Re: The map of typological features

Nathan Sanders wrote:
In article <1149083702.013656.216900@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Darkstar" <darkstar100@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Nathan Sanders wrote:

So what are examples of languages with well-developed cases that do
*not* have accusative or ergative case?

Excuse me, there was a lot of typing for me, I didn't read you well
from the start. No, I don't know of these languages, though I don't
have enough information on some (e.g. Yukaghir). In theory, some
languges might use only locative/directional cases, but omit relational
cases. Dunno.

The only case systems I've heard of are variants of accusative or
ergative, differing on how the patient of a(n in)transitive verb is
distinguished from the agent. I've never heard of a system that
universally marks the agent/patient or subject/object the same way,
yet has a well-developed case system distinguishing various oblique
arguments from them (and from each other).

I think your typology would better be split along these lines:

* morphological or syntactic (positional) case, or both

and

* nominative/accusative, ergative/absolutive, or active/stative case,
any of which may be marked morphologically or syntactically; note that
some languages use one case system for morphology, and a different one
for syntax! Others use one case system with some verb tenses, and a
different case system with other verb tense.

You've lumped a 3+ phonation contrast for plosives with emphatic
(pharyngealized) consonants and with ejectives, both of which are
completely separate phenomena, but not with prenasalization or
implosives. Why? Simply because it makes your groupings work out
nicer?

Exactly. Conducting a statistical research, you do not necessarily have
to provide a causal mechanism.

But you can't a priori make these groupings. Some languages have
voiced plosives, some have aspirated plosives, some have murmured
plosives, some have ejectives, some have implosives, some have
prenasalized plosives, and many have different combinations of each of
these.

They are not exactly separate phenomena. "Red" languages probably
use intense explosives of different types (voiced, unvoiced, geminate,
pharyngealized, etc). These sounds demand considerable articulatory
effort, unlike "blue" languages that utilize developed vocalism,
open syllables, sonorants and implosives which require less energy. I
suspect that the considerations of energy are of primary importnance
here. "Red" languages may be more energetic phonologically with
intense and profound explosions, esp coming from the throat or, at
least, from the back of the mouth cavity.

Nasals are sonorants,

Nasals and prenasalized plosives are not the same thing.

No, but prenasalization means movement to the front of the mouth, it
also diminishes the amount of explosion because some of the air stream
is passed through the nasal cavity.

while I'm clueless as to why Type B tends to use
implosives, as well.

Both implosives and prenasalization are ways in which a language can
increase the apparent voicing of a stop, to further distinguish it
from voiceless stops. This would be very likely to develop in
languages that have unaspirated voiceless plosives.
That is, a language like French is more likely to develop implosives
or prenasalized plosives than a language like English.

Yes, but some Austronesian languages have voiced/unvoiced/prenasalized
plosives in triple oppositions. In fact, any sound can be used to
further distinguish a new sound from a voiced plosive (?). My current
explanation is that implosives concentrate much less energy, and thus
are viewed as acceptably weak plosives by Type B which dislikes
powerful explosive phonemes.

But I do not *have* to account for that, do I?

Description and explanation are of course two separate issues.
However, having both is always nice. And knowing the explanation
makes it easier to tell which features are just a subtype of other
features, and which features should be split into multiple different
features.

A more objective approach would be to look at each of these properties
separately.

If they're independent, then I should put them into separate lines,
okay.

Exactly. And if they're dependent, they shouldn't be put on separate
lines, since that inflates the co-occurrence of dependent features.

Other signs of this complexity should also be present (consonant
clusters, some affricates), syllables must be closed, vocalism should
not be particularly developed.

So this feature only counts when combined with other features?! No
wonder you get the groupings you want: "Feature X only counts when
feature Y is present, and lo and behold, languages with feature X
happen to have feature Y, too!"

I'm just looking for a stack of phonological features. There's nothing
wrong with that.

There is if you're using feature co-occurrence to make a claim, but
then artificially inflating that co-occurrence because of the way
you've defined your features.

Okay, I agree that some of my features seem to be dependent, and that
causes hidden inflation. I'll stand corrected.

Real comparative and typological linguistics don't rely on "knowing it
when you hear it". They use data in the form of regular,
well-defined, verifiable patterns.

Well, as a real linguist, you might help me identify the patterns of
the first and the second series more precisely. :-)

As a real linguist, I would look up research into typology (I'm not a
typologist), and find out which features are known to be dependent.
Greenberg's universals would be a good starting point, though I don't
think he deals much with phonological universals.

So you haven't done this yet for the languages you claim do and do not
have "widespread nasals"?

It's all described in books, encyclopedias and other sources. I don't
have to do my own field research or go to Micronesia to find out how
they talk over there. Any kind of work is based on other people's work.
In this particular example, some encyclopedia article cited nasals to
be "widespread" or something to that extent and I took this opinion to
be "generally accepted".

Do you know how *they* defined "widespread"? If not, your map is even
more fuzzy. Smith might mean widespread within the phoneme set, while
Jones might mean widespread in the lexicon, and Alberts and Lewis mean
widespread in actual speech, but use different thresholds.

Obviously, within the lexicon and word formation methods (in the case
of reduplications). I think my labels were too short and ambigous, if
this part raised so many questions.

In some cases, I did go to Micronesia, though,
by downloading sound files to check certain languages. Anyway, there
are no standard algorithms in linguistics that reduce fuzzy sets to a
number.

Sure there are, especially when you're talking about things that are
supposed to be "widespread" or "frequent".

Linguistics is still one of the humanities.

Only for those who don't know what linguistics is. Because of the
wide variety of topics it covers, linguistics transcends the
humanities-science split, though the methodology is more aligned with
the sciences than with the humanities.

So what kind of standard algorithms or workable programs can perform a
phonological analysis for an arbitrary piece of spoken speech in some
rare language -- Hadza, for instance? I think manual analysis is the
only acceptable way in most cases.

[...]

Well, I'll have to repeat: if reduplications are frequently used in
grammar and word formation, they belong to Type B.

And again, I'd ask what "frequent" means. If I find a language that
only has one major use for reduplication, but uses it extensively in
speech, is that "frequent"?

Such a language wouldn't be typical.
Maybe you're just forgetting about the extensive use of reduplications
in Austronesian languages, where they are used for making plurals, or
Chinese where they're used to form a durative verb aspect as in
"kankan" -- "look for some time" or even standard questions
"shi-bu-shi" (is-not-is? = is it?), "zhidao-bu-zhidao" (know-not-know?
= do you know?). That's what I call grammar.

Give me at least some examples from any IE, FU or Alt languages of the
north that extensively use reduplications to replace grammatical
categories (plural, pronouns, etc)

Why limit it grammatical categories? Why shouldn't lexical
reduplication count as reduplication?

Lexics by itself is not part of the typological analysis. (Though,
lexics meaning word formation is.) The whole idea of structural
analysis is to avoid massive lexics mining. Counting reduplicated words
in a given language can be tricky. But I don't even have to conduct a
large-scale research or define what "frequent" means, if I have obvious
reduplications in grammar.

But to conform to your limitations, how about Ancient Greek
reduplication for perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect?

Are they unique to Greek or can you find something similar in many IE
languages? Probably not.

in formal speech.

Why limit it to formal speech? Most language use is informal!

We certainly wouldn't include stuttering or uncertainity markings as a
form of reduplication. It must be a part of the standardly accepted
speech. The discourse elements you mentioned are not part of textbook
grammar or even dictionary lexics. It's true that emphatic repetitons
like "really, really" or "he ran and ran" are found in all the
languages of the world, but they are not the structural stuff (=a
substantial and significant part of phonology, morphology, syntax). In
other words, you can easily drop them or substitute them by other
expressions of emphasis, and still get good English.

Also, consider the fact that pure reduplications are not compatible
with the synthesis. Hence, "day by day" (Eng.) but "den' za dnyom"
(Rus.), and that seems to be the reason why they're not present in
Type B.

Maybe I'll desist, then.

I'm not asking you to desist, only to think more carefully about what
you're trying to find, and avoid your preconceived notion that there
is a north-south linguistic split in the world's language. You're
(subconsciously?) allowing this notion to affect how you define your
features.

How would another researcher be
able to independently verify your conclusions by applying your
features to languages, if you don't provide something concrete,
objective, and repeatable? Without rigor, what you've created is a
pretty picture of your opinions, not a scientific theory.

Okay, okay, I agree that my picture lacks sufficient rigor.

And that lack of rigor makes your work look biased. The whole
enterprise appears to an outsider as you having noticed a pattern from
a small sample, and then defining an ad hoc feature system to derive
that pattern.

In fact, you should be defining an objective feature system first, and
*then* looking for patterns.

I just hope that someone would pick up serious holes before I procede
with the formalization. I just think if there are any serious errors,
people would see them "just like that".

A lot of errors have been pointed out, but you've dismissed many of
them as informal language use,
pseudo-creoles, not part of the stage
of the proto-language that you have decided is important, etc.

We'll really get stuck in a swamp if we go into a discussion on
pseudo-creoles. I dropped it because I thought it was basically
irrelevant to my thesis. When conducting a debate, one has to cut
certain branches off, otherwise the dialogue would be growing on and on
forever like a baobab, until the opponents get worn out and lose track.
I just wanted you to get back to the point, and maybe I was a little
impolite about it. If anyone's willing, we can discuss it separately,
but as for now, I have enough things on my mind with the present
theory, I hoped this could wait a little.

You're
arbitrarily ignoring huge chunks of valid data that doesn't fit your
theory.

If I'm ignoring something, that's because I didn't hear you or thought
it was unimportant. Just try to make a stronger standpoint in that
case. Besides, as I have already said only non-abstract data can be
counted as valid. Saying something absractly is one thing, whereas
providing specific examples to support your viewpoint is a lot harder,
sometimes making your own views change.

English is a non-creole language, and as such, is an example of how
languages can be structured. It is just as valid to look at English
as it is to look at Mende, Arabic, Thai, Turkish, or any other natural
language.

Okay, but not at English only.

So what other example of unexplicable major typological changes do we
have, BTW?

Please see a separate thread below.

This is just off the top of my head, without doing any actual
research. It is, after all, not my research project! You want to
find typological patterns, so you should be doing the leg-work.

Either PIE was a tone langauge, or it wasn't (you've classified it as
not being a tone language). Since Ancient Greek and Proto-Slavic were
tonal, then by your classification, they must have changed from
non-tonal PIE to tonal, ergo, the feature of tone is not stable (and
this is already known).

*Non-phonological* is the key word here. IE languages have never been
truely tonal.

Ancient Greek and Proto-Slavic were most certainly "truly tonal"!
There may have been restrictions on which tones could appear where,
but this is likely true for any tone language (tone sandhi, tone
spreading, etc. are widely attested in tone languages).

ASFAIR, tones in Greek followed the position of the dynamic stress.
Correct me if I'm forgetting something. Anyway, the role of tones in
PIE is an interesting issue. If we decide that tones in IE languages
are crucial, I'm ready to take it as a valid point.

It might help to look further into the past beyond 8000 BC,
although that's just a humble hope, and it's too early to speak
about that now.

I don't think it's too early to say that it won't provide anything
scientifically sound.

Well, I don't have all the necessary resources for it, consider it just
a game.

Noted.

Nathan

--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams College
http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/

I appreciate your efforts and your answers. You can also consider it a
work-out in typological linguistics.

.

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