Typology: (competing) motivations МД

2 А.Е. Кибрик От таксономической к объяснительной ‘Как’ типология -> ‘Почему’ типология Объяснение следует искать вне собственно языковой структуры отличается от объяснений через «обобщение» Для Кибрика – «обстоятельства» усвоения и использования языка

3 Cristofaro’s ‘universals’ Universals of language proper Functional universals =external motivations Conceptual space (and its structure)

4 Payne’s leaf Why is the leaf flat? It’s done so It’s father was so (it was born so) … It maximizes its surface for photosynthesis Functionalism is biology

5 Кибрик 1992: on alignment Underlying principles: Economy Dicrimination Semanticity

6 Cristofaro 2012 Functional universals (=motivations) Iconicity Markedness Processing ease

7 Croft 2003 (Competing) motivations Processing ease Frequency of use …

8 Inventory of motivations Iconicity Economy/Markedness/Processing ease Economy Markedness Frequency Processing ease Anthropo-/egocentricity

9 Кибрик 1992: on alignment

10 Кибрик 1992: on alignment EconomyDiscriminationSemanticity 1.Accusative0 2.Ergative0 3.Active00 4.Contrastive-20 5.Neutral0-2 6.? 7.? 8.? 9.? 10.? 11.? 12.? 13.? 14.? 15.?

11 Motivations confront GG Cf.: processing ease, frequency and other external motivations Hawkins: “Chomsky … has argued that grammars are ultimately autonomous and independent of performance factors, and are determined by an innate U(niversal) G(rammar)” Cristofaro: Chomsky insists that languages are the way they are not because of external reasons (pressions) but because they are the way they are (inherited UG) Doris Payne’s leaf

12 x-centricity anthropo- animacy hierarchy? probably, related to salience (see Comrie on markedness and DuBois on frequency below) ego- the central place all shifters have in human language? person hierarchies (e.g. clusivity)

13 Iconicity Givon: “All other thing being equal, a coded experience is easier to store, retrieve and communicate if the code is maximally isomorphic to the experience” underlying performance

14 Economy (=markedness?) Cristofaro: if conceptual situations that are less frequent at the discourse level are associated with zero-marking, so will conceptual situations that are more frequent at the discourse level this is arguably because more frequent conceptual situations are easier to recognize and therefore need not be expressed overtly an instance of the general economic principle whereby speakers do not express information overtly whenever they can afford to do so (*Grice) Underlying performance (processing ease)

15 Croft 2003 “Typology and Universals” links the discussion of economy and iconicity to the notion of markedness marked category receives not less marking, allows for less suppletion/allomorphy/irregularities, distinguishes less cross-cutting categories, and occurs less often (than the unmarked one)

16 Croft Pl-Pl +Sg+- -Sg++ SgPl Mhethey Fshe Nit ‘structural coding’ (morphological) (paradigmatic) ‘behavorial potential’

17 Croft: economy vs. iconicity Iconicity is understood as “syntagmatic isomorphism” (Hyman): the correspondence between meaning and form in a syntagmatic relation Economy is understood (primarily) as amount of morphological material

18 Croft: economy vs. iconicity How to prove their (co-)existence of competing economy and iconicity? There are no patterns that are not motivated by either rare empty morphemes (oFR) jeo ne di -> je ne dis pas -> je dis pas de l’eau -> dlo (HC)

19 Croft: economy vs. iconicity

20 Croft: economy vs. iconicity Iconicity is understood as “paradigmatic isomorphism” (Hyman): the correspondence between meaning and form in a pradigmatic relation Lexical: synonymy, monosemy, homonymy, polysemy Polysemy! recurrent similarity of form must reflect similarity in meaning Form Meaning Economy Iconicity

21 Croft: economy vs. iconicity

22 Croft: markedness and frequency The unmarked tokens will occur at least as frequently as marked tokens (Greenberg) Connects properties of language structure to properties of language use

23 Croft: markedness and frequency How is this connected to economy? Zipf’s law: more frequent tokens are shorter DuBois: Grammars code best what speakers do most Non-iconic economical mappings (cumulation, suppletion; homonymy, polysemy) are found in frequent tokens What about behavorial?

24 Croft: summary Structural coding Frequency Salience/ expectedness Economy Iconicity Processing ease

25 Why compete? If functionalists are right in that linguitic structures are ‘externally’ motivated, why do languages have different structures? Competing motivations Different motivations are differently strong; they all have chances – though different chances – to win

26 Cristofaro’s points Contra e.g. Kibrik, motivations do not affect language acquisition or spread or use but only language change (creation of novel constructions) motivations do not pertain to language use but to language change; explains effect of vestiges Competing motivations explain cross-linguistic variation Existence of competing motivations explains not only existence of relatively well represented types (ergative vs. accusative) which can be explained away by ‘parameters’ of GG but also the fact that (almost) no universal is absolute: all are statistical

27 Back to universals: Indeed, in order for non-implicational and implicational universals to be part of Universal Grammar, they have to be exceptionless, because by definition Universal Grammar involves the same components for all speakers. Yet very few, if any, typological universals are free from exceptions

28 Hawkins 2003 preferred word orders in languages that permit choices are generally those that are productively grammaticalized in languages with fixed orders Keenan-Comrie Accessibility Hierarchy is supported both by processing ease and frequency data from performance, and by grammatical data in the form of cut-off points for relativization

29 Hawkins 2003 Performance-Grammar Correspondence Hypothesis: Grammars have conventionalized syntactic structures in proportion to their degree of preference in performance, as evidenced by patterns of selection in corpora and by ease of processing in psycholinguistic experiments In order to test the PGCH we need to examine variation data both across and within languages. If patterns in the one (in grammars) match patterns in the other (in performance), the hypothesis will be supported Should also be supported by PsyLing evidence

30 Hawkins 2012 Performance based principles (some of) Minimize form: as in number hierarchy, oblique cases etc (correlation between grammaticalization and frequency of use; link to the notion of markedness) Minimize domain: as in relativization: accessibility, gapping (correlation between grammaticalization and frequency of use)

31 Summary Kibrik shifting towards explanatory typology Haiman iconicity (in a very abstract sense) Croft markedness (melted iconicity and economy) Hawkins focus on specific models of performance-grammar correspondance Cristofaro – an overview