694019070 03 01 01 JB John Benjamins Publishing Company 01 JB code TSL 132 Eb 15 9789027259943 06 10.1075/tsl.132 13 2021003475 DG 002 02 01 TSL 02 0167-7373 Typological Studies in Language 132 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Linguistic Categories, Language Description and Linguistic Typology</TitleText> 01 tsl.132 01 https://benjamins.com 02 https://benjamins.com/catalog/tsl.132 1 B01 Luca Alfieri Alfieri, Luca Luca Alfieri University of Studies Guglielmo Marconi 2 B01 Giorgio Francesco Arcodia Arcodia, Giorgio Francesco Giorgio Francesco Arcodia Ca’ Foscari University of Venice 3 B01 Paolo Ramat Ramat, Paolo Paolo Ramat University of Pavia 01 eng 430 vi 424 LAN009060 v.2006 CFK 2 24 JB Subject Scheme LIN.COGN Cognition and language 24 JB Subject Scheme LIN.SEMAN Semantics 24 JB Subject Scheme LIN.SYNTAX Syntax 24 JB Subject Scheme LIN.THEOR Theoretical linguistics 24 JB Subject Scheme LIN.TYP Typology 06 01 Few issues in the history of the language sciences have been an object of as much discussion and controversy as linguistic categories. The eleven articles included in this volume tackle the issue of categories from a wide range of perspectives and with different foci, in the context of the current debate on the nature and methodology of the research on comparative concepts – particularly, the relation between the categories needed to describe languages and those needed to compare languages. While the first six papers deal with general theoretical questions, the following five confront specific issues in the domain of language analysis arising from the application of categories. The volume will appeal to a very broad readership: advanced students and scholars in any field of linguistics, but also specialists in the philosophy of language, and scholars interested in the cognitive aspects of language from different subfields (neurolinguistics, cognitive sciences, psycholinguistics, anthropology). 04 09 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/475/tsl.132.png 04 03 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/475_jpg/9789027208651.jpg 04 03 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/475_tif/9789027208651.tif 06 09 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/1200_front/tsl.132.hb.png 07 09 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/125/tsl.132.png 25 09 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/1200_back/tsl.132.hb.png 27 09 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/3d_web/tsl.132.hb.png 10 01 JB code tsl.132.01alf 1 34 34 Chapter 1 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Chapter 1. Linguistic categories, language description and linguistic typology – An overview</TitleText> 1 A01 Luca Alfieri Alfieri, Luca Luca Alfieri University of Studies Guglielmo Marconi 2 A01 Giorgio Francesco Arcodia Arcodia, Giorgio Francesco Giorgio Francesco Arcodia Ca' Foscari University 3 A01 Paolo Ramat Ramat, Paolo Paolo Ramat University of Pavia 01 In this paper we propose a critical discussion of the rationale for this volume. After a short introduction (Section 1), an outline of the long-standing opposition between language particular description and universal grammar in the history of the language sciences is provided (Section 2). This opposition indeed represents the substrate on which our ‘comparative concepts debate’ is based: a summary of the debate, both in the form it had in the <sc>lingtyp</sc> mailing list (January / February 2016) and in the subsequent monographic issue of <i>Linguistic Typology</i> 2016, is offered in Section 3 and Section 4. Some critical consideration on the debate and on its relation with the various branches of linguistics are presented in Section 5. An overview of the papers included in the volume closes this introduction (Section 6). 10 01 JB code tsl.132.02has 35 58 24 Chapter 2 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Chapter 2. Towards standardization of morphosyntactic terminology for general linguistics</TitleText> 1 A01 Martin Haspelmath Haspelmath, Martin Martin Haspelmath MPI-SHH Jena and Leipzig University 01 This paper proposes that just like phonologists, linguists working on morphosyntax should have a core set of standard terms that are understood in exactly the same way across the discipline. Most of these terms are traditional terms that are given a standard retro-definition, because linguists already behave as if these terms had the same meaning for everyone. The definitions are definitions of general concepts (i.e. comparative concepts, applicable to all languages in exactly the same way), but they are expected to be highly similar to language-particular categories with the same labels. If linguists were close to finding out the true natural-kind categories of Human Language that all grammars consist of, there would be no need for definitions, but since this seems to be a remote goal, research on general linguistics must rely on uniformly defined general terms. 10 01 JB code tsl.132.03wil 59 100 42 Chapter 3 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Chapter 3. Universal underpinnings of language-specific categories</TitleText> <Subtitle textformat="02">A useful heuristic for discovering and comparing categories of grammar and beyond</Subtitle> 1 A01 Martina Wiltschko Wiltschko, Martina Martina Wiltschko ICREA, UPF 01 The goal of this paper is to argue that the assumption that there are universal underpinnings for the construction of language specific categories is a useful, if not necessary assumption for the discovery and comparison of categories. Specifically, I will explore three empirical domains: <ol type="i"> • <br /><br /> <b>grammatical categories</b> of the familiar kind (e.g., tense, voice, demonstrative, etc.); • <br /><br />categories associated with the <b>language of interaction</b> (e.g., sentence final tags, response particles, interjections, etc.), and • <br /><br />categories that express <b>emotions</b> (e.g., ideophones, certain types of intonational tunes, expressives, etc.) </ol> <br />The argument will be developed as follows. <br />I start by introducing the framework for the analysis of grammatical categories I have developed in Wiltschko 2014. This approach seeks to reconcile the tension between the two opposing views which this volume addresses: typologists observe that languages differ in their categorial inventories but some linguists (especially of the generative tradition) assume that there is a core which all languages share, including a set of universal categories. The key to reconciling this tension, I argue, is to assume that the categories we observe are always constructed on a language-specific basis, but that there are some universal building blocks involved in their construction, namely the <i> <b>universal spine</b>,</i> a hierarchically organized set of functions which is at the core of constructing sentential meanings. The spine has to be associated with units of language (I use the term unit of language as opposed to morpheme or word because I include – among other things - features as well and intonational tunes in the set of elements that can associate with the spine). Familiar grammatical categories are constructed via this association: that is, units of language <i>per se</i> do not form grammatical categories, they do so only in interaction with the spine. It follows that grammatical categories will always be language-specific, since the units of language are language-specific (for traditional morphemes this follows from the Saussurian assumption that the relation between form and meaning is arbitrary – hence must be conventionalized on a language specific basis). What this assumption allows us to do is to compare language-specific categories via a third element (Humboldt’s <i>tertium comparationis</i>), namely the spine. Comparing language-specific categories directly to each other is typically meaning-based, but categories of similar meaning do not always have the same distribution and hence cannot be classified as universal categories (assuming that the hallmark of units of language of the same category is that they display the same distributional patterns). <br />I then proceed to show that the same framework can be used for the discovery and comparison of categories which are not typically assumed to be part of grammar proper: interactive and emotive categories. I first show that they, too, display the patterns of grammatical categories: we find classes of UoLs which enter into syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations; and they display patterns of contrast and patterns of multi-functionality. 10 01 JB code tsl.132.04fra 101 136 36 Chapter 4 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Chapter 4. Typology of functional domains</TitleText> 1 A01 Zygmunt Frajzyngier Frajzyngier, Zygmunt Zygmunt Frajzyngier University of Colorado 01 The aim of this study is to advocate one of the aims of linguistic typology, viz. the discovery of how languages are similar or different with respect to the functions they encode and consequently for the development of a typology based solely on the functions encoded in the grammatical systems of individual languages. Such a typology has the advantage of not requiring or depending on aprioristic definitions. Such a typology also has the following additional advantages: it can serve as a tool in explaining the forms of utterances in individual languages and in explaining why certain languages have functions that other languages do not. 10 01 JB code tsl.132.05lie 137 210 74 Chapter 5 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Chapter 