Abstract
It is hard to define structural categories of language (e.g. noun, verb, adjective) in a way which accounts for linguistic variation. This leads Haspelmath to make the following claims: i) unlike in biology and chemistry, there are no natural kinds in language; ii) there is a fundamental distinction between descriptive and comparative linguistic categories, and; iii) generalisations based on comparisons between languages can in principle tell us nothing about specific languages. The implication is that cross-linguistic categories cannot support scientific induction. I disagree: generalisations on the basis of linguistic comparison should inform the language sciences. Haspelmath is not alone in identifying a connection between the nature of the categories we use and the kind of inferences we can make (e.g. Goodman’s ‘new riddle of induction’), but he is both overly pessimistic about categories in language and overly optimistic about categories in other sciences: biology and even chemistry work with categories which are indeterminate to some degree. Linguistic categories are clusters of co-occurring properties with variable instantiations, but this does not mean that we should dispense with them: if linguistic generalisations reliably lead to predictions about individual languages, and if we can integrate them into more sophisticated causal explanations, then there is no a priori requirement for a fundamental descriptive/comparative distinction. Instead, we should appreciate linguistic variation as a key component of our explanations rather than a problem to be dealt with.
Funding source: ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language
Award Identifier / Grant number: CE140100041 ‘Dynamics of Language’
Acknowledgment
Thanks to Nick Evans and Kim Sterelny for setting the ball rolling on this project, as well as their guidance, commentary and feedback throughout; thanks also to Lindell Bromham and Ian Keen for their insightful reviews, and to Bruno Ippedico, Hedvig Skirgård, and Kevin Stadler for their comments on an earlier version of this paper; thanks to Ron Planer and Fausto Carcassi for their invaluable philosophical input. This project was supported by a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language and the Department of Philosophy at the Australian National University.
References
Bickel, Balthasar. 2013. Distributional typology: Statistical inquiries into the dynamics of linguistic diversity. In Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis, 901–923. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Boyd, Richard. 1999. Homeostasis, species, and higher taxa. In Species, 141–185. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Brown, Dunstan, Marina Chumakina & Greville G. Corbett. 2012. Canonical morphology and syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199604326.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. & Östen Dahl. 1989. The creation of tense and aspect systems in the languages of the world. Studies in Language 13(1). 51–103. https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.13.1.03byb.Search in Google Scholar
Croft, William. 2000. Explaining language change: An evolutionary approach. London: Longman.Search in Google Scholar
Croft, William. 2008. Evolutionary linguistics. Annual Review of Anthropology 37(1). 219–234. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.37.081407.085156.Search in Google Scholar
Dahl, Östen. 2016. Thoughts on language-specific and crosslinguistic entities. Linguistic Typology 20(2). 427–437. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2016-0016.Search in Google Scholar
Darwin, Charles. 1859. On the origin of the species. London: John Murray.Search in Google Scholar
De Queiroz, Kevin. 2007. Species concepts and species delimitation. Systematic Biology 56(6). 879–886. https://doi.org/10.1080/10635150701701083.Search in Google Scholar
Ereshefsky, Marc. 1992. The units of evolution: Essays on the nature of species. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Ereshefsky, Marc. 2017. Species. In The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Palo Alto, California: Stanford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas. 2016. Typology and coevolutionary linguistics. Linguistic Typology 20(3). 505–520. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2016-0023.Search in Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas & Stephen C. Levinson. 2009. The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32(5). 429–494. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x0999094x.Search in Google Scholar
Godfrey-Smith, Peter. 2003. Goodman’s problem and scientific methodology. Journal of Philosophy 100(11). 573–590.Search in Google Scholar
