[Lingtyp] How do typologists use examples in grammars?

Tue Jun 1 19:12:16 UTC 2021

Dear Florian and Eline — I don’t disagree with brevity as a default principle, but I want to point out a very important exception to this: 

When an example is supposed to illustrate a semantic or pragmatic property/phenomenon, it is often crucial that the context in which the utterance was observed is made explicit. If that does not happen, the author’s translation becomes the only representation of the semantic/pragmatic property in question, which renders the example essentially useless. I’m pointing this out because I still see it happen far too often. 

Let me illustrate, beginning with an example of the practice I’m criticizing: 

(1) Ts’o’k in=mèet-ik                        le=nah=o’
    TERM A1SG=do:APP-INC(B3SG) DEF=house=D2
    ‘I (will) have/had built the house’

Suppose you want to use (1) to show that this Yucatec utterance is tenseless, i.e., can be used with reference/topic times in the present, past, or future of utterance time. As it is, (1) illustrates this solely through the translation. But the translation wasn’t observed - it’s my interpretation, and I’m not an L1 speaker of the language! My translation is not admissible as evidence of the competence and practices of Yucatec speakers.

So what to do? Well, if I want to be able to claim that (1) can be used with reference/topic times in the present, past, or future of utterance time, then I had first of all better observed it in all of these kinds of contexts. And of course, I have - in elicitation. 

Now, one way to make the context explicit is by paraphrasing it:

(2) [Context for future topic time: Jorge will soon return to his country. He knows
that Pedro wants to build a house. But he doesn’t know whether he will be able to
do it. He sees Pedro in the street and asks him. Pedro responds: ‘When you return
next year, ...]

 Ts’o’k in=mèet-ik                        le=nah=o’
 TERM A1SG=do:APP-INC(B3SG) DEF=house=D2
 ‘I will have built the house’

(3) [Context for past topic time: Jorge had learned that Pedro had built a house. He
asked him whether the house was new. Pedro responded: ‘When you came here
two years ago, ...]

 Ts’o’k in=mèet-ik                        le=nah=o’
 TERM A1SG=do:APP-INC(B3SG) DEF=house=D2
 ‘I had built the house’

(4) [Context for present topic time: Jorge has just arrived in the village of Yaxley. He
has been away for two years. He knew that Pedro wanted to build a house, but he
didn’t know whether he was able to do it. He sees Pedro in the street and asks
him. Pedro responds:]

 Ts’o’k in=mèet-ik                        le=nah=o’
 TERM A1SG=do:APP-INC(B3SG) DEF=house=D2
 ‘I have built the house’

This example is a bit elaborate, and often, the example you want to cite come from recorded texts or spontaneous observation, so there’s only one context per sentence - obviously, observing a single sentence or phrase across a variety of contexts is something that usually only happens in elicitation. 

The second method of making the context explicit is of course to reproduce the context itself in the target language. However, to the extent that information about the nonverbal = situational context matters for the interpretation of an example, a metalanguage description is usually the only option.

To reiterate: I’m not suggesting that we always include the context in our examples. I am, however, suggesting that we always do so when we are attempting to illustrate a semantic or pragmatic property that requires information about the context to as evidence that the utterance in question indeed had the purported meaning. 

This has become standard practice in the semantic literature on lesser studied languages, but it still needs to be adopted more among linguists more broadly.

Best — Juergen 

> On Jun 1, 2021, at 2:35 PM, Florian Matter <florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch> wrote:
> 
> 1. for the purpose of illustrating a particular phenomenon: shorter is better, since the relevant part(s) will form a bigger part of the presented material.
> 2. -
> 3. -
> 4. brevity, as unproblematic glossing as possible
> 5. clearly 5/5 — if they exist!
> 
> Best,
> Florian
> 
> 
> On 1 June 2021 at 19:30:35, Eline Visser (eelienu at pm.me) wrote:
> 
>> Dear typologists,
>> 
>> I’d like to learn more about how you use the examples given in grammars. I have just finished a grammar myself, and will continue to do descriptive work in the future, and this is a topic that fascinates me. I'm especially interested in knowing if one can discern the traits of a good example (for typological use). I’d be glad if some of you could take the time to answer the questions below, either briefly or elaborately. You can email me the answers. Also, if there’s is anything published on this topic please do let me know.
>> 
>> 1. In general, do you prefer short (let’s say <1 line) or longer (> 1 line) examples? Elaborate if you wish.
>> 
>> 2. In general, do you have a preference for examples from a certain genre? Which? You can interpret genre broadly or narrowly, in which ever way you like: monologue, dialogue, anecdotes, recipes, hymns, picture-matching tasks…
>> 
>> 3. In general, do you have a dispreference for examples of a certain genre?
>> 
>> 4. Say you have two examples that illustrate your point equally well. What could be a deciding factor for choosing one over another?
>> 
>> 5. Say you can’t find an example that illustrates your point well. On a scale from 1-5, how likely is it that you will go to the language’s corpus or the attached texts in the grammar to find one yourself? (1= very unlikely, 5 = very likely)
>> 
>> 6. Anything else you’d like to share about examples in grammars? Feel free to rant.
>> 
>> Eline
>> 
>> P.s. For those who ordered a Kalamang grammar hard copy - they’re in Sweden, I’m in Norway, traveling isn’t as easy as I thought yet, so this takes a bit longer than I thought, sorry!
>> 
>> 
>> 
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