31.3838, Review: Discourse Analysis; General Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; Semantics: Carling (2019)

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Subject: 31.3838, Review: Discourse Analysis; General Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; Semantics: Carling (2019)

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Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2020 21:37:10
From: Olivier Bondeelle [olivier.bondeelle at gmail.com]
Subject: The Mouton Atlas of Languages and Cultures

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/30/30-4580.html

EDITOR: Gerd  Carling
TITLE: The Mouton Atlas of Languages and Cultures
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2019

REVIEWER: Olivier Bondeelle, Université de Picardie Jules Verne / Universität Bielefeld

(21x30cm, xxxii + 727 pp.) focuses on the changes in time and space of the
languages of the cultural macro-area of Eurasia. It is based on the DiACL
database (Diachronic Atlas of Comparative Linguistics), which can be consulted
online (https://diacl.ht.lu.se/), and which includes 500 languages from 18
families of the macro-areas of Eurasia, the Pacific and the Amazon.

SUMMARY

Chapter 1 (''Introduction'': 1-13) explains the objectives and principles that
guide the volume. It begins by positioning the book within existing research
in the field by explaining that it can be seen as a continuation of research
on the distribution of languages according to typological features (Haspelmath
et al. 2005, Michaelis et al. 2013), and also as a renewal of older studies in
historical and comparative linguistics of Indo-European languages (Buck 1949).
The general objective of the book is to contextualize the linguistic changes
observable in cultural systems in Eurasia, taking into account environment and
usage, in order to uncover the patterns of convergence, divergence, and
advergence of this linguistic area, due to processes of relocation and
inter-linguistic and cultural contacts. This chapter specifies that empirical
grammatical and lexical data are extracted from DiACL, which served as the
basis for the research, and that the results are reproduced on maps and graphs
throughout the volume.

Chapter 2 (“Theoretical backdrop: words, things, and humans in their
environment”: 14-16) provides an overview of the theory and methodology
adopted. It explains that the research makes extensive use of statistical and
quantitative methods. A number of theoretical prerequisites follow: the
uniformitarianism of evolution (historical processes attested in the present
must have taken place in the past, even if not attested: the present reflects
the past); the formulation of hypotheses about the behavior of traits that
must be tested statistically and thus lead to the establishment of models of
linguistic and cultural change, depending on the salience of the factors that
constrain such change. The results are integrated into a two-dimensional
space-time matrix, where the lexicon reflects socio-cultural changes and where
grammar helps to trace the directions of these changes.

Chapter 3 (“Language: classification, reconstruction, and principles of
change”: 17-22) provides a synthesis of models of classification, language
reconstruction and linguistic change. It returns to the two main models, the
tree and the wave, structured by the three principles of convergence,
divergence and advergence. It then explains that the two main methods of
reconstruction, the comparative method and the evolutionary method, are
complementary in that they adopt two different points of view on the
linguistic features that are observed and analyzed. The evolutionary method
tracks the similarity of comparative concepts through the traits’ homoplagy,
whereas the comparative method tracks the sharing of cognates through the
homology of phonemic structures. 

Grammar poses a particular problem for the comparative method in that not all
features of grammar can be considered as cognates (word order for example). A
distinction must therefore be made between paradigmatic features such as
conjugation or gender systems for which reconstruction is fairly satisfactory,
and non-paradigmatic (syntactic) features which give rise to more discussion.
The evolutionary method now makes extensive use of typological traits to
establish models of linguistic change. But there are also debates about
whether grammatical structures are valid instruments for language evolution.

For the lexicon, reconstruction and evolution are conditioned in this work by
colexification (lexicalization of more than one concept by the same form), and
by semantic changes (metaphor, metonymy, substitution). While the direction
and regularity of semantic changes are highly disputed issues in the
literature, they are nevertheless important metrics for measuring the salience
of socio-cultural and environmental concepts.

Chapter 4 (“Description of the database Diachronic Atlas of Comparative
Linguistics”: 23-26) describes the infrastructure of the comparative database
on which the work is based. It explains that DiACL conforms to the principles
of research: the constitution of data sets is established by a selection of
features that can be used in synchrony and diachrony, using computational
methods at different levels. For each language, metadata includes its
extensions in time and space, and its level of documentation. The language
table is linked to three other tables: the language tree table, which defines
the position of languages in relation to one another, the macro-areas table,
which defines geographical positions, and the geographical presence table,
which establishes the presence of a language through focal points or polygons
on maps.