Godfrey-Smith, Peter. 2011. Induction, samples, and kinds. Carving Nature at its Joints: Topics in Contemporary Philosophy 8. 33–52. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262015936.003.0002.Search in Google Scholar
Goodman, Nelson. 1955. Fact, fiction and forecast. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph. 1974. Language typology: A historical and analytic overview. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110886436Search in Google Scholar
Hartmann, Iren, Martin Haspelmath & Michael Cysouw. 2014. Identifying semantic role clusters and alignment types via microrole coexpression tendencies. Advances in research on semantic roles 38(3). 463–484.10.1075/bct.88.02harSearch in Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2007. Pre-established categories don’t exist: Consequences for language description and typology. Linguistic Typology 11(1). 119–132. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty.2007.011.Search in Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2010a. Comparative concepts and descriptive categories in crosslinguistic studies. Language 86(3). 663–687.10.1353/lan.2010.0021Search in Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2010b. The interplay between comparative concepts and descriptive categories (Reply to Newmeyer). Language 86(3). 696–699.10.1353/lan.2010.0004Search in Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2011. The indeterminacy of word segmentation and the nature of morphology and syntax. Folia Linguistica 45(1). 31–80. https://doi.org/10.1515/flin.2011.002.Search in Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2018. How comparative concepts and descriptive linguistic categories are different. In Daniël Olmen, Tanja Mortelmann & Frank Brisard (eds.), Aspects of linguistic variation. Berlin: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110607963-004Search in Google Scholar
Huddlestone, Rodney & Geoffrey K. Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/9781316423530Search in Google Scholar
Hume, David. 1740. A treatise of human nature. London.10.1093/oseo/instance.00046221Search in Google Scholar
Khalidi, Muhammad Ali. 2013. Kinds (Natural kinds Vs. Human kinds). In Encyclopedia of philosophy and the social sciences. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage.Search in Google Scholar
Kripke, Saul A. 1972. Naming and necessity. In Semantics of natural language, 253–355. Dordrecht: Springer.10.1007/978-94-010-2557-7_9Search in Google Scholar
Lazard, Gilbert. 2006. More on counterfactuality, and on categories in general. Linguistic Typology 10(1). 61–66. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty.2006.003.Search in Google Scholar
Mayr, Ernst. 1994. Typological versus population thinking. In Conceptual issues in evolutionary biology, 157–160. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Putnam, Hilary. 1979. The meaning of ”meaning”. In Philosophical papers, vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511625251.014Search in Google Scholar
Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1969. Natural kinds. In Essays in honour of Carl Hempel, 5–23. Dortrecht: Springer Science and Business Media.10.1007/978-94-017-1466-2_2Search in Google Scholar
Sterelny, Kim. 1994. The nature of species. Philosophical Books 35(1). 9–20.10.1111/j.1468-0149.1994.tb02387.xSearch in Google Scholar
Tinbergen, Niko. 1963. On aims and methods of ethology. Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie 20. 410–433.10.1017/CBO9780511619991.003Search in Google Scholar
VandeWall, Holly. 2007. Why water is not H2O, and other critiques of essentialist ontology from the philosophy of chemistry. Philosophy of Science 74(5). 906–919. https://doi.org/10.1086/525632.Search in Google Scholar
Weinberg, Steven. 1998. The revolution that didn’t happen. New York Review of Books 45(15). 48–52.Search in Google Scholar
Zwarts, Joost. 2008. Commentary on Croft and Poole, inferring universals from grammatical variation: Multidimensional scaling for typological analysis. Theoretical Linguistics 34(1). 67–73. https://doi.org/10.1515/thli.2008.006.Search in Google Scholar
Zwarts, Joost, William Croft & Keith T. Poole. 2008. Inferring universals from grammatical variation: Multidimensional scaling for typological analysis. Theoretical Linguistics 34(1). 1–37. https://doi.org/10.1515/thli.2008.006.Search in Google Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold M. 1977. Litmus tests, the Bloomfieldian counterrevolution, and the correspondence fallacy. In Second annual linguistic metatheory conference: Michigan State University.Search in Google Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold M. 1985. Clitics and particles. Language 61(2). 283–305. https://doi.org/10.2307/414146.Search in Google Scholar
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston