Do field linguists really ask the “wrong questions”? A reply to Haspelmath (2012a)

In a recent paper on word classes, Haspelmath (2012a) takes field linguists to task for asking the “wrong questions,” like whether the major word classes are universal or present in a particular language. The problem with this claim is that the field linguists he cites are not asking these questions at all. While they may advocate a particular best analysis, they do not usually make either explicit or implicit universalists claims (the main exception being Chung 2012 who says that her analysis of Chamorro “supports the claim that lexical categories are universal” (p1)).

My Linguistic Typology paper on adjectives in Ecuadorian Quechua (Floyd 2011) is one of sources portrayed as universalist, despite clearly stating that it does not “not take a strong position here regarding the adjective’s universality” (p27) and that the term “adjective” in the article refers only to a “language-internal word class” (p39). Continue reading