Chapter 5 (''Grammar'': 27-178) examines datasets in four typologically
important areas: nominal morphology, verbal morphology, word order, and
alignment (the marking of subject, object, and agent). The results are
analyzed in section 5.7 and discussed in section 5.8, with the objective of
providing information on the history of the macro-area and on language
contacts. The analysis is initially synchronic and is independent of
phylogenetic relationships, making it possible to visualize clusters of
languages in space according to the distribution of grammatical features. The
analysis then adopts a diachronic perspective, proposing a model of a
reconstruction of the evolution according to a model based on the statistical
probability of the presence or absence of a morphosyntactic trait at a
specific level of a phylogenetic tree.

The results show that Proto-Indo-European is in agreement with the canonical
model applied since the reconstructions of the neogrammarians of the 19th
century: a nominative-accusative, highly synthetic system. But this
three-gender system (masculine / feminine / neutral) goes against the
traditional view of the two-gender system (animate masculine / inanimate
neutral). Moreover, the initial head also seems to be confirmed in
Proto-Indo-European (Noun-Adposition, Possessive-Noun or Adjective-Noun), with
a high probability of the Subject-Object-Verb order in the main and
subordinate clauses. But here again, the high probability of the Noun-Relative
Clause order goes against the implication that a Verb-Object language has the
Relative Clause-Noun order (Greenberg 1963).

Section 5.8 discusses the results. It identifies five types of grammatical
zones (dispersal, accretion, historical development, conservation, boundaries
or hybrids) that explain 10 language clusters (Medieval Germanic, Central
Indo-Iranian / West Iranian, Basque / Caucasian, Greek, Ancient Indo-European,
Goidelic, Central Asian, Scandinavian, Romance, Slavic) and 7 hybrid areas
(Medieval Northwest Germanic, Brythonic, Uralic, Balkan, Northeast Caucasian,
Iranian, Insular Indo-Aryan). The western clusters are more homogeneous than
those in the east, which are more difficult to interpret, mainly due to gaps
in data: they do not follow tree sub-branches in language families (unlike the
west). The Basque / Caucasian cluster should be mentioned. The results
contradict the notion of the accretion zone as an area of high diversity
according to Nichols 1992. Rather, the results here illustrate an ancient
stable zone that prevails over the dispersal zone for Indo-European, Uralic
and Turkic. As far as ancient Indo-European is concerned, the results show
surprisingly little indication of the division of most languages into other
clusters, which argues for considering this zone rather as one of historical
development. This interpretation is reinforced by the distribution over time
of gains and losses of the traits examined. The peaks coincide with the major
migrations and dispersions of most branches of Indo-European (Chalcolitic 4th
millennium BCE, Late Age Bronze 2nd millennium BCE, end of the Iron Age 1st
millennium BCE, Migration period 5th-8th ACE).

How should we interpret the fact that the ancient Indo-European cluster tends
to cluster with eastern rather than western languages? This question has
consequences for the discussion about the homeland of Indo-Europeans and the
chronological evolution. But what should be noted is that the east represents
a conservation area.

Chapter 6 (''Atlas: lexicon'': 179-377) explores the comparative lexical
database of cognates that constitutes the lexical module of DiACL, where
lexical concepts refer mainly to the modes of subsistence of populations
(hunting, agriculture, natural environment). They were extracted from DiACL in
the form of hierarchical taxonomies whose categories represent innovations
during the two Neolithic revolutions (agriculture and technology). Numerous
subdivisions are made among the list of the 100 main concepts (see Tables 34
p. 188 and 35 p. 190-191). For example, the main category of hunting and
capture is subdivided into game, predatory animals and predatory birds.

The objective is to retrace the various paths of these concepts by examining
three aspects of lexical change: the potential borrowings of this or that
concept, the productivity of cognates for this or that concept, and lastly the
regularity of the semantic changes corresponding to the concepts examined.

