[Lingtyp] Typology: another broken system

[Patrik Austin]

I hope I did not overestimate typologists' communication skills. Let us
expand it a little since everyone should have a good understanding of the
basics of syntax. Please do comment.

As for *the public reply*, though, the following groups of experts are
cordially invited: (1) the editorial board of the Linguistic Typology
journal, including Prof Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm. (2) The WALS team,
including Profs Matthew Dryer and Martin Haspelmath. Now, this is certainly
not a matter of waiting for a coherent reply for just a month as the people
mentioned above might be able to corroborate. Either way, it is coming out
to the public, so if you have any words for this, choose them carefully.

As for a general discussion on this list, everyone, please join in. For an
ice-breaker, there was an answer in the FB typology list to my request for
comments from the top of the hierarchy or anyone:

”*I*
<https://www.facebook.com/groups/168693006493630/user/526364535/?__cft__%5b0%5d=AZWAJbUoqoXrAxe1NhFs-HaFZE7JaZoTCmANhmDFyyT15aNEo8Nu_vVAs4uYJVcczlaxWwkj_EtKRjLXkfClO6IULJErq-ZzcJc958t4drMil_LCLTVIKOs8Ft-mYUUzGTOUR0HPecYK7Ene1RDYc6H7&__tn__=R%5d-R>
sure hope you don’t mean Bickerton, Jakobson, Greenberg or Firbas… For one,
you keep referring to mainstream syntactic typology without defining it. I
can guess what you mean by it, but a) I shouldn’t have to and b) chances
are, there is no such thing. Secondly, I am not even sure what the article
tries to do. You misrepresent Dryer, mix up several different and
incompatible types of word-order typologies (Hungarian in section 2,
reference to transformations in 3.1), appeal to “logic” (“From a purely
logical point…”), misrepresent the history of FSP (though points for
including a reference to Weil) and misuse the words “prediction” and
“algorithm”, talk about some thing called “classical grammar”… In short,
that paper is a mess. And your basic issue now is that the “big guys” have
failed to acknowledge your work. Do I have that right?”

Would this help Lingtyp subscribers to start a discussion addressing issues
from the thread starter?

Thanks,

Patrik


Den tirs. 25. mar. 2025 kl. 14.46 skrev Neil Myler <myler at bu.edu>:

> Your article's been out for a month, mate, and (at least where I am) it's
> the middle of the teaching term.  Cut us some slack.
> It does look interesting, though.  I promise I'll take a look soon.
> Neil
>
> On Tue, Mar 25, 2025 at 9:27 AM Patrik Austin via Lingtyp <
> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:
>
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> I hope you are doing well today. I recently published another article on
>> syntactic universals, and as before, no reply. Let us look at the
>> contents of this paper and the related issues.
>>
>> *1. Introduction* and *2. Universals, the data, and the problem*. This
>> article is about dominance in the transitive clause relating to Greenberg’s
>> universal #1, etc. When syntactic typologists write about it, it is
>> possibly the most important unsolved issue in linguistics. However, when
>> these scholars read my article, it suddenly becomes unclear whether it is
>> an interesting topic in the first place. That being said, we tend to hear
>> next that there is ”no such thing as syntactic typologists”, igniting the
>> discussion of whether or not they exist. The conclusion might be that they
>> do *not* exist in the sense suggested in this article (i.e., when
>> criticized for failures). However, when funding is given, quite a few
>> experts appear.
>>
>> *3. Previous research*. A summary shows that syntactic typology is BS,
>> to put it politely. Quite common names here. This is precisely what social
>> psychology predicts: academia is a status game, and here, syntactic
>> typologists are shown to have the job of making unnecessary complications
>> to a relatively simple issue. There has never been true progress and never
>> will if it is up to the professional group because their collective task is
>> to keep the game going as long as possible. When it is played out, they
>> will focus on another similar game.
>>
>> Notice especially *Figure 3* (rotate view to right), which shows how not
>> just syntactic typology but also Generative Grammar is BS, which everyone
>> of course always knew. But the curious thing is that while these two groups
>> have created a facade of antagonism, we see quite clearly that they are
>> actually collaborating by jointly maintaining a false dichotomy
>> (”functionalism vs formalism”). Here, we see clearly that both are the same
>> BS with only a vague connection to the scientific study of language.
>>
>> *Table 1*: Dryer’s excuses. Since he does not reply, I think everyone is
>> eligible. Please do.
>>
>> 4. *The solution of the transitive distribution*. *4.1 Highlighting: a
>> new typological generalization*. Table 2: a scorecard that correctly
>> predicts the transitive distribution. When discussing this table, the
>> standard reaction is that there is nothing but a scorecard in the whole
>> paper, taking less than half a page in a 30-page article, which seems
>> impossible. To outsiders, though, the question is: is it true? Does this
>> scorecard do what it promises, i.e., mathematically generates the correct
>> pattern? Interestingly, linguists seem totally incapable of answering such
>> a simple question and would rather answer any other question, which they
>> are great experts in.
>>
>> *4.2 A theory for the generalization*, *4.3, 4.4.* The deeper-level
>> explanation is what it says in this section. So, what does it say? I am
>> told there is only a scorecard and no link to scientific theory and
>> empirical research. Is that so?
>>
>> *5. Conclusion*. I suppose the conclusion is the prediction: linguistics
>> is a farce, a status game, a broken system, and people doing it are
>> hostages to the system with little will of their own. It is a sad, pathetic
>> world, and no one can fix it because all participants are economically and
>> emotionally tied to it. If this is not true, then, I will soon see many
>> coherent replies to my article that explain which precise error has been
>> made in the paper or else why it will not be cited even though it provides
>> the seemingly long-awaited solution to this classic problem that so many
>> professionals have very special knowledge of but cannot explain in a way
>> comprehensible to the outside world.
>>
>> Thanks, and trust yourself – you can do it!
>>
>> Reply.
>>
>> Patrik
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>
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