>
> Maddieson, Ian. 1984. *Patterns of Sounds*. Cambridge: Cambridge
> University Press.
>
> Spike, Matthew. 2020. “Fifty Shades of Grue: Indeterminate Categories and
> Induction in and out of the Language Sciences.” *Linguistic Typology*
> 24(3):465-488. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2020-2061
>
>
>
>
>
> *From: *Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Martin
> Haspelmath <martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de> <martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de>
> *Date: *Thursday, 4 February 2021 at 11:32 pm
> *To: *"lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org"
> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Subject: *Re: [Lingtyp] papers on non-uniqueness in tone and stress
>
>
>
> It seems that there are at least three different issues here:
>
> (i) whether all speakers of a language have the same system even when
> their conventional behaviour is identical; there happens to be an example
> of indeterminacy in the latest issue of *Phonological Data and Analysis*
> (see Matthew Gordon's earlier message):
>
> Bennett, W. G., & Braver, A. (2020). Different speakers, different
> grammars: Productivity and representation of Xhosa labial palatalization. *Phonological
> Data and Analysis*, *2*(6), 1–29. https://doi.org/10.3765/pda.v2art6.9
>
>
> (ii) on what basis one decides between different analyses of a
> language-particular system; e.g. Schane's (1968) example of English [spin],
> which can be phonemicized as /sbin/ (with phonetic devoicing of /b/ after
> sibilant) or /spʰin/ (with phonetic deaspiration in the same environment).
>
> (iii) how one links language-particular phenomena to comparative concepts;
> Erich Round's paper on “Australian Phonemic Inventories Contributed to
> PHOIBLE 2.0” https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3464333 is a clear example of
> this last type. It seems that the issue in Chácobo that Adam Tallman
> mentioned ("tone" vs. "stress") also falls in this category.
>
> Phonologists do not always distinguish between (ii) and (iii) (particular
> description vs. general comparison), as pointed out prominently by Lass
> (1984) and Simpson (1999) (cited by Erich). But Kiparsky (2018) (also cited
> by Erich) explicitly rejects the distinction – I have argued against
> Kiparsky here: https://dlc.hypotheses.org/1817.
>
> Best,
> Martin
>
> Am 04.02.21 um 13:28 schrieb Erich Round:
>
> Hi Adam,
>
>
>
> I’ve enjoyed the conversations you’ve sparked here on the list recently,
> please keep them coming!
>
>
>
> Thanks for raising an important topic. I have some paper suggestions
> below. I’d start by saying, though, that you might be getting formal
> phonologists wrong. Generative theorists from the start were well aware of
> the non-uniqueness problem, and that’s one reason why they were so keen on
> metrics to evaluate multiple candidate grammars. Now, that’s not to say it
> proved to be plain sailing, but there’s a deep appreciation of the problem
> buried in the theory, even if for practical purposes much theoretical work
> (just like much typological work) assumes only one analysis in order to get
> some other task completed in a finite amount of time. In optimality
> theory, the notion of Richness of the base is one new-ish incarnation of
> attempts to deal with the matter.
>
>
>
> Canonical Typology (Corbett 2005, Round and Corbett 2020) provides the
> conceptual tools for asking not just whether ‘the best analysis’ is A, B or
> C, but to what extent, in multiple different regards, A, B and C differ and
> therefore can be considered (dis)advantageous in different ways. This helps
> us clarify why and how multiple analyses arise in the first place. My
> forthcoming chapter (2021) on phonotactics in Australian languages
> discusses this with respect to complex segments; Kwon & Round (2015)
> discuss it with respect to phonaesthemes; my review (2017) of Gordon’s
> Phonological Typology (2016) discusses the idea of doing typology over a
> distribution of possible analyses (which I term ‘factorial analysis’) and
> points out some places where Gordon’s own work covertly does this when
> confronted with non-uniqueness. Parncutt (2015) applies the idea to
> reduplication, and a current PhD student of mine, Ruihua Yin presented some
> of her fascinating results regarding sonority sequencing at the Australian
> Linguistics Society conference in December; her thesis should be finished
> early this year, and will be a major undertaking in this kind of typology.
> Round (2019) discusses how I addressed the issue of non-uniqueness when
> compiling a typologically nuanced set of 400 Australia phoneme inventories
> for Phoible. Natalia Kuznetsova’s work (2019) is relevant to prosody and
> responds to Hyman’s (2006) classic paper. Other serious discussions of the
> issue from various angles, typically very thoughtful and some quite
> in-depth are: Hockett 1963, Lass 1984, Simpson 1999, Hyman 2007, 2008,
> 2017, Dresher 2009, van der Hulst 2017, Kiparksy 2018.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Erich
>
>
>
> Corbett, Greville G. 2005. “The Canonical Approach in Typology.” In *Linguistic
> Diversity and Language Theories*, edited by Zygmunt Frajzyngier, Adam
> Hodges, and David S Rood, 25–49. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
>
> Dresher, B. Elan. 2009. *The Contrastive Hierarchy in Phonology*.
> Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
>
> Gordon, Matthew K. 2016. *Phonological Typology*. Oxford University Press.
>
> Hockett, Charles F. 1963. “The Problem of Universals in Language.” In *Universals
> of Language*, edited by Joseph Greenberg, 1–29.
>
> Hyman, Larry. 2006. “Word-Prosodic Typology.” *Phonology* 23: 225–57.
>
> Hyman, Larry M. 2007. “Where’s Phonology in Typology?” *Linguistic
> Typology* 11: 265–71.
>
> Hyman, Larry M. 2008. “Universals in Phonology.” *The Linguistic Review*
> 25: 83–137.
>
> Hyman, Larry M. 2017. “What (Else) Depends on Phonology?” In *Dependencies
> in Language*, edited by Nicholas Enfield, 141–58.
>
> Kiparsky, Paul. 2018. “Formal and Empirical Issues in Phonological
> Typology.” In *Phonological Typology*, edited by Larry M. Hyman and Frans
> Plank, 54–106. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
>
> Kuznetsova, Natalia. 2019. What Danish and Estonian can show to a modern
> word-prosodic typology. In Goedemans, R., Heinz, J., & van der Hulst, H.
> (Eds.). The study of word stress and accent: Theories, methods and data.
> CUP.
>
> Kwon, Nahyun, and Erich R. Round. 2015. “Phonaesthemes in Morphological
> Theory.” *Morphology* 25 (1): 1–27.
>
> Lass, Roger. 1984. “Vowel System Universals and Typology: Prologue to
> Theory.” *Phonology Yearbook* 1: 75–111.
>
> Parncutt, Amy. 2015. “Towards a Phonological Typology of Reduplication in
> Australian Languages.” Honours Thesis, University of Queensland.
>
> Round, Erich R. 2017. “Review of Gordon, Matthew K. Phonological Typology,
> OUP 2016.” *Folia Linguistica* 51 (3): 745–55.
>
> Round, Erich R. 2019. “Australian Phonemic Inventories Contributed to
> PHOIBLE 2.0: Essential Explanatory Notes.”
> https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3464333.
>
> Round, Erich R. forthcoming 2021. “Phonotactics.” In *Oxford Guide to
> Australian Languages*, edited by Claire Bowern. Oxford: Oxford University
> Press. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.23022.13120
>
> Round, Erich R., and Greville G. Corbett. 2020. “Comparability and
> Measurement in Typological Science: The Bright Future for Linguistics.” *Linguistic
> Typology* 24 (3): 489–525.
>
> Simpson, Adrian P. 1999. “Fundamental Problems in Comparative Phonetics
> and Phonology: Does UPSID Help to Solve Them.” In *Proceedings of the
> 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences*, 1:349–52. Berkeley:
> University of California.
>
> Van der Hulst, Harry. 2017. “Phonological Typology.” In *The Cambridge
> Handbook of Linguistic Typology*, edited by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and
> Robert MW Dixon, 39–77. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
>
>
>
>
>
> *From: *Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of TALLMAN Adam
> <Adam.TALLMAN at cnrs.fr> <Adam.TALLMAN at cnrs.fr>
> *Date: *Thursday, 4 February 2021 at 9:20 pm
> *To: *VAN DE VELDE Mark <Mark.VANDEVELDE at cnrs.fr>
> <Mark.VANDEVELDE at cnrs.fr>, "lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org"
> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Subject: *Re: [Lingtyp] papers on non-uniqueness in tone and stress
>
>
>
> Thanks, yes, I've read this paper.
