[Lingtyp] retrolative

[Christian Lehmann]

Dear all,

many thanks for your helpful comments and examples. What has accumulated 
so far may be summarized thus:

The round trip is one of those concepts which appear as a grammatical 
category – here: the retrolative – in some languages, but are processed 
at other levels in other languages. Considering that contributors to the 
discussion command data of languages of the five continents, one may 
preliminarily conclude that the concept is primarily coded in verbal 
grammar. No example has yet appeared of the retrolative as a case 
relator (specifically, an adposition). Also, there are more data of 
transitive than of intransitive verbs in round-trip constructions. Which 
may have a plausible extralinguistic explanation.

As long as research using such a comparative concept produces useful 
results, there is no reason to discard it on the basis that comparative 
concepts lack a sufficient methodological foundation. A constructive 
reaction to the situation would rather be to sharpen this foundation so 
that it becomes both theoretically sound and empirically applicable.

As for terminology, concepts like ‘ablative’, ‘perlative’ etc. and their 
respective terms have been well-established in linguistics for many 
centuries (some of them for more than two millennia) and across several 
descriptive branches like Romance or Finno-Ugric linguistics. Whenever 
one is dealing with a concept coupled with such a term, one uses this 
term instead of inventing a new one. This avoids terminological 
proliferation and confusion. Likewise, if one is dealing with a concept 
which as yet lacks an established term but fits into an established 
paradigm, one forms a term which fits this paradigm instead of coining a 
term unrelated to the pattern. While this is good practice in all 
disciplines, it is especially important in linguistics as we have to 
distinguish conceptually and terminologically between notions available 
in human cognition and communication (like round trip) and grammatical 
categories (like retrolative).

Unless this is too optimistic, we are moving into an age of more 
cooperation in scientific research. Sometimes a discussion on the 
LingTyp list is so fruitful that someone might integrate its results 
into a paper on the respective topic. Provenience of every piece might 
be indicated like this: ‘N.N., lingtyp list, 07/08/2024’. In my 
understanding, this would both suffice as an acknowledgement of original 
authorship and satisfy standards for an academic reference. 
(Incidentally, this does not relate to any current plans of mine.)

Best to everybody,

Christian


-- 

Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
Rudolfstr. 4
99092 Erfurt
Deutschland

Tel.: 	+49/361/2113417
E-Post: 	christianw_lehmann at arcor.de
Web: 	https://www.christianlehmann.eu
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