Human linguisticality and the building blocks of languages

This paper discusses the widely held idea that the building blocks of languages (features, categories, and architectures) are part of an innate blueprint for Human Language, and notes that if one allows for convergent cultural evolution of grammatical structures, then much of the motivation for it disappears. I start by observing that human linguisticality (=the biological capacity for language) is uncontroversial, and that confusing terminology (“language faculty,” “universal grammar”) has often clouded the substantive issues in the past. I argue that like musicality and other biological capacities, linguisticality is best studied in a broadly comparative perspective. Comparing languages like other aspects of culture means that the comparisons are of the Greenbergian type, but many linguists have presupposed that the comparisons should be done as in chemistry, with the presupposition that the innate building blocks are also the material that individual grammars are made of. In actual fact, the structural uniqueness of languages (in lexicon, phonology, and morphosyntax) leads us to prefer a Greenbergian approach to comparison, which is also more in line with the Minimalist idea that there are very few domain-specific elements of the biological capacity for language

Ergativity and depth of analysis

In this paper, I argue that “depth of analysis” does not deserve the prestige that it is sometimes given in general linguistics. While language description should certainly be as detailed as possible, general linguistics must rely on worldwide comparison of languages, and this cannot be based on language-particular analyses. Rigorous quantitative comparison requires uniform measurement, and this implies abstracting away from many language-particular peculiarities. I will illustrate this on the basis of ergative patterns, starting out from I.A. Mel’čuk’s (1981) proposal for Lezgian. This proposal was not successful, but why not? And why is Baker’s (2015) theory of dependent case likewise unsuccessful? By contrast, quantitative worldwide research has found striking similarities of ergative coding patterns, which can be explained by the efficiency theory of asymmetric coding. I will argue that this success is due to a more cautious approach to understanding Human Language, which does not rely on the Mendeleyevian vision for grammar (that all grammars are made from the same innate building blocks)

Inflection and derivation as traditional comparative concepts

This article revisits the distinction between inflectional and derivational patterns in general grammar and discusses the possibility that this wellknown distinction is not rooted in the reality of languages, but in the Westerntradition of describing languages, through dictionaries (for words, includingderived lexemes) and through grammar books (where we often find tables ofexemplary paradigms). This tradition has led to rather different terminologicaltreatments of the two kinds of patterns, but from the perspective of a constructional view of morphology, there is no need to incorporate such differences intoformal grammatical descriptions. For practical purposes, we need clear andsimple definitions of entrenched terms of general linguistics, so the article proposes semantically based (retro-) definitions of inflection, derivation and lexemethat cover the bulk of the existing usage. Finally, I briefly explain why we needsharp definitions of comparative concepts, and why prototype-based and fuzzydefinitions of traditional terms are not helpful.<br

Explaining grammatical coding asymmetries: Form–frequency correspondences and predictability

This paper claims that a wide variety of grammatical coding asymmetries can be explained as adaptations to the language users’ needs, in terms of frequency of use, predictability and coding efficiency. I claim that all grammatical oppositions involving a minimal meaning difference and a significant frequency difference are reflected in a universal coding asymmetry, i.e. a cross-linguistic pattern in which the less frequent member of the opposition gets special coding, unless the coding is uniformly explicit or uniformly zero. I give 25 examples of pairs of construction types, from a substantial range of grammatical domains. For some of them, the existing evidence from the world’s languages and from corpus counts is already strong, while for others, I know of no counterevidence and I make readily testable claims. I also discuss how the functional-adaptive forces operate in language change, and I discuss a number of possible alternative explanations

Defining the word

In this paper, I propose a definition of the term word that can be applied to all languages using the same criteria. Roughly, a word is defined as a free morph or a clitic or a root plus affixes or a compound plus affixes. The paper relies on earlier definitions of the terms free, morph, affix, clitic, root, and compound, which are summarized here. I briefly compare the proposed definition with Bloomfield’s, I note that it is a shared-core definition, and I say how word-forms differ from lexemes. In the final section, I explain why I think that an unnatural-seeming definition is better than a prototype definition or other options

Explaining alienability contrasts in adpossessive constructions: Predictability vs. iconicity

This paper argues that alienability contrasts in adnominal possessive constructions should not be explained by iconicity of distance, but by predictability due to the higher relative frequency of possessed occurrences of inalienable nouns. While it is true that when there is an alienability split, the alienable construction typically has an additional marker which often separates the possessor from the possessed noun, the broader generalization is that additional marking is found when the possessive relationship is less predictable. This generalization also extends to cases of antipossessive marking and impossessibility. The diachronic mechanisms responsible for the development of alienability contrasts are differential reduction and differential inhibition of a new construction

Comparing reflexive constructions in the world's languages

The past four decades have seen a lot of new research on reflexive constructionsthat goes far beyond the earlier literature, and a variety of technical terms havebeen used. The divergent frameworks have made some of this literature hard toaccess. This paper provides a nontechnical overview of the most important kindsof phenomena in the world’s languages and offers a coherent conceptualframe-work and a set of cross-linguistically applicable technical terms, defined also inan appendix. I also explain other widely used terms that do not form part of thepresent conceptual system (defined in another appendix). The paper begins with adefinition of the most basic term (reflexive construction) and then moves to typesof reflexivizers (reflexive pronouns and reflexive voice markers), as well assyntactic concepts such as ranks and domains. I also briefly discuss obviative anaphoricpronouns and antireflexive marking. Finally, I introduce the distinction betweendiscourse-referential and co-varying coreference. The general philosophy is thatwe will understand general questions about reflexive constructions (i.e. questionsnot restricted to the language-particular level) only when we know what isuniversal and what is historically accidental, so there is also an appendix that lists somepossible universals of reflexive constructions

Coexpression and synexpression patterns across languages: Comparative concepts and possible explanations

Meanings and linguistic shapes (or forms) do not always map onto each other in a unique way, and linguists have used all kinds of different terms for such situations: Ambiguity, polysemy, syncretism, lexicalization, semantic maps; portmanteau, cumulative exponence, feature bundling, underspecification, and so on. In the domain of lexical comparison, the term colexification has become generally established in recent years, and in the present paper, I extend this word-formation pattern in a regular way (cogrammification, coexpression; syllexification, syngrammification, synexpression). These novel terms allow us to chart the range of relevant phenomena in a systematic way across the grammar-lexicon continuum, and to ask whether highly general explanations of coexpression and synexpression patterns are possible. While there is no new proposal for explaining coexpression here, I will suggest that frequency of occurrence plays a crucial role in explaining synexpression patterns. Copyright © 2023 Haspelmath