>
>
>
> Adam
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin)
>
> ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant
> CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596)
> Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, Lyon (07)
>
> Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867
> ------------------------------
>
> *De :* Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] de la part de
> Mark Van de Velde [mark.vandevelde at cnrs.fr]
> *Envoyé :* jeudi 4 février 2021 11:57
> *À :* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> *Objet :* Re: [Lingtyp] papers on non-uniqueness in tone and stress
>
> Dear Adam:
>
> I can recommend Hyman (2012).
>
> All the best,
>
> Mark
>
> Hyman, Larry M. 2012. In defense of prosodic typology: A response to
> Beckman and Venditti. *Linguistic Typology*. De Gruyter Mouton 16(3).
> 341–385. https://doi.org/10.1515/lity-2012-0014.
>
>
>
>
>
> On 04/02/2021 11:12, TALLMAN Adam wrote:
>
> Hello all,
>
>
>
> I'm looking for papers on the notion of non-uniqueness in phonology (or
> morphosyntax if applicable). I have three so far (Chao, Hockett, and
> Schane).
>
>
>
> I'm particularly interesting in non-uniqueness in the domain of the
> description of suprasegmentals - like when we have a system that seems to
> mix tone and (other types of) prominence whether the system should be
> described as tonal with a stress mapped to it or vice versa. Phonologists
> discuss the issue as if there is an obvious unique best way of describing
> such relations in all cases. But I think that's probably false and it
> choosing one over the other just amounts to an expositional decision - some
> of the discussion in Tallman and Elias-Ulloa (2020) point in this
> direction in Chácobo.
>
>
>
> There's also the related issue of *when* the acoustic correlates of some
> phonological category are organized in such a way as to genuinely merit the
> designation "tone". Phonologists seem to assume that this issue is trivial
> or obvious - again, I think this is probably false (the notion is more open
> ended than is recognized) regardless of the phonological evidence that can
> be rallied in support of one position or another.
>
>
>
> @Article{chao:1934:phonemes,
> title = {The non-uniqueness of phonemic solutions of phonetic systems},
> author = {Yuen Ren Chao},
> journal = {Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology,
> Academia Sinica},
> year = {1934},
> volume = {4},
> number = {},
> pages = {363-397},
> %doi = {},
> %urldate = {},
> }
>
>
>
> @incollection{hockett:1963:universals,
> Author = {Charles F. Hockett},
> Booktitle = {Universals of language (Volume 2)},
> Editor = {Joseph H. Greenberg},
> Pages = {1-29},
> Publisher = {MIT Press},
> Address = {Cambridge, MA},
> Title = {The problem of universals in language},
> Year = {1963},
> Edition = {}}
>
>
>
> @Article{schane:1968:nonuniqueness,
> title = {On the non-uniqueness of phonological representations},
> author = {Sanford A. Schane},
> journal = {Language},
> year = {1968},
> volume = {44},
> number = {4},
> pages = {363-397},
> %doi = {},
> %urldate = {},
> }
>
>
>
> @Article{tallman:eliasulloa:2020:acoustics,
> title = {The acoustic correlates of stress and tone in Chácobo (Pano)},
> author = {Adam J.R. Tallman},
> journal = {The acoustic correlates of stress and tone in Chácobo
> (Pano): A production study},
> editor = {Adam J.R. Tallman and José Élias-Ulloa},
> year = {2020},
> volume = {147},
> number = {4},
> pages = {3028},
> doi = {https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0001014},
> %urldate = {2019-07-04},
> }
>
>
>
> Adam
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin)
>
> ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant
> CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596)
> Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, Lyon (07)
>
> Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
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>
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>
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>
> --
>
> [image: Image removed by sender. LLACAN]
>
> Mark Van de Velde
> Directeur du LLACAN (CNRS-INaLCO)
> mark.vandevelde.cnrs.fr
> bantu.cnrs.fr
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
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>
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>
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>
>
>
> --
>
> Martin Haspelmath
>
> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
>
> Deutscher Platz 6
>
> D-04103 Leipzig
>
> https://www.shh.mpg.de/employees/42385/25522
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
>
> --
> Martin Haspelmath
> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
> Deutscher Platz 6
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--
Adam J.R. Tallman
PhD, University of Texas at Austin
Investigador del Museo de Etnografía y Folklore, la Paz
ELDP -- Postdoctorante
CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596)
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