5. Theories of language, language comparison, and grammatical description</TitleText> <Subtitle textformat="02">Correcting Haspelmath</Subtitle> 1 A01 Hans-Heinrich Lieb Lieb, Hans-Heinrich Hans-Heinrich Lieb Freie Universität Berlin 01 This essay is a study of Haspelmath’s conception of ‘comparative concepts’ vs. ‘descriptive categories’ from a new angle: a study concentrating on questions of logical form and formal explicitness rather than on linguistic adequacy; it is suggested that the inconclusiveness of previous discussion of the conception is mainly due to formal flaws hidden in Haspelmath’s account by its informality. Three major flaws of the conception are identified: (i) a failure to explicitly relativize comparative-concept terms to languages: to construe the terms as relational, as denoting relations between linguistic items, or constructions, and languages; (ii) misconstruing empirical statements on descriptive categories as definitions of the category terms; and (iii) a failure to recognize the importance of theories of language in dealing with ‘comparative concepts’ vs. ‘descriptive categories’. There are serious consequences of these flaws, which are pointed out in detail. The conception as such is not rejected: ten revisions are proposed for an improved version. An attempt is made throughout to actually settle matters, which requires going into details rather deeply. The essay proceeds in three steps, using background notions from logic and the philosophy of science: after the introductory Part A (§§ 1 and 2), Haspelmath’s definition of “serial verb construction” is carefully analysed in Part B (§§ 3 to 10) as the most elaborate example of how he wishes to deal with comparative concepts; in Part C (§§ 11 to 19), the conception of ‘comparative concepts’ vs. ‘descriptive categories’ is modified by introducing the revisions, first with respect to comparative concepts (§§ 11 to 13), then with respect to descriptive categories (§§ 14 to 16), resulting in a different view of their interrelations (§§ 17 and 18) and in a more adequate conception of the relations between general linguistics, comparative linguistics, and descriptive linguistics (§ 19). 10 01 JB code tsl.132.06rei 211 248 38 Chapter 6 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Chapter 6. Comparative concepts are <i>not</i> a different kind of thing</TitleText> 1 A01 Tabea Reiner Reiner, Tabea Tabea Reiner University of Munich 01 This contribution challenges the by now established notion of comparative concepts; in particular, it can be read as a (delayed) response to Haspelmath (2010). Like Haspelmath’s original paper, the present one is theoretical in essence, with examples used primarily for illustration. My main point is that Haspelmath’s comparative concepts are, despite his claims to the contrary, simply crosslinguistic categories. This point has been made before; however, I offer two new ingredients to the argument: first, an explicit definition of the crucial term <i>instantiation</i>, allowing, among other things, a reaction to Haspelmath’s (2018b) newest defence of comparative concepts, and second, an alternative approach involving multiple monotonic inheritance. The contribution as a whole, though being theoretical, strives to argue as framework-neutrally as possible; in particular I remain agnostic about the existence and nature of Universal Grammar in any sense. 10 01 JB code tsl.132.07sei 249 278 30 Chapter 7 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Chapter 7. Essentials of the <sc>unityp</sc> research project</TitleText> <Subtitle textformat="02">Attempt of an overview</Subtitle> 1 A01 Hansjakob Seiler Seiler, Hansjakob Hansjakob Seiler University of Zurich/University of Cologne 2 A01 Yoshiko Ono Ono, Yoshiko Yoshiko Ono University of Zurich/University of Cologne 3 A01 Waldfried Premper Premper, Waldfried Waldfried Premper University of Zurich/University of Cologne 01 This contribution surveys the insights of ‘<sc>unityp</sc>’ (Language Universals and Typology), a research project initiated and led by Hansjakob Seiler from 1973 until 1992 and further developed by him until 2017. First, an overview of essential concepts and the architecture of the <sc>unityp</sc> model is given. Of central importance are three levels of research: cognitive-conceptual, general comparative grammar, and individual languages. Then the conceptual and methodological implications are demonstrated by selected analyses. These comprise a summary of Seiler’s latest ‘works in progress’ concerning Identification as well as an application of the crucial abductive method in cross-linguistic investigation, exemplified by the object relation and number. 