[Lingtyp] Greenbergian word order universals: confirmed after all

[Simon Greenhill]

Colleagues, Martin, everyone else

Thank you for sharing your perspectives on our 2011 paper. It's nice to see this still be discussed more than a decade later. However, I would like to express my concerns and disagreements with some of the points you've raised.

I'm very proud of the Dunn et al. paper for a number of reasons. I'll name three.

First, the paper showed that the overly simplistic correlation methods that had been used to make sweeping global claims were problematic. We need better tools to tackle these questions, and the tools we applied were one part of a better toolkit. 

Second, it highlighted the need to understand language systems in a diachronic manner. We cannot decouple language typology from language history, instead we need to understand how these are entangled.

Third, it emphasised the way that particular configurations of languages can be arrived at via different routes in different families at different times. This enables a much richer understanding of how these particular generalisations have arisen.

Have Jäger and Wähle disproved any of that? no. Maybe these were not completely novel insights (Maslova’s work has been mentioned which touches on a few of these issues too, for example), but these ideas did appear to crystallise in this paper.

While it's certainly important to revisit and reevaluate research findings to ensure accuracy, it is crucial to approach these discussions with an understanding of the scientific process. Scientific paradigms evolve over time, and different studies may yield varying results due to changes in methodologies, data sources, and sample sizes. This doesn't necessarily imply that the initial research was flawed or that the authors were neglectful. In particular, the tools, the data, and our understanding of how languages change are substantially further advanced than they were a decade ago (or, I know that *my* understanding of these things is more advanced now, at least). And these other papers that you mention -- and many other studies -- have built upon the work we did in 2011. 

Furthermore, I would like to caution against drawing overly broad conclusions about the quality of research published in high-prestige journals. The peer-review process in such journals is rigorous, and while they may occasionally feature sensationalist claims, this doesn't diminish the overall value they contribute to the scientific community. For the record, of the handful of papers I've had in these journals *all* have been reviewed by people I would infer to be linguists based on the comments and issues they raised. We did not send these papers to these journals to avoid linguistic reviewers but, frankly, I've had better reviews at these journals than at prominent linguistics journals (and by "better" I mean more rigorous, more thorough, and more critical).

Finally, linguistic typology is an ongoing and evolving field trying to tackle very difficult problems. We need all the tools and approaches we can get to solve these problems across all the levels that languages operate on (from detailed language internal analyses to high-level global analyses). Rather than looking back and gate-keeping what is 'real’ typology published in ‘real’ linguistics journals, we should shift our focus forward. Typology can be a welcoming and diverse community that embraces a wide range of approaches, analyses, and styles. Let's look outward to foster connections with other fields and disciplines. 

After all, why shouldn't linguistic typology work be everywhere in science? it's certainly interesting enough. 

Simon

Dr. Simon J. Greenhill

Associate Professor 

Te Kura Mātauranga Koiora | School of Biological Sciences
Te Whare Wānanga o Tāmaki Makaurau | University of Auckland

Abteilung für Sprach- und Kulturevolution | Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie | Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology