[Lingtyp] ***** SPAM 5.2 ***** Re: Universal constraints on lexicalisation

[Juergen Bohnemeyer]

Dear all – This is presumably obvious to everybody, but the reason protein is lexicalized/lexified as ‘egg white’ in many languages is because one of the first proteins that chemists were able to isolate (in the 18th century, I think) was albumin from egg whites, if I remember my high school chemistry class.

Semantically, this seems like an unremarkable example of metonymy to me. The other example Hartmut mentioned, Schlag+sahne beat+cream ‘whipping cream’/‘whipped cream’, is trickier. The first question that comes to my mind is whether that’s polysemy at all, or rather underspecified. I’m leaning toward the latter view, because to me, the following is straightforwardly anomalous:


(1)          #Das ist keine Schlagsahne, das ist geschlagene Sahne.

‘That’s not whipping cream, that’s whipped cream’

Note that the English translation is perfectly fine, but the German original is weird. This is the polysemy test Cruse (1985) calls the ‘maximization’ test. I call it the ‘discrete deniability’ test in my forthcoming book on semantic research methods.

In any event, I don’t think these are examples of enantiosemy.

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> on behalf of Edith A Moravcsik via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Monday, February 3, 2025 at 10:10
To: Zygmunt Frajzyngier <zygmunt.frajzyngier at colorado.edu>, Maria Tamm <tamm at ling.su.se>, Hartmut Haberland <hartmut at ruc.dk>
Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Universal constraints on lexicalisation
In Hungarian, too, the words for eggwhite and protein are the same. The word is fehérje - literally 'its white'.

Edith Moravcsik



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From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Hartmut Haberland via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 2, 2025 3:11 PM
To: Zygmunt Frajzyngier <zygmunt.frajzyngier at colorado.edu>; Maria Tamm <tamm at ling.su.se>
Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Universal constraints on lexicalisation


Another curious colexification in most forms of Standard German is Eiweiß meaning both protein and eggwhite. In some regional variants two distinct words exist, Eiweiß for protein and Weißei for white of egg, possibly due to contact with Polish, Czech and possibly Yiddish which all make a similar distinction.



Fra: Hartmut Haberland <hartmut at ruc.dk>
Sendt: 2. februar 2025 09:31
Til: Zygmunt Frajzyngier <zygmunt.frajzyngier at colorado.edu>; Maria Tamm <tamm at ling.su.se>
Cc: Östen Dahl <oesten at ling.su.se>; lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Universal constraints on lexicalisation



Some interesting colexifications:

Greek νύφη both sister- and daughter-in-law.

German Schlagsahne both whipped cream and whipping cream (Danish flødeskum and piskefløde, resp.)

German Tante and English aunt are both father’s sister, mother’s sister, wife of father’s brother and wife of mother’s brother, where Danish has faster, moster and (for the last two, but occasionally also loosely for all four) tante. German Tante can be used in at least two more, increasingly loose senses (female good friend of the parents, any unrelated female of the parents generation), but with some syntactic restrictions (*meine Tante).

I am not sure if νύφη really is a colexification comparable to Schlagsahne, and not rather means ‘in-law of same or immediately younger generation’.



Den 1. feb. 2025 kl. 17.39 skrev Zygmunt Frajzyngier via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>>:



Dear all,

In support of Östen’s note.

In several Chadic languages the same lexical item denotes entities denoted by English ‘father’ and ‘mother’s brother’.

Zygmunt



From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>> on behalf of Östen Dahl via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>>
Date: Saturday, February 1, 2025 at 9:18 AM
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] Universal constraints on lexicalisation

[External email - use caution]



Dear all,



With regard to the claim that 'father' and 'mother's brother' cannot be colexified, consider the following quotation from the Wikipedia article on "Matrilineality":



"While a mother normally takes care of her own children in all cultures, in some matrilineal cultures an "uncle-father" will take care of his nieces and nephews instead: in other words *social fathers* here are uncles."



That is, fathers and maternal uncles are similar in that they can both play the role of "social fathers"; it is not unthinkable that a language spoken in a society on the borderline between patrilineality and matrilineality will lexify the concept "social father". What this shows is that the criterion of cognitive complexity can lead you in the wrong direction. In fact, kinship terms sometimes unite relationships which are tricky to give a common definition, such as "brother-in-law" in English.



1.      Östen





Från: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>> För Martin Haspelmath via Lingtyp
Skickat: den 1 februari 2025 16:40
Till: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] Universal constraints on lexicalisation



Dear Masha and others,

In addition to "cognitive complexity", one may also consider frequency of use as constraining lexification.

For example, 'female wolf' is not more cognitively complex than 'female horse' (English mare, contrasting with stallion), but gender/sex is less commonly mentioned in connection with wild animals than with domestic animals, so English does not dislexify 'male wolf' and 'female wolf'.

In my 2023 Frontiers paper, I suggested that some important lexification tendencies can be explained with reference to root length possibilities: Roots are typically 1-2 syllables long, so when a meaning is not frequent enough, it needs more syllables and hence multiple morphs:

Haspelmath, Martin. 2023. Coexpression and synexpression patterns across languages: Comparative concepts and possible explanations. Frontiers in Psychology 14. (doi:https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1236853)

(The paper also cites David Gil's 1992 paper.)

Incidentally, it seems that "lexification" is clearer than "lexicalization", because the latter is used in multiple meanings (see my 2024 paper, §7: https://www.peren-revues.fr/lexique/1737).

Best,

Martin



On 01.02.25 12:40, David Gil via Lingtyp wrote:

Hi Masha,



Some examples from the semantic domain of quantification can be found here:



Gil, David (1992) "Scopal Quantifiers: Some Universals of Lexical Effability", in M. Kefer and J. van der Auwera eds., Meaning and Grammar, Cross-Linguistic Perspectives, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 303-345.



Best wishes,



David





On Sat, Feb 1, 2025 at 5:29 PM Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>> wrote:

Dear all,



I am involved in a handbook chapter in which I would like to give a few examples of suggested universal constraints on lexicalisation, e.g., those primarily concerning meanings that should not be expressible in a word (a stem, root or whatever), preferably not from the domain of colour terms. To give an example, Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010) argue that no verb encodes both manner and result simultaneously, which has been contested by Beavers and Koontz-Garbodens.



Or,  a definition of a term covering both ‘father’ and ‘mother’s brother’ would be cognitively very complex since it will require disjunction (‘father’ or ‘mother’s brother’, cf. ‘male relative of one’s patriline’ for ‘father’ and ‘father’s brother’) (Evans 2001) – I don’t know if this constraint still holds.



Many thanks and all the best,

Masha



Prof. Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm
Dept. of linguistics, Stockholm university, 106 91, Stockholm, Sweden
Editor-in-chief of “Linguistic Typology”

President-Elect of Societas Linguistic Europaea
www.ling.su.se/tamm<http://www.ling.su.se/tamm>
tamm at ling.su.se<mailto:tamm at ling.su.se>



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David Gil



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Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution

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