[Lingtyp] Typology: another broken system

Wed Mar 26 10:48:50 UTC 2025

Thank you for asking!

Previous article: the solution to the problem of harmonic correlations
(contra Hawkins):

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03740463.2021.1987685

Notice I had to censor that article to the point that it hardly seems to
have a ’conclusion,’ but the lists and figures are sufficient to
understand. The problem of harmonic correlations was created by
typologists, who made unnecessary complications to the terminology. When I
simplified it to saying that ’connectives’ are oriented towards the
semantic head, the problem vanished. Result: ignored. As an anecdote, my
Department tried to force me either to accept that my model is the same as
Hawkins’s or that I do not have a model in the first place, in exchange for
a PhD (which I don’t need and I told them so).

My second typology article experience was amazing because the Communicator
gave me the green light to ”tell the truth” (sic). So I did, as you can
read, and I was quite sure until the last minute they would not be able to
publish it. When they did, I had to go back and check a few times it had
not been removed (yet).

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03740463.2024.2425512

Obviously, I also have a bunch of rejected manuscripts concerning the
basics of language research.

Cheers,

Patrik

Den ons. 26. mar. 2025 kl. 11.13 skrev Hartmut Haberland <hartmut at ruc.dk>:

> Patrik, could you share the references to your articles with us? Hartmut
>
> Den 26. mar. 2025 kl. 10.29 skrev Patrik Austin via Lingtyp <
> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>:
>
> 
>
> 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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