Re: New Methodology on Analysis of Language Change

On Thu, 12 Jan 2006 15:14:36 GMT, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> Thanks for the article -- just as I thought, they don't provide the
> actual data, but they admit it's "typological."
>
> The article is worth the paper it was printed on here.
>
> And, of course, it appears in *Science*.
>
> (I still hope you didn't pay $10 for it.)

And Joe Murphy responded:

No, all free. But this is all new. A couple of days ago, when I first
looked for the article, there was a $10.00 charge for a day-pass to view
it. Today when I looked again, it was available in full. Go figure.

Not only that, I glanced at the "Content" page that is supplied as a
supplement to the article and the 125 "Linguistic Characteristics" that we
used as comparison criteria were listed. All are shown as either/or type
things.

I've listed some examples below to give you a flavor for the factoids
employed and how the inputting seems to have been done The 125
characteristics were broken up under 9 or 10 headings, all of which are
capitalized below. Under each capitalized heading there are numbered
subheadings reflecting the factoids employed and how the weighting was
done. Everything seems to have been inputted on an either/or or yes/no
basis based upon the presence or absence of a given characteristic
in the language analyzed.

I can't tell how the particular Papuan languages selected for analysis
where chosen. Possibly the basis was just their location and the fact that
there was data available on those selected.

Anyway, the following will give you a flavor for how things were done:

A. STRUCTURE OF THE SOUND SYSTEM (11 Factors):

1. Fricatives: 1. No phonemes for which a fricative is the major
realization; 0. One or more fricative phonemes

2. Prenasalized stops: 1. There are one or more stops for which the major
realization is prenasalized; 0. No prenasalized stop phonemes.

B. ORDER OF NP ELEMENTS (4 Factors):

12. Definite or specific articles (i.e. articles whose major purpose is to
mark definiteness and/or specificity): 1. present, 0. absent

13. Indefinite or non-specific articles (i.e. articles whose major purpose
is to mark indefiniteness and/or non-specificity) 1. present O. absent

C. PERSONAL PRONOUNS (4 Factors):

For the purposes of the following, consider all categories of pronoun,
incuding pronominal verbal affixes:

16. Inclusive-exclusive distinction: 1. present (in any pronoun paradigm);
0. absent

17. Pronoun number: 1. number not marked on pronouns; 0 number marked on
pronouns

D. DEMONSTRATIVES (4 Factors)

For this section, consider only pronominal and adjectival, but not
adverbial, demonstratives

20. More than 2 degrees distance DEM: 1. more than two degrees of distance
marked in demonstratives; 0. two or fewer degrees of distance marked.

Systems with terms for 'proximal to speaker', 'proximal to addressee' and
'distal' are counted as two degrees of distance.

21. Non-speaker anchored DEM (speaker-anchored spatial demonstratives are
demonstratives that take as their deictic centre the speaker. By contrast
some demonstratives take not the speaker but the addressee as the deictic
centre, for example a demonstrative might mean 'close to the speaker'; and
some take both speaker and addressee as the deictic centre, e.g. 'far from
speaker and addressee'): 1. one or more spatial demonstratives not
speaker-anchored; 0. no non-speaker-anchored demonstratives.

E. NOUN FORMATION (8 Factors):

24. Number determined declension: By noun declensions is meant e.g. nouns
divided into groups which act differently in terms of morphological marking
Not including place names which can act as bare adjuncts. 1. there are
noun declensions whose membership is (at least partly) determined by the
number of the noun; 0. no noun declensions determined by the number of the
noun.

25. Gender determined declension: 1. there are noun declensions (at least
partly) whose membership is determined by the gender of the noun; 0. no
noun declensions determined by the gender of the noun.

F. NOMINAL CLASSIFICATION (4 Factors):

32. Noun classes/genders: 1. the language has noun classes and/or gender;
0. the language has no noun classes or gender (By noun classes/gender is
meant a system of dividing all or almost all of the nouns of a language
into morphological classes which determine agreement phenomena beyond the
noun itself. Does include gendered 3rd person pronouns, even if this is
the only gender in the language, but does not include clssifiers.

