[Lingtyp] Optional determination?

Mon Sep 2 13:21:02 UTC 2024

I think the negative remark on finiteness is also misplaced. See the progress in Irina Nikolaeva’s fine paper “Unpacking finiteness” (2013, in Canonical morphology and syntax).
Very best, Grev

On 2 Sep 2024, at 13:34, Martin Haspelmath via Lingtyp <LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:

I certainly didn't want to "argue that determination is uninteresting and not worthy of attention" – all I said was that we don't know how to identify it cross-linguistically. Of course these phenomena are on our agenda!

The "finiteness/determination" parallels are indeed intriguing, and it is understandable that generative grammarians have often tried to systematize them, e.g. by drawing parallels between DP and TP, between KP and CP, and so on. (Parallels have also been noted in other traditions, of course, e.g. in Functional Grammar by Rijkhoff.)

But it's also well-known that "finiteness" is not identifiable across languages using uniform criteria (see e.g. Cristofaro 2007; Nikolaeva 2010), and this experience may be reason to be cautious when it comes to "determination".

Now what about "weak determiners" and "strong determiners"? I wasn't very familiar with this distinction, but I found the following in a 2014 lecture handout by Barbara Partee (
https://people.umass.edu/partee/HSE_Web_14/materials/HSE144.pdf):

Weak determiners: Determiners that can occur "normally" in existential sentences (Milsark 1977): a, some, one, two, three, …, at most/at least/exactly/more than/nearly/only one, two, three, …, many, how many, a few, several, no

Strong determiners: Determiners which cannot "normally" occur in existential sentences: every, each, the, all, most, both, neither, which of the two, all but two

These lists of forms, as well as the criterion (occurrence in Existential Clauses) are English-specific, so it's unclear how these notions could form the basis of a general approach to "determination". Outside of formal semantics, forms meaning 'many' or 'all' are generally regarded as quantifiers, not as determiners.

Jürgen Bohnemeyer also mentions "clitic possessive pronouns", but these are not generally treated as determiners either (except in English, the Bloomfieldian tradition).

So it seems that we need more terminological clarity in order to avoid talking past each other.

Best,

Martin

On 01.09.24 16:18, Juergen Bohnemeyer wrote:
Dear all – As I said before, languages vary in where they draw the line between weak and strong determiners. Weak ones are those that combine with other determiners, including strong determiners, whereas strong determiners combine only with weak ones. For example, Italian and Yucatec treat clitic possessive pronouns as weak determiners, whereas possessive pronouns are strong in most Germanic and Romance languages afaik.

Martin seems to claim that in most languages (in fact, he seems to imply that it may be all languages save English), there is no distinction between weak and strong determiners, i.e., all determiners are weak.

And here I am, not being aware of even a single example of such a language. Please release me from my ignorance, those who have the facts, whatever they may be.

Lastly, Martin seems to want to argue that determination is uninteresting as a phenomenon and not worthy of the attention of typologists. Apologies if I’m overstating. But, fwiw., it seems to me that such questions of interest are matters of personal taste and it isn’t obvious to me what their role in scientific discourse should be.

To me, the parallels between determination in the nominal domain and finiteness in the verbal domain have long been intriguing. In both cases, some languages have grammaticalized a rather robust contrast, others a more porose one, and yet others none at all. As long as we have no explanation for why this is, nor even a precise mapping of the relevant distributions, it seems to me that these phenomena are by necessity on the typological agenda, whether some of us like it or not.

Best – Juergen

Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
Professor, Department of Linguistics
University at Buffalo

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From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Martin Haspelmath via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Sunday, September 1, 2024 at 01:35
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Optional determination?

It seems to me that "determiner" in Bloomfield's (1933) sense (where it basically referred to articles and demonstratives) and "determination" in the sense of semantics are two rather different things.

Many semanticists seem to think that one needs a syntactic determiner to turn a nominal expression into a referential expression, but of course, many languages lack both definite and indefinite articles (Grambank has 1268 languages of this type: https://grambank.clld.org/combinations/GB020_GB021).