10 01 JB code tsl.132.08mat 279 312 34 Chapter 8 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Chapter 8. The non-universality of linguistic categories</TitleText> <Subtitle textformat="02">Evidence from pluractional constructions</Subtitle> 1 A01 Simone Mattiola Mattiola, Simone Simone Mattiola University of Bologna 01 This paper aims at giving a typological overview of pluractionality in order to show how grammatical categories, in cross-linguistic perspective, cannot be considered as universally valid entities. After having defined the phenomenon, I will present the main functions and some formal characteristics that pluractional markers have in the languages of the world. Then, I will describe the diachronic sources from which pluractional markers probably come from. Finally, I will discuss the grammatical status that pluractionality has in cross-linguistic perspective in the light of the broad variety it shows in the languages of the world and also taking into consideration data from specific languages. 10 01 JB code tsl.132.09alf 313 366 54 Chapter 9 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Chapter 9. Parts of speech, comparative concepts and Indo-European linguistics</TitleText> 1 A01 Luca Alfieri Alfieri, Luca Luca Alfieri University of Studies Guglielmo Marconi 01 The paper adopts and further elaborates on the distinction between comparative concepts (CC) and descriptive categories (DC) by proposing a partly new definition of the parts of speech (PoS), and uses that definition to provide a new analysis of PoS in Latin and RV Sanskrit. More, specifically, the paper shows that in Latin three major classes of morphemes are found (nouns, adjectives and verbs), whereas in the RV only two major classes are found (verbal roots and nouns) and the typical “adjective” is a derived stem built on a verbal root meaning a quality (i.e. roughly a nominalization). The data described are then used to contribute to the CC debate in the field of PoS, by showing its relation with historical Indo-European linguistics, by critically analysing traditional labels such as noun, adjective, verb, root, stem and lexeme, and by questioning the alleged incommensurability between CCs and DCs. 10 01 JB code tsl.132.10pud 367 388 22 Chapter 10 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Chapter 10. Verbal vs. nominal reflexive constructions</TitleText> <Subtitle textformat="02">A categorial opposition?</Subtitle> 1 A01 Nicoletta Puddu Puddu, Nicoletta Nicoletta Puddu University of Cagliari 01 Reflexives have been extensively studied from different approaches and perspectives, but no clear consensus has been established on the criteria for their definition. From a morphological point of view, a distinction between nominal reflexives and verbal reflexives has been generally accepted in both functional and generative approaches. However, it is ultimately hard to make a precise distinction between verbal and nominal reflexives which should possibly be viewed as a continuum rather than as a discrete partition. In this paper, I will discuss the opportunity of a categorial distinction between verbal and nominal reflexive constructions, identifying some general principles which allow us to classify a form as “verbal” or “nominal”. 10 01 JB code tsl.132.11dam 389 410 22 Chapter 11 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Chapter 11. The category ‘pronoun’ in East and Southeast Asian languages, with a focus on Japanese</TitleText> 1 A01 Federica Da Milano Da Milano, Federica Federica Da Milano Università di Milano-Bicocca 01 The topic of the paper is an analysis of the debated notion of the category ‘pronoun’ in East and Southeast Asian languages, with a special focus on Japanese. After a description of the main aspects of the notion of ‘person’ as a grammatical category, the focus is devoted to personal pronouns in general and then to personal pronouns in East and Southeast Asian languages. Special attention is devoted to Japanese personal pronouns, taking into account the Emancipatory Pragmatics approach. 10 01 JB code tsl.132.sub 411 418 8 Miscellaneous 12 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Subject index</TitleText> 10 01 JB code tsl.132.lan 419 420 2 Miscellaneous 13 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Language index</TitleText> 10 01 JB code tsl.132.aut 421 424 4 Miscellaneous 14 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Author index</TitleText> 02 JBENJAMINS John Benjamins Publishing Company 01 John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia NL 04 20210709 2021 John Benjamins B.V. 02 WORLD 13 15 9789027208651 01 JB 3 John Benjamins e-Platform 03 jbe-platform.com 09 WORLD 21 01 00 105.00 EUR R 01 00 88.00 GBP Z 01 gen 00 158.00 USD S 679019069 03 01 01 JB John Benjamins Publishing Company 01 JB code TSL 132 Hb 15 9789027208651 13 2021003474 BB 01 TSL 02 0167-7373 Typological Studies in Language 132 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Linguistic Categories, Language Description and Linguistic Typology</TitleText> 01 tsl.132 01 https://benjamins.com 02 https://benjamins.com/catalog/tsl.132 1 B01 Luca Alfieri Alfieri, Luca Luca Alfieri University of Studies Guglielmo Marconi 2 B01 Giorgio Francesco Arcodia Arcodia, Giorgio Francesco Giorgio Francesco Arcodia Ca’ Foscari University of Venice 3 B01 Paolo Ramat Ramat, Paolo Paolo Ramat University of Pavia 01 eng 430 vi 424 LAN009060 v.2006 CFK 2 24 JB Subject Scheme LIN.COGN Cognition and language 24 JB Subject Scheme LIN.SEMAN Semantics 24 JB Subject Scheme LIN.SYNTAX Syntax 24 JB Subject Scheme LIN.THEOR Theoretical linguistics 24 JB Subject Scheme LIN.TYP Typology 06 01 Few issues in the history of the language sciences have been an object of as much discussion and controversy as linguistic categories. The eleven articles included in this volume tackle the issue of categories from a wide range of perspectives and with different foci, in the context of the current debate on the nature and methodology of the research on comparative concepts – particularly, the relation between the categories needed to describe languages and those needed to compare languages. While the first six papers deal with general theoretical questions, the following five confront specific issues in the domain of language analysis arising from the application of categories. The volume will appeal to a very broad readership: advanced students and scholars in any field of linguistics, but also specialists in the philosophy of language, and scholars interested in the cognitive aspects of language from different subfields (neurolinguistics, cognitive sciences, psycholinguistics, anthropology). 04 09 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/475/tsl.132.png 04 03 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/475_jpg/9789027208651.jpg 04 03 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/475_tif/9789027208651.tif 06 09 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/1200_front/tsl.132.hb.png 07 09 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/125/tsl.132.png 25 09 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/1200_back/tsl.132.hb.png 27 09 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/3d_web/tsl.132.hb.png 10 01 JB code tsl.132.01alf 1 34 34 Chapter 1 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Chapter 1. Linguistic categories, language description and linguistic typology – An overview</TitleText> 1 A01 Luca Alfieri Alfieri, Luca Luca Alfieri University of Studies Guglielmo Marconi 2 A01 Giorgio Francesco Arcodia Arcodia, Giorgio Francesco Giorgio Francesco Arcodia Ca' Foscari University 3 A01 Paolo Ramat Ramat, Paolo Paolo Ramat University of Pavia 01 In this paper we propose a critical discussion of the rationale for this volume. After a short introduction (Section 1), an outline of the long-standing opposition between language particular description and universal grammar in the history of the language sciences is provided (Section 2). This opposition indeed represents the substrate on which our ‘comparative concepts debate’ is based: a summary of the debate, both in the form it had in the <sc>lingtyp</sc> mailing list (January / February 2016) and in the subsequent monographic issue of <i>Linguistic Typology</i> 2016, is offered in Section 3 and Section 4. Some critical consideration on the debate and on its relation with the various branches of linguistics are presented in Section 5. An overview of the papers included in the volume closes this introduction (Section 6). 10 01 JB code tsl.132.02has 35 58 24 Chapter 2 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Chapter 2. Towards standardization of morphosyntactic terminology for general linguistics</TitleText> 1 A01 Martin Haspelmath Haspelmath, Martin Martin Haspelmath MPI-SHH Jena and Leipzig University 01 This paper proposes that just like phonologists, linguists working on morphosyntax should have a core set of standard terms that are understood in exactly the same way across the discipline. Most of these terms are traditional terms that are given a standard retro-definition, because linguists already behave as if these terms had the same meaning for everyone. The definitions are definitions of general concepts (i.e. comparative concepts, applicable to all languages in exactly the same way), but they are expected to be highly similar to language-particular categories with the same labels. If linguists were close to finding out the true natural-kind categories of Human Language that all grammars consist of, there would be no need for definitions, but since this seems to be a remote goal, research on general linguistics must rely on uniformly defined general terms. 