33. Concord beyond NP: 1. elements outside the noun phrase can agree
with the class of a noun; 0. no agreement of class of noun with elements
outside the NP

G. POSSESSION (8 Factors):

36. Possessive classes: 1. there are possessive classes (i.e. different
nouns treated differently in possession according to semantically-based
groupings); 0. no possessive classes

37. Inalienability: 1. distinction between semantic alienable and
inalienable possession is present in the grammar (inalienable possession
interpreted loosely as special grammatical treatment of a class defined by
some of the prototypical targets of inalienable possession e.g. kinship
terms, body parts, part-whole relationships); 0. absent.

H. NUMERALS AND THE COUNTING SYSTEM (3 Factors)

44. Decimal numerals: 1. language has a decimal counting system; 0. no
decimal counting system

45. Quinary numerals: 1. elements of a quinary counting system present;
0. absent

I. ADJECTIVES (2 Factors)

47. Adjective-verb lexical overlap: 1. lexical overlap (including
zero-derivation) between a significant proportion of adjectives and verbs;
0. insignificant or absent lexical overlap between adjectives and verbs.

48. Adjective attribution/predication: 1. the same lexical set of
adjectives function both attributively and predicatively: 0. insignificant
or absent lexical overlap between adjectives and verbs.

SYNTACTIC ROLE OF NPS

49. Core case marking: 1. case marking for core NPs (i.e. S, A or O
function in Dixon's terms) present (include any affixal and adpositional
marking which appears on the NP and shows the function of the NP in the
clause); O. no case marking for core NPs

50. Oblique case marking: 1. case marking for oblique NPs present; ). no
case marking for oblique NPs

THE VERB COMPLEX (5 Factors):

53. TAM-Person: 1. the same morphemes encode both Tense/Aspect/Mood and
person on the verb; 0. TAM and person encoded separately, if at all.

54. Verb prefixes/proclitics: 1. prefixes or proclitics present on the
verb: 0. absent.

ENCODING OF CORE PARTICIPANTS (15 Factors)

58. S-suffix: 1. S participant at least sometimes marked by a verbal
suffix (S meaning subject of an intransitive verb); 0. S participant never
marked by a verbal suffix

59. S-prefix: 1. S participant at least sometimes marked by a verbal prefix
(S meaning subject of an intransitive verb); 0. S participant never marked
by a verbal prefix.

ENCODING OF OBLIQUE PARTICIPANTS (3 Factors):

73. Non-core: 1. a non-core participant may be marked on the verb (instead
of or in addition to subject/object; includes affixes, clitics and
staellite particles associated with verbs forming a constituent with the
verb on some level, but exclude optional adverbials); 0. no non-core
participants marked on the verb.

74. Recipient object: 1. recipients in a three place predicate can be
treated as the primary transitive object; 0. recipients cannot be treated
as a transitive object.

OTHER CATEGORIES ENCODED ON VERBS (Two Factors):

76. Verb negation: 1. negation can be marked on verbs; 0. negation not
marked on verbs.

77. Verb direction. 1. direction (deictic category) can be marked on
verbs; 0. direction not marked on verbs.

VERB FORMATION (Eight Factors):

78. Verb suppletion: 1. suppletive verbs present in language; 0. absent

79. Conjugation classes: 1. present; 0. absent

PREDICATE TYPES (20 Factors):

86. Copula: 1. present; 0. absent

87. Non-verbal predicates (not including copula); 1. present; 0. absent

ALIGNMENT (6 Factors):

106. S=O morphology in basic constructions: 1. S and O are conflated
morphologically in at least some basic constructions; 0. S and O are not
conflated morphologically in at least some basic constructions.

107. S=A morphology in basic constructions: 1. S and A are conflated
morphologically in at least some basic constructions; 0. S and A are not
conflated morphologically in at least some basic constructions.

COMPLEX CLAUSES (7 Factors):

112. Clause chaining: 1. present (i.e. chains of morphologically
stripped-down medial clauses which are dependent on one final clause for
the TAM or participant marking specification); 0. absent

113. Simultaneous-sequential: 1. there is a morphologically marked
distinction between simultaneous and sequential clauses; 0. no such
distinction.

CAUSATIVES (3 Factors)

119. Causatives formed by serial verb constructions: 1. present; 0.
absent

120. Causatives formed by bound affixes/clitics: 1. present; 0. absent

MISCELLANEOUS (4 Factors)

122. Morphological topic or focus (include affixes and clitics); 1.
present; 0. absent

123. Tail-head linkage (i.e. a discourse strategy in which the final verb
of one sentence is repeated as the first verb of the next sentence): 1.
present 0. absent

What do you make of it?

Joe Murphy
Boy Linguist
.