1,721,294 research outputs found
A conversation between David Pesetsky and Martin Haspelmath about in-depth analysis
No full textMartin Haspelmath: David, thanks for engaging in various discussions on Facebook over the years. Most recently, I had a conversation with Elena Anagnostopoulou about innate principles, and she mentioned parasitic gaps as a convincing example of something that is explained by innate principles. Then I was asked how I would deal with the universal properties of parasitic gaps, and I replied that I wasn’t sure what exactly a parasitic gap is. To test the universality of the phenomenon, I‘d need ..
Do we need a "framework" for syntax? A conversation between Richard Larson and Martin Haspelmath
No full text(The following is a slightly edited conversation that took place on Facebook recently, on Roberta D'Alessandro's page. There's also one comment by Roberta. It's reproduced here with permission.) Martin Haspelmath (Reacting to a Facebook comment that it’s hard to understand the syntax of human languages): Syntax suddenly starts working if it's framework-free! But I admit it may not be so cool... Richard Larson: Same is true for physics! It suddenly "starts working" if you toss out all this sil..
What is the role of innate universal categories in grammatical theorizing? A conversation between David Adger and Martin Haspelmath
No full textMartin Haspelmath: David, you criticized a blogpost that I wrote a while ago, where I said that Chomsky apparently changed his mind and no longer assumes a rich universal grammar (UG). I didn’t quite understand what you meant in your brief Twitter comments. I have been under the impression that in at least 20th century Principles & Parameters linguistics, the idea was that innate grammatical knowledge explains limits on diversity, and therefore analyses of particular languages should make us..
An interview with Dan Slobin on diversity of categories, acquisition, and sign language
No full textMartin Haspelmath: Dan, you have shown an interest in my distinction between comparative concepts and descriptive categories, and you told me that you recently read my new paper “How comparative concepts and linguistic categories are different”. Can you say what you liked about it and how it relates to your own work? Dan Slobin: I read your paper with great enthusiasm and pleasure. It makes your familiar argument precise, elegant, and, in my opinion, strongly convincing. You echo an argument..
An interview with Sonia Cristofaro about diachronic change and typological explanation
No full text(The following conversation reflects some of the discussions that we had over the last few years, and particularly at a recent mini-workshop at WIKO Berlin.) Martin Haspelmath: In the typological literature of the last decade, one finds more and more instances of people claiming that this or that typological generalization actually has a diachronic explanation. Quite a few authors appeal to “common pathways of change” (e.g. Anderson 2016), and Bybee (2006) has even claimed that “the stronge..
Ist die Gender-Grammatik biologisch vorherbestimmt? Eine Klarstellung
No full textvon Josef Bayer, Universität Konstanz In einer Antwort auf meinen Artikel in der Neuen Zürcher Zeitung vom 11. April 2019 fragt Martin Haspelmath Ist die Gender Grammatik biologisch vorbestimmt? und beantwortet die Frage anschließen negativ. Zwar hätten Menschen die biologischen Voraussetzungen für Sprache, aber die “grammatischen Regeln” seien nicht Teil der Biologie. Weil sie über die Sprachen hinweg variieren, müssen sie, so Haspelmaths Schlussfolgerung, kulturell sein. Ich bin damit selbs..
A discussion with Edith Moravcsik about singulative markers and individualizers
No full textMartin Haspelmath: Edith, we have a long history of interacting, starting with the first course on universals that I attended at the University of Vienna (back in 1982, as I noted here). So I’m really glad that you took an interest in some of my recent work on singulative marking (Haspelmath & Karjus 2017). Edith Moravcsik: I was reminded of it by the recent LINGTYP discussion about singulatives. I re-read the your 2017 paper on the topic (Haspelmath & Karjus) and also your relevant 2018 blog..
What is the role of biology and culture in understanding language(s)? A discussion with José-Luis Mendívil-Giró
No full textMartin Haspelmath: José-Luis, I'd like to thank you for writing a detailed comment on one of my recent posts (on differential object marking) on your own blog (Philosophy of Linguistics). I’d like to discuss some of the general issues in more detail. José-Luis Mendívil-Giró: Thank you very much, Martin, for your interest in my opinions. Martin: I agree with you that in addition to understanding “why” (e.g. why object marking tends to be differential in a particular way in languages), scientis..
A conversation between Gillian Ramchand and Martin Haspelmath, on different perspectives in linguistics
No full textMartin: Many thanks, Gillian, for contributing a substantive comment on a recent blogpost about describing and comparing languages and framework-free theory. Instead of leaving your comment simply as it, here are some reactions of mine in a dialogue form (and thanks for adding a few more points, marked in italics below). Gillian Ramchand: It seems logically obvious that IF there are things common to all languages, then every individual language will manifest them in some way. Can we agree on ..
CLDF dataset derived from Haspelmath and Tadmor's "World Loanword Database" from 2009
No full textCite the source of the dataset as:
Haspelmath, Martin & Tadmor, Uri (eds.) 2009. World Loanword Database. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://wold.clld.org
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