10 01 JB code tsl.132.03wil 59 100 42 Chapter 3 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Chapter 3. Universal underpinnings of language-specific categories</TitleText> <Subtitle textformat="02">A useful heuristic for discovering and comparing categories of grammar and beyond</Subtitle> 1 A01 Martina Wiltschko Wiltschko, Martina Martina Wiltschko ICREA, UPF 01 The goal of this paper is to argue that the assumption that there are universal underpinnings for the construction of language specific categories is a useful, if not necessary assumption for the discovery and comparison of categories. Specifically, I will explore three empirical domains: <ol type="i"> • <br /><br /> <b>grammatical categories</b> of the familiar kind (e.g., tense, voice, demonstrative, etc.); • <br /><br />categories associated with the <b>language of interaction</b> (e.g., sentence final tags, response particles, interjections, etc.), and • <br /><br />categories that express <b>emotions</b> (e.g., ideophones, certain types of intonational tunes, expressives, etc.) </ol> <br />The argument will be developed as follows. <br />I start by introducing the framework for the analysis of grammatical categories I have developed in Wiltschko 2014. This approach seeks to reconcile the tension between the two opposing views which this volume addresses: typologists observe that languages differ in their categorial inventories but some linguists (especially of the generative tradition) assume that there is a core which all languages share, including a set of universal categories. The key to reconciling this tension, I argue, is to assume that the categories we observe are always constructed on a language-specific basis, but that there are some universal building blocks involved in their construction, namely the <i> <b>universal spine</b>,</i> a hierarchically organized set of functions which is at the core of constructing sentential meanings. The spine has to be associated with units of language (I use the term unit of language as opposed to morpheme or word because I include – among other things - features as well and intonational tunes in the set of elements that can associate with the spine). Familiar grammatical categories are constructed via this association: that is, units of language <i>per se</i> do not form grammatical categories, they do so only in interaction with the spine. It follows that grammatical categories will always be language-specific, since the units of language are language-specific (for traditional morphemes this follows from the Saussurian assumption that the relation between form and meaning is arbitrary – hence must be conventionalized on a language specific basis). What this assumption allows us to do is to compare language-specific categories via a third element (Humboldt’s <i>tertium comparationis</i>), namely the spine. Comparing language-specific categories directly to each other is typically meaning-based, but categories of similar meaning do not always have the same distribution and hence cannot be classified as universal categories (assuming that the hallmark of units of language of the same category is that they display the same distributional patterns). <br />I then proceed to show that the same framework can be used for the discovery and comparison of categories which are not typically assumed to be part of grammar proper: interactive and emotive categories. I first show that they, too, display the patterns of grammatical categories: we find classes of UoLs which enter into syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations; and they display patterns of contrast and patterns of multi-functionality. 10 01 JB code tsl.132.04fra 101 136 36 Chapter 4 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Chapter 4. Typology of functional domains</TitleText> 1 A01 Zygmunt Frajzyngier Frajzyngier, Zygmunt Zygmunt Frajzyngier University of Colorado 01 The aim of this study is to advocate one of the aims of linguistic typology, viz. the discovery of how languages are similar or different with respect to the functions they encode and consequently for the development of a typology based solely on the functions encoded in the grammatical systems of individual languages. Such a typology has the advantage of not requiring or depending on aprioristic definitions. Such a typology also has the following additional advantages: it can serve as a tool in explaining the forms of utterances in individual languages and in explaining why certain languages have functions that other languages do not. 10 01 JB code tsl.132.05lie 137 210 74 Chapter 5 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Chapter 5. Theories of language, language comparison, and grammatical description</TitleText> <Subtitle textformat="02">Correcting Haspelmath</Subtitle> 1 A01 Hans-Heinrich Lieb