In the recent volume on Phonological typology (Hyman & Plank (eds.) 2018), the editors complain that phonology is not given sufficient attention by morphosyntax-heavy mainstream typology, so it may perhaps be reassuring to note that “phonology is not different” in one respect: The nature of the things to be compared is often unclear. Continue reading
Category Archives: Opinion
Confusing p-linguistics and g-linguistics: Philosopher Ludlow on “framework-free theory”
This post was prompted by a recent paper by Peter Ludlow (a Michigan/Illinois-based philosopher) on “the philosophy of generative linguistics” (2019), where he targets a 2010 paper of mine for criticism, and (quite flatteringly) pits me against Darwin. But he confuses general linguistic theory with language-particular theory, and as this confusion seems to be more widespread, it probably deserves some discussion. Continue reading
Bound forms and welded forms: Two basic concepts of general grammar
Linguists often try to characterize affixes in terms of a notion of “boundness“, as in this passage of the Wikipedia article “affix“:
“Lexical affixes are bound elements that appear as affixes, but function as incorporated nouns within verbs” Continue reading
Ist gendern bio?
von Frans Plank, Universität Konstanz
[This post continues the discussion of gender equality in German on this blog, begun by M. Haspelmath and J. Bayer]
Wie jetzt bloß richtig gendern? – als ob sonst nichts los wäre, das ist Thema Nr. 1 im deutschen Blätterwald. Allein die NZZ tritt auf die Bremse, in Sorge, was dem Idiom der Eidgenossen da womöglich auch bald noch drohe. Unter Vermischtes aus dem Ausland lässt sie einen Emeritus aus Konstanz (für Sprachbiologie?) resigniert raten, es doch bitte bleiben zu lassen: alle Liebesmüh um die Gender-gerechte Nachbesserung der deutschen Sprache sei sowieso vergeblich, weil gegen die Natur, eben nicht bio. Continue reading
Against traditional grammar – and for normal science in linguistics
I was recently invited to give a talk for the IGRA doctoral programme during a retreat workshop in beautiful Hohenstein-Ernstthal. I am grateful to the organizers (Gereon Müller and Jochen Trommer) for the talk invitation, and to the participants for a very good discussion after the talk. Here is the gist of what I said. Continue reading
Ist die Gender-Grammatik biologisch vorherbestimmt? Eine Klarstellung
von Josef Bayer, Universität Konstanz
In einer Antwort auf meinen Artikel in der Neuen Zürcher Zeitung vom 11. April 2019 fragt Martin Haspelmath Ist die Gender Grammatik biologisch vorbestimmt? und beantwortet die Frage anschließen negativ. Zwar hätten Menschen die biologischen Voraussetzungen für Sprache, aber die “grammatischen Regeln” seien nicht Teil der Biologie. Weil sie über die Sprachen hinweg variieren, müssen sie, so Haspelmaths Schlussfolgerung, kulturell sein. Continue reading
Ist die Gender-Grammatik biologisch vorherbestimmt? Eine Antwort auf Josef Bayer
[This post is in German, because it is about a topic of German grammar that is currently being hotly discussed in various circles. – Update: There is now also a reply by Josef Bayer.]]
Ist es aus Gründen der Gender-Gerechtigkeit besser, im Deutschen von “Geflüchteten” und “Besuchenden” zu sprechen (statt von “Flüchtlingen” und “Besuchern”)? Soll man Gendersternchen oder andere Formen der Genus-Neutralisierung verwenden? Über diese Fragen wird seit den 1980er Jahren diskutiert, und in letzter Zeit hat sich die Diskussion verschärft, nachdem 2018 der Rechtschreibrat die Empfehlung des Gendersterns diskutiert hat, Continue reading
Unity of science: Why linguistics faces bigger challenges than the replication crisis
Over the last few years, psychologists and scientists in some other field have been talking (and worrying) a lot about problems of replicability and reproducibility. In psychology, people even talk about a “replication crisis”, and linguists have been thinking about replicability (e.g. of cross-linguistic generalizations, Plank (ed.) 2006) and reproducibility as well (see Berez-Kroeker et al. 2018, a position paper on reproducibility of linguistic data). Continue reading
No progress on differential object marking: Comments and reflections on Kalin (2018)
From my perspective, differential object marking (DOM) – the universal tendency for prominent objects to get special marking – has been well-understood since the 1980s, but even though the explanation was clearly stated in Comrie (1989) (and also formulated clearly in Croft (1988) and Bossong (1991)), many linguists seems to have forgotten about it. Continue reading
Is generative syntax simply a useful descriptive tool?
In the late 20th century, the general view of generative syntax was that it made claims about the innate universal grammar, and that by investigating the principles and parameters of grammar, it did three things simultaneously: (i) explain the possibility of language acquisition despite the poverty of the stimulus, (ii) explain limits on cross-linguistic diversity, and (iii) provide a framework for the elegant description of particular languages (e.g. Baker 2003).
The confidence in the existence of a rich UG and parameters seems to have waned in the 21st century Continue reading
Chomsky now rejects universal grammar (and comments on alien languages)
That our colleague Noam A. Chomsky no longer argues for a rich innate universal grammar (UG), containing many dozens (or even hundreds) of substantive features or categories, is old news. In Hauser, Chomsky & Fitch (2002), the authors say that the domain-specific faculty of language (=FLN) comprises only the property of recursion, nothing more. Continue reading
Morphists and adaptationists in 19th century biology, and in modern linguistics: Some intriguing parallels
Recently I’ve been reading up on various aspects of the history of biology, and I noted some similarities between biology and linguistics that I found quite amazing. Maybe historians of science will dispute my interpretations, but I cannot resist the temptation to draw some parallels between what I call “morphists” (scholars who emphasize pure “form”) and adaptationists in both biology and linguistics. Continue reading
The moving parts and fixed parts of our theories: Why functional-adaptive explanations are more testable
I have recently stumbled upon a new metaphor may might help us think more clearly about different approaches in linguistics: the “moving-parts” metaphor that is sometimes used by generative linguistics.
It came up first in a Twitter conversation I had with Peter Jenks, Continue reading
Let’s invest more time in research, and less time in reviewing
Over the last three decades, the amount of time linguists spend on reviewing seems to have increased significantly. Reviews of journal papers seem to be getting longer, we spend more time on grant reviewing, and most strikingly, we spend much more energy on abstract reviewing. Maybe this increase in reviewing is a good thing and I’m just nostalgic of the old times, but I feel that there’s too little discussion of this development. Here I will argue that less reviewing would be better for science, Continue reading
Confused by syntax: Some notes on Koeneman & Zeijlstra (2017)
(See also a reply to this critical review by the authors: “Syntax and didactics“)
A new authoritative textbook on Chomskyan syntax
Papers in the framework of current mainstream generative grammar (MGG) are often difficult, or even impenetrable, to read, even when the reader is well-versed in syntax and in other models of generative syntax. They are mostly written for the community of practitioners, who naturally do not see a need to motivate their choices. I was thus happy to see a new textbook (“Introducing syntax”, Koeneman & Zeijlstra 2017), published by an authoritative publisher, and approved by Noam Chomsky himself Continue reading