The results are presented by different visualizations: geographical maps for
the concepts and the corresponding cognates, graphs of semantic changes,
statistical graphs of the rates of borrowing and semantic instability. One map
(37b pp. 376-377) recapitulates borrowing flows throughout Eurasia, and five
graphs give an overview of the statistical tests carried out on the main
categories of the concepts examined (see Appendix 3c).

The results are discussed in Section 6.13. The authors identify three types of
lexical concepts according to the stability of cognates, borrowing rate and
semantic stability. The first type, considered to group the most salient
concepts, is characterized by a high stability of cognates, a low rate of
borrowing, and a high semantic stability: these are products (honey, wax,
mead, milk, salt, wool) and different trees (elm, ash, birch), but also verbs
denoting cultural activities (sowing, planting, weaving), domestic animals
(dog, cat) and names of seasons (summer, autumn, winter, spring). The second
type is characterized by a low stability of cognates, a low rate of borrowing,
and a strong semantic instability. It includes most domestic animals (pig,
cow, ox, horse), metals (iron, copper, silver, gold, bronze), crops (wheat,
oats, barley, rye, grain), the words of ploughing and those of predatory birds
(eagle, hawk, crow). The third type is characterized by a high rate of
borrowing and high semantic instability. It groups together wild animals
including predators (lion, lynx, panther), game (deer, wild boar, bison) as
well as the products of hunting (fur, fat, meat).

Maps show that the center of Western Europe is an area of intense borrowing
dominated by Latin and Greek, then by Proto-Germanic and Proto-Balto-Slavic.
The northern and western peripheries of Europe are less prominent in terms of
source languages, while the eastern part is relatively isolated from the west
(few arrows connect them) and more connected to the south and far east. West
Asia and Anatolia have had contact, but this aspect suffers from the lack of
data on Semitic languages here.

Chapter 7 (''Concluding chapter: an integrated view of the linguistic and
cultural histories of Eurasia'': 378-386) analyzes the results of the two
previous chapters. It recalls that this atlas selected 35 grammatical features
(120 variants) and 100 lexical concepts that were considered important in
Eurasia. 

The lexicon reveals the following facts. At the level of methodology, the
metrics used make it possible to distribute the lexical concepts into four
classes, which themselves belong to the two opposite fields of nature and
culture. The lexical concepts that make up the domain of culture refer to
domestic space (what is eaten, drunk and manufactured on a daily basis,
domestic animals and small livestock); outdoor activities (agriculture, animal
husbandry) and farming; technology and materials used for manufactured
products (artefacts, wood, stone). The concepts that make up nature refer to
the animate (game or predators), but also to the inanimate (metals, seasons,
trees). The organization of these four classes is interpreted by the authors
as an interior / exterior structure (fig. 58 p. 383) with inside: the clan,
the habitat, women and children; and outside: the farming activities of the
men who tame nature. At its opposite is the domain of nature.

By gathering grammatical and lexical data, a number of areas characterized by
specific behaviors in terms of changes and mutual contacts can be identified
(map 58 p. 385). The strongest trend is a cleavage between east and west. The
Central Asian migration zone (Map 58, Zone 1) extends from Mongolia to Eastern
Europe and the Caucasus, first affected by the dispersal of Indo-Iranian in
contact with the Uralic to the north, and then by the impact of Turkic and
Arabic (Map 57). The South Asian Development Zone (Zone 2 Map 58) contains
many Indo-European languages in the data, which are characterized by deviant
patterns in vocabulary and grammar (Map 27). The West Asian contact zone (3
map 58) is characterized by very old written sources and intense contacts
between very diverse languages and populations. The Caucasian accretion zone
(4 map 58) is located between the Black and Caspian Seas and includes very
diverse and independent non-migratory languages, with Turkic playing the role
of contact with the West Asian and then Central Asian zone (map 57). In
comparison, the Eastern European periphery (5 map 58) has little diversity and
a tendency to diverge between West and East, as well as a certain
conservatism. This is why this area is referred to as the periphery
(borrowings are more towards this area than from it, map 57). The
south-central European development zone (6 map 58) maintains intense contacts
and much borrowing, especially from south to north. The Northern European
periphery (7 map 58) includes local conservation areas and has a general
tendency to borrow rather than to be the source of borrowing. Finally, the
Atlantic periphery (8) borrows heavily from the south-central development zone
and contains the Basque accretion zone.