Lieb, Hans-Heinrich Hans-Heinrich Lieb Freie Universität Berlin 01 This essay is a study of Haspelmath’s conception of ‘comparative concepts’ vs. ‘descriptive categories’ from a new angle: a study concentrating on questions of logical form and formal explicitness rather than on linguistic adequacy; it is suggested that the inconclusiveness of previous discussion of the conception is mainly due to formal flaws hidden in Haspelmath’s account by its informality. Three major flaws of the conception are identified: (i) a failure to explicitly relativize comparative-concept terms to languages: to construe the terms as relational, as denoting relations between linguistic items, or constructions, and languages; (ii) misconstruing empirical statements on descriptive categories as definitions of the category terms; and (iii) a failure to recognize the importance of theories of language in dealing with ‘comparative concepts’ vs. ‘descriptive categories’. There are serious consequences of these flaws, which are pointed out in detail. The conception as such is not rejected: ten revisions are proposed for an improved version. An attempt is made throughout to actually settle matters, which requires going into details rather deeply. The essay proceeds in three steps, using background notions from logic and the philosophy of science: after the introductory Part A (§§ 1 and 2), Haspelmath’s definition of “serial verb construction” is carefully analysed in Part B (§§ 3 to 10) as the most elaborate example of how he wishes to deal with comparative concepts; in Part C (§§ 11 to 19), the conception of ‘comparative concepts’ vs. ‘descriptive categories’ is modified by introducing the revisions, first with respect to comparative concepts (§§ 11 to 13), then with respect to descriptive categories (§§ 14 to 16), resulting in a different view of their interrelations (§§ 17 and 18) and in a more adequate conception of the relations between general linguistics, comparative linguistics, and descriptive linguistics (§ 19). 10 01 JB code tsl.132.06rei 211 248 38 Chapter 6 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Chapter 6. Comparative concepts are <i>not</i> a different kind of thing</TitleText> 1 A01 Tabea Reiner Reiner, Tabea Tabea Reiner University of Munich 01 This contribution challenges the by now established notion of comparative concepts; in particular, it can be read as a (delayed) response to Haspelmath (2010). Like Haspelmath’s original paper, the present one is theoretical in essence, with examples used primarily for illustration. My main point is that Haspelmath’s comparative concepts are, despite his claims to the contrary, simply crosslinguistic categories. This point has been made before; however, I offer two new ingredients to the argument: first, an explicit definition of the crucial term <i>instantiation</i>, allowing, among other things, a reaction to Haspelmath’s (2018b) newest defence of comparative concepts, and second, an alternative approach involving multiple monotonic inheritance. The contribution as a whole, though being theoretical, strives to argue as framework-neutrally as possible; in particular I remain agnostic about the existence and nature of Universal Grammar in any sense. 10 01 JB code tsl.132.07sei 249 278 30 Chapter 7 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Chapter 7. Essentials of the <sc>unityp</sc> research project</TitleText> <Subtitle textformat="02">Attempt of an overview</Subtitle> 1 A01 Hansjakob Seiler Seiler, Hansjakob Hansjakob Seiler University of Zurich/University of Cologne 2 A01 Yoshiko Ono Ono, Yoshiko Yoshiko Ono University of Zurich/University of Cologne 3 A01 Waldfried Premper Premper, Waldfried Waldfried Premper University of Zurich/University of Cologne 01 This contribution surveys the insights of ‘<sc>unityp</sc>’ (Language Universals and Typology), a research project initiated and led by Hansjakob Seiler from 1973 until 1992 and further developed by him until 2017. First, an overview of essential concepts and the architecture of the <sc>unityp</sc> model is given. Of central importance are three levels of research: cognitive-conceptual, general comparative grammar, and individual languages. Then the conceptual and methodological implications are demonstrated by selected analyses. These comprise a summary of Seiler’s latest ‘works in progress’ concerning Identification as well as an application of the crucial abductive method in cross-linguistic investigation, exemplified by the object relation and number. 