[Lingtyp] retrolative

[Nigel Vincent]

Dear Christian,
I very much agree with your last point (which is not to say I disagree with the rest of your message!). I did something like what you suggest in the acknowledgements section of my paper on 'Conative' which began life precisely as a query to the lingtyp list and which in due course was published, at Frans' suggestion, in Linguistic Typology (2013, 17: 269-289).
Best
Nigel


Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE
Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics
The University of Manchester

Linguistics & English Language
School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
The University of Manchester



https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html
________________________________
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Christian Lehmann via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Sent: 09 August 2024 1:22 PM
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] retrolative


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
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