Like many other types of grammatical markers, articles are often optional. So I don't really see a basis for distinguishing between "maximal projection" and "non-maximal projection" in general terms. (And the idea that there is a single determiner slot seems to be based on English alone; even languages such as Greek and Spanish allow the cooccurrence of demonstratives and articles.)

Finally, the term "determination" has also been used in a more general sense, for all nominal modifiers, as in Trubetzkoy's "Le rapport entre le determiné, le determinant et le defini" (1939). All this makes it difficult to talk about these phenomena in such a way that we immediately understand what is meant.

Best,

Martin

On 31.08.24 19:57, Juergen Bohnemeyer via Lingtyp wrote:
Thanks again, Christian. So I take your answer to be that optional determination is (i) a thing (i.e., it exists) and (ii) does indeed involve a categorical difference between determined and undetermined phrases, on account of the latter, but not the former, being compatible with determiners. This makes sense to me.

But of course, even languages with obligatory determination distinguish between weak and strong determiners, where only the latter strictly exclude other determiners. So it remains to be seen what kinds of determiners are strictly incompatible with other determiners in languages with optional determination. Maybe Zygmunt’s book has the answer to that question.

Best – Juergen

Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
Professor, Department of Linguistics
University at Buffalo

Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus
Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260
Phone: (716) 645 0127
Fax: (716) 645 3825
Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu<mailto:jb77 at buffalo.edu>
Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/

Office hours Tu/Th 3:30-4:30pm in 642 Baldy or via Zoom (Meeting ID 585 520 2411; Passcode Hoorheh)

There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In
(Leonard Cohen)
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From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Christian Lehmann via Lingtyp <LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG><mailto:LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
Date: Saturday, August 31, 2024 at 11:31
To: LINGTYP LINGTYP <LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG><mailto:LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Optional determination?
Oh, if that is the point, then the answer is quite different:

In many languages, a syntagma consisting of a common noun and a syntagma consisting of a common noun modified by an adjective attribute belong to the same category, viz. 'nominal', which is a category that can be modified by an adjectival attribute.
In most languages, a nominal and a nominal determined by a determiner are different categories because the former, but not the latter can be determined by a determiner.

I hope this fits your point better.
Christian
------------------------------------------

Am 31.08.24 um 16:12 schrieb Juergen Bohnemeyer:
Dear Christian – No, I don’t share the presupposition you mention at all. Rather, there is a specific role of obligatoriness vs. optionality in the particular case of determination: if determination is optional, then it is presumably the case that both determined (i.e., maximal) and non-determined (i.e., non-maximal) noun phrases can express arguments. My question is whether there is then any other known reason to still treat them as belonging to distinct syntactic categories. I hope this makes sense? – Best – Juergen

Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
Professor, Department of Linguistics
University at Buffalo

Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus
Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260
Phone: (716) 645 0127
Fax: (716) 645 3825
Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu<mailto:jb77 at buffalo.edu>
Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/

Office hours Tu/Th 3:30-4:30pm in 642 Baldy or via Zoom (Meeting ID 585 520 2411; Passcode Hoorheh)

There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In
(Leonard Cohen)
--

From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Christian Lehmann via Lingtyp<lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Saturday, August 31, 2024 at 03:57
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org><lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Optional determination?
Dear Jürgen,

before considering your specific question, let me ask about its presupposition: If a process is optional, it seems doubtful to you whether it can be considered a grammatical process.

Now if something is (structurally) obligatory, it is grammatical. The inverse does not hold, because although obligatoriness has been regarded by some as the most important feature of grammaticalization, it is not the only one. Moreover, there are degrees of optionality/obligatoriness (s. Lehmann, Thoughts on grammaticalization).

Thus, the grammatical rules concerning determination may say that determiners are optional in certain contexts, but obligatory in others; that if there is a determiner, it has to go in such and such a syntagmatic position; that determiners are chosen from a small closed paradigm and cannot be combined syntagmatically; etc. Compare, e.g., adjectives, for which there are such rules, too; but they are less strict.

During the documented history from Vulgar Latin to the modern Romance languages, articles have been developping from absent to increasingly obligatory. At which point has determination by articles become "a grammatical process"?

Best, Christian

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