10 01 JB code tsl.132.08mat 279 312 34 Chapter 8 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Chapter 8. The non-universality of linguistic categories</TitleText> <Subtitle textformat="02">Evidence from pluractional constructions</Subtitle> 1 A01 Simone Mattiola Mattiola, Simone Simone Mattiola University of Bologna 01 This paper aims at giving a typological overview of pluractionality in order to show how grammatical categories, in cross-linguistic perspective, cannot be considered as universally valid entities. After having defined the phenomenon, I will present the main functions and some formal characteristics that pluractional markers have in the languages of the world. Then, I will describe the diachronic sources from which pluractional markers probably come from. Finally, I will discuss the grammatical status that pluractionality has in cross-linguistic perspective in the light of the broad variety it shows in the languages of the world and also taking into consideration data from specific languages. 10 01 JB code tsl.132.09alf 313 366 54 Chapter 9 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Chapter 9. Parts of speech, comparative concepts and Indo-European linguistics</TitleText> 1 A01 Luca Alfieri Alfieri, Luca Luca Alfieri University of Studies Guglielmo Marconi 01 The paper adopts and further elaborates on the distinction between comparative concepts (CC) and descriptive categories (DC) by proposing a partly new definition of the parts of speech (PoS), and uses that definition to provide a new analysis of PoS in Latin and RV Sanskrit. More, specifically, the paper shows that in Latin three major classes of morphemes are found (nouns, adjectives and verbs), whereas in the RV only two major classes are found (verbal roots and nouns) and the typical “adjective” is a derived stem built on a verbal root meaning a quality (i.e. roughly a nominalization). The data described are then used to contribute to the CC debate in the field of PoS, by showing its relation with historical Indo-European linguistics, by critically analysing traditional labels such as noun, adjective, verb, root, stem and lexeme, and by questioning the alleged incommensurability between CCs and DCs. 10 01 JB code tsl.132.10pud 367 388 22 Chapter 10 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Chapter 10. Verbal vs. nominal reflexive constructions</TitleText> <Subtitle textformat="02">A categorial opposition?</Subtitle> 1 A01 Nicoletta Puddu Puddu, Nicoletta Nicoletta Puddu University of Cagliari 01 Reflexives have been extensively studied from different approaches and perspectives, but no clear consensus has been established on the criteria for their definition. From a morphological point of view, a distinction between nominal reflexives and verbal reflexives has been generally accepted in both functional and generative approaches. However, it is ultimately hard to make a precise distinction between verbal and nominal reflexives which should possibly be viewed as a continuum rather than as a discrete partition. In this paper, I will discuss the opportunity of a categorial distinction between verbal and nominal reflexive constructions, identifying some general principles which allow us to classify a form as “verbal” or “nominal”. 10 01 JB code tsl.132.11dam 389 410 22 Chapter 11 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Chapter 11. The category ‘pronoun’ in East and Southeast Asian languages, with a focus on Japanese</TitleText> 1 A01 Federica Da Milano Da Milano, Federica Federica Da Milano Università di Milano-Bicocca 01 The topic of the paper is an analysis of the debated notion of the category ‘pronoun’ in East and Southeast Asian languages, with a special focus on Japanese. After a description of the main aspects of the notion of ‘person’ as a grammatical category, the focus is devoted to personal pronouns in general and then to personal pronouns in East and Southeast Asian languages. Special attention is devoted to Japanese personal pronouns, taking into account the Emancipatory Pragmatics approach. 10 01 JB code tsl.132.sub 411 418 8 Miscellaneous 12 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Subject index</TitleText> 10 01 JB code tsl.132.lan 419 420 2 Miscellaneous 13 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Language index</TitleText> 10 01 JB code tsl.132.aut 421 424 4 Miscellaneous 14 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textformat="02">Author index</TitleText> 02 JBENJAMINS John Benjamins Publishing Company 01 John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia NL 04 20210709 2021 John Benjamins B.V. 02 WORLD 08 905 gr 01 JB 1 John Benjamins Publishing Company +31 20 6304747 +31 20 6739773 bookorder@benjamins.nl 01 https://benjamins.com 01 WORLD US CA MX 21 13 10 01 02 JB 1 00 105.00 EUR R 02 02 JB 1 00 111.30 EUR R 01 JB 10 bebc +44 1202 712 934 +44 1202 712 913 sales@bebc.co.uk 03 GB 21 10 02 02 JB 1 00 88.00 GBP Z 01 JB 2 John Benjamins North America +1 800 562-5666 +1 703 661-1501 benjamins@presswarehouse.com 01 https://benjamins.com 01 US CA MX 21 2 10 01 gen 02 JB 1 00 158.00 USD