After a bibliography (387-399), the 322-page appendices list in alphabetical
order the languages of the book (Appendix 1: 401-404), the grammar data (2a:
the list of traits: 405-410, 2b: state combinations: 411-413, 2c: state
combinations in the languages: 414-425, 2d: solutions by structure : 426-429),
lexical data (3a: the list of concepts: 430-432, 3b: lexical data: 433-694,
3c: statistics: 695-702, 3d: data sources: 703-704), sources (4a: language
consultants: 705-706, 4b: literature sources: 707-718, 4c: geographical
sources: 719-722). The book is completed by credits for maps and three indexes
(by subject: 723-726, by authors and resources: 726, by languages: 726-727).
The general presentation of the work (v-xxxii: preface; list of contributors;
set of conventions; listing of tables, maps and graphs; table of contents) is
given at the outset.

EVALUATION

The publication of this book is important because the volume breaks new ground
in the field of linguistic change by contextualizing languages in their
spatial (geographical) and temporal (historical) environment. It exploits the
most advanced resources in the typology of languages and societies (Murdock
1967, 1981), through large databases covering an impressive set of languages
and territories, offering an extensive and innovative set of visual analysis
tools (maps, polygons, networks) extracted from an online searchable database.
It is also important to stress the benefits of consulting DiACL in open
access, which is very user-friendly and allows each trait and each language to
be individually queried for more focused studies.

The imbalance of the chapters is quite consistent with the work insofar as not
each of the fields explored requires the same tools and the same
presentations. The scope of Chapter 6, which deals with the lexicon, is all
the more understandable if we bear in mind that it is based on graphs that
require graphic space for consultation. Similarly, the mass of data
undoubtedly required the lists and tables included in the appendices to which
the reader can refer at any time. Nevertheless, one may wonder whether it
would not have been more economical to link them to the online database. Yet
the chapters complement each other remarkably well. Chapter 5 on grammar
offers a fairly clear and detailed areal view of the similarities between
languages or groups of languages according to their families and contacts, and
Chapter 6 on the lexicon enriches it with a socio-cultural history that bears
the traces of contacts prolonged by shared semantic changes or by the
geographical distribution of cognates. The areas of contact appear precisely
thanks to this conjugation.

The quantitative method adopted by the authors of the book is unquestionably
one of the strong points of the research. It first of all confirms the results
of previous research, some of which are old since they were based on
comparative grammar for proto-Indo-European. It also produces significant new
results to reconstruct the gender system and the word order system in
proto-Indo-European. It makes a significant contribution to the much-disputed
question of the Indo-European homeland: the different areas of dispersion and
development highlighted by this vast survey give credit to a multi-areal
approach to Indo-European, which helps to move the debate forward.

For the lexicon, the measurement of the stability of semantic changes,
cognates and the rate of borrowing undoubtedly presents very interesting
models of linguistic changes in this macro-area, and provides an overall
vision of a remarkably cohesive Eurasia.

However, some of the analyses proposed in this book to explain these processes
would nevertheless merit discussion, and perhaps confrontation with other
points of view. The sketch of the general profile of the Eurasian cultural
area is significant in this respect. The analysis of the book traces a
two-dimensional space for the Eurasian cultural area in which the vocabulary
of artefacts is the meeting point of the two opposite dimensions of nature and
culture. The authors explain this by the need to tame nature through
technology. In response, it can be said that the nature / culture opposition
emerges quite naturally from the lexical concepts selected by the authors, who
themselves state that social concepts such as kinship structures or marriage
were not taken into account, whereas they could have given a different view of
the cultural area (see 6.2. and Appendix 3b). It is nevertheless true that the
nature / culture opposition is a good heuristic in anthropology to show the
differences and variations between cultural macro-areas (Descola 2013). But it
is presented here in a way that is probably too general to characterize the
very ancient culture of Eurasia. It would therefore be interesting to examine
the organization of lexical concepts in other cultural areas and to compare it
with that of Eurasia, which is possible thanks to the wide coverage of DiACL.
Subsequent editions of comparable volumes on the Amazon and Pacific areas
would be welcome.

The aim of the whole undertaking presented in the book is very ambitious not
only in terms of the spatial and temporal scope of the subject under study,
but also and above all in terms of the dynamic perspective adopted on the
processes of linguistic change. As such, the notions of migratory /
non-migratory languages can be useful in explaining differences in language
change in Eurasia. The lexicon here offers an interesting example.

Caucasian languages (non-migratory languages) illustrate a strong tendency
towards shared cognates, whereas semantic changes are more frequent in the
Indo-European family (migratory languages). The type of semantic change itself
differs. There are more metaphors in migratory languages and more metonymy in
non-migratory languages. This could be explained by the relocation of
populations of migratory languages that have had to adapt to their
environment. Explanations for grammar remain more difficult to formulate. This
work clearly shows that the properties of morphosyntax are more genetic, less
areal than those of syntax, and less sensitive to changes because they are
less frequent. But the authors acknowledge (p. 379) that the processes that
lead to these results remain obscure.

While the book finally gives a clear and precise idea of the environmental
context of linguistic macro-area and prolonged contacts in Eurasia, it has not
managed to formulate precise hypotheses about the processes that constrain
patterns of linguistic change. For grammar, the authors stick to internal
arguments of linguistic systems according to the principle of Occam's razor
that would favor change (economy and frequency), although this is not really
justified by the authors. For the lexicon, the salience, functionality and
accessibility of concepts are invoked without the need for cultural change
being demonstrated or the chain of causality being made explicit. This remains
insufficient to trace the evolution of a linguistic area in its socio-cultural
context (Nettle 1999, Testart 2013, 2012). It is also significant that the
authors repeatedly use the word classification in contexts where the subject
is clearly evolution (Chapter 3). However, this remark should be qualified: it
is addressed to DiACL users, for whom it constitutes a research horizon,
rather than to the authors of this impressive work.

In conclusion, the mass of structured data in the DiACL database constitutes a
solid set of resources for researchers (linguists, anthropologists,
specialists in human cognition) working on grammar, lexicon or more generally
on the cultural area of Eurasia. It presents a strong potential for advanced
research with fine analysis on contact areas. The multiple associated visual
tools make this book valuable pedagogical material for teachers of language
and social sciences.

REFERENCES

Buck C.D. (1949). A dictionary of selected synonyms in the principal
Indo–European languages: a contribution to the history of ideas. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.

Descola P. (2013 [fr. 2005]). Beyond Nature and Culture. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.

Greenberg J. H. (1963). “Some universals of grammar with particular reference
to the order of meaningful elements”.  Universals of Grammar, pp. 73-113.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Haspelmath M., M. S. Dryer, D. Gil & B. Comrie (eds. 2005). The World Atlas of
Language Structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Michaelis S. M, P. Maurer, M. Haspelmath & M. Huber (eds. 2013). The Atlas of
Pidgin and Creole Language Structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Murdock G. P. (1967). Ethnographic Atlas: A Summary. Pittsburgh: The
University of Pittsburgh Press.

Murdock G. P. (1981). Atlas of World Cultures. Pittsburgh: The University of
Pittsburgh Press.

Nettle D. (1999). Linguistic diversity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nichols, J. (1992). Language diversity in space and time. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.

Testart A. (2013). “Reconstructing Social and Cultural Evolution: The Case of
Dowry in the Indo-European Area. Current Anthropology 53: 23-50.

Testart A. (2012). Avant l'histoire : l'évolution des sociétés, de Lascaux à
Carnac [Prior to History: The Evolution of Societies, from Lascaux to Karnak].
Paris : Gallimard.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

In my published thesis (freely available on my webpage), I proposed a unified
treatment of different lexical and grammatical meaning relationships
(polysemy, conversion, derivation, alternation, phraseology). This offers a
better understanding of the structure of the lexicon as a whole. The language
studied was Wolof, an Atlantic Niger-Congo language and an important lingua
franca in Senegambia, a region of West Africa. Since then, I have been working
on other languages of the same linguistic area (Atlantic: Jóola, Manding:
Mandinka, Creole: Casamance), in order to better understand the dynamics of
semantic change in space and time within a particularly cohesive
socio-cultural area.





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