The interplay between comparative concepts and descriptive categories (Reply to Newmeyer)

In his reply to my discussion note ‘Comparative concepts and descriptive categories in crosslinguistic studies’(Haspelmath 2010, henceforth H10), Newmeyer (2010, henceforth N) defends the widespread old idea that there are crosslinguistic categories and that the same kinds of concepts are and should be used both in crosslinguistic studies and in language-particular description. His critique does not amount to a full-blown endorsement of the categorial-universalist position, however, which in its prototypical generative form assumes a single set of categories or features for both purposes. For instance, when N says that ‘it is only by means of working out the interplay between the languageparticular and the language-independent that we can hope to understand either’ (p. 688), he implies that the two are not identical, and that the relationship between them is nontrivial, much as I have emphasized.

The bulk of N’s reply is devoted to listing various problems in H10’s examples that he sees as undermining its general claims, especially with respect to the notions of subject, thematic roles, adjectives, clause, and word. In this brief reply, I try to show that none of them are real, and that a closer consideration of these cases actually strengthens my position.

N first observes that despite my criticism of the equation of language-particular ‘subject’ categories across languages, I do use ‘subject’ as a comparative concept in some of the generalizations and definitions (in particular, in examples 3 and 13). I did not give the relevant definition in H10 for lack of space, hoping that it could be inferred, but here it is: ‘the agent of a simple transitive clause’ (the same definition is assumed by Greenberg 1963). This is of course a very different concept from ‘Subject in Tagalog’ (defined in terms of case-marking by ang, very often different from the agent NP) and from ‘Subject in English’ (perhaps defined as in N’s ex. 6, comprising expletive there, which surely is not an agent). Thus, this underscores rather than undermines my central point. N’s own concrete proposal for defining ‘subject’ (‘[an entity that manifests] more of the core properties of subjects than of constructs that contrast with subjects’, p. 692) is also a possible comparative concept, provided that the ‘core properties’ can be defined in a universally applicable way. As I noted in H10 (§7.3) in the discussion of Keenan’s (1976) definition of ‘subject’, however, it is unclear how one can draw up such a list of core properties on a principled basis. And most crucially, it is unlikely that such a definition will be found useful in language-particular studies. Descriptive categories are normally defined in terms of specific conditions, not in vague quantitative terms (‘more properties than’).

N also criticizes me for using semantic roles such as ‘recipient’ (in 2) and ‘agent’ (in 16) (even though he uses the latter concept himself in ex. 6). But he overlooks that the problems with such semantic roles have never arisen in a typological context. Nobody has ever seen problems with defining the comparative concept ‘ergative’ in terms of ‘agent’. It is only when one tries to describe particular languages with a single universal set of semantic roles that one runs into problems. But we can describe I play the sonata in purely grammatical terms, without reference to general semantic roles.¹ Generative linguists try to use as many crosslinguistic categories in the description of individual languages as possible, and this often leads to insurmountable problems. Typology is happy to limit its generalizations to clear cases of agents, patients, and recipients. Admittedly, we cannot formulate universals over sentences like I play a sonata, but typology does not strive for exhaustiveness of coverage. Comparative linguists can thus simply leave them aside, whereas descriptivists have to find a category for them, and this is difficult if one only wants to use crosslinguistic categories.

Let us look at adjectives next. N is of course right that ‘it makes all the difference in the world for generalizations about Adjective-Noun order’ how ‘adjective’ is defined (p. 690). Greenberg and Dryer...