Usage-based and Typological Approaches to Linguistic Units PDF
Preview Usage-based and Typological Approaches to Linguistic Units
y u r a a L v o , R i t d s . ) n e T s u y o s h i kOo S u z u k i ( o y R d n a U T t ys o a p g Lo i e l n o - g b g u a i c i s sa e t l i d B E cA N a J Up A n M p I n N d S ir C to U s R a R E c N T h T O e P I s C S Usage-based and Typological Approaches to Linguistic Units Benjamins Current Topics issn 1874-0081 Special issues of established journals tend to circulate within the orbit of the subscribers of those journals. For the Benjamins Current Topics series a number of special issues of various journals have been selected containing salient topics of research with the aim of finding new audiences for topically interesting material, bringing such material to a wider readership in book format. For an overview of all books published in this series, please see benjamins.com/catalog/bct Volume 114 Usage-based and Typological Approaches to Linguistic Units Edited by Tsuyoshi Ono, Ritva Laury and Ryoko Suzuki These materials were previously published in Studies in Language 43:2 (2019) Usage-based and Typological Approaches to Linguistic Units Edited by Tsuyoshi Ono University of Alberta Ritva Laury University of Helsinki Ryoko Suzuki Keio University John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of 8 the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984. doi 10.1075/bct.114 Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress: lccn 2021001832 (print) / 2021001833 (e-book) isbn 978 90 272 0883 5 (Hb) isbn 978 90 272 5983 7 (e-book) © 2021 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com Table of contents Introduction On the notion of unit in the study of human languages 1 TsuyoshiOno,RitvaLauryandRyokoSuzuki Articles Understanding ‘clause’ as an emergent ‘unit’ in everyday conversation 11 Sandra A.Thompson Linguistic units and their systems: Completeness,self-reference, and 39 contingency RossKrekoski Free NPs as units in Finnish 59 Marja-LiisaHelasvuo Referring expressions in categorizing activities: Rethinking the nature 87 of linguistic units for the study of interaction PatriciaMayesandHongyinTao Questioning the clause as a crosslinguistic unit in grammar and 123 interaction RitvaLaury,TsuyoshiOnoandRyokoSuzuki The predicate as a locus of grammar and interaction in colloquial 161 Indonesian Michael C.Ewing Index 203 On the notion of unit in the study of human languages TsuyoshiOno,RitvaLauryandRyokoSuzuki University of Alberta|University of Helsinki|Keio University 1. Introduction Inthefollowingsections,wewillraiseseveralglobalissueshavingtodowiththe notionofthelinguisticunit,thethemeofthecurrentvolume.Ourintentionhere istohelpthereaderunderstandthediscussiongiveninthesedata-heavypapers inthelargercontextoftheorizingthenatureofhumanlanguageingeneral.Our theoreticaldiscussionwillbefollowedbysummariesofthesecontributionsatthe end of the article. 1.1 The notion of unit in linguistics Thefollowingdefinitionfromawell-respecteddictionaryoftermsinthefieldof linguisticsmoreorlessrepresentsthetraditionalunderstandingofthenotionof unit: unit–Inageneral,pre-theoreticalsense,thistermisoftenusedinlinguisticsand phoneticstorefertoanyentitywhichconstitutesthefocusofanenquiry.…The unitisthestretchoflanguagethatcarriesgrammaticalpatterns,andwithinwhich grammaticalchoicesaremade.Forexample,theunitsentenceconsistsofoneor more instances of the unit clause, and so on. (Crystal 2008:503) Thelinguisticunitisstructurallydefinedhereasacontainer‘carrying’grammat- icalpatterns.Thisisconsonantwith,andperhapshasinfluencedorisinfluenced by,thetraditionalviewthatlanguage,particularlysyntax,ismadeoffullyparsable and hierarchically organized parts. Becauseofthedominanceofthisparticularviewoflanguageanditsseeming simplicity, this understanding of the notion of unit has typically been taken for granted and given a more or less pre-theoretical (as the above definition states) andthusunchallengedstatus.Thisismanifestedinthediscussionofdirectlyrel- evant topics (e.g., the discussion of the unit clause) and also embedded in less https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.114.01ono © 2021 John Benjamins Publishing Company 2 TsuyoshiOno,RitvaLauryandRyokoSuzuki relevant discussion, practically in all disciplines, fields, and areas dealing with language including any type of syntax, typology, historical linguistics, compu- tational linguistics, psycholinguistics, Conversation Analysis, language teaching, andsoon. In this article, we would like to take issue with this notion as it is currently understoodbecause,aswewilldemonstrate,andasisfurthersupportedbyother contributionsinthisvolume,itmispresentsthenatureofthelanguageofeveryday talk,theprimaryformoflanguage(see,e.g.,Fillmore1974;Schegloff1996;Linell 2005). 1.2 Unit in individual languages Characterizing linguistic structure in terms of units understood as described above dominates studies of individual languages. Steps typically taken to approach linguistic structure are to define structural units (e.g., clause) a priori and then search for their manifestations in the language in question. The main problemwithsuchanapproachisthatthosestructuralunits(andthustheirdef- initions) originate from the study of socially dominant languages such as Indo- European languages, especially English, but they have tended to be assumed as universals. Obviouslythisisproblematicpartlybecausethesocialdominanceofpartic- ularlanguagesshouldnotprivilegetheirstructuralpropertiesasgeneralproper- tiesofhumanlanguages.Itisalsoproblematicbecausethosestructuralproperties mostlyderivefromthestudyofexamplesconstructedbyresearchersthemselves, whichthusmightnotreflectthelanguageofactualspeech,themostfundamental formoflanguage.Forthesereasons,wearejustifiedtoaskwhethersuchproper- tiesareactuallyrelevanttolanguagesthatonemighthappentobestudying.That is, are structural properties primarily based on constructed examples of socially dominant language(s) real/useful for actual speech data of other languages? Infact,sincethe1990s,studiesbasedonconversationdatahavedemonstrated theproblematicnatureoftraditionallinguisticunitsinaccountingforthegram- mar of individual languages (Englebretson 2003, 2008; Miller 1995; Miller & Weinert 1998; Thompson 2002; Ono & Jones 2008; Ono & Thompson 1995, 2009; Tao 2003). Some of these studies have even shown that structural proper- ties, including units which are familiar to linguists and assumed to be found in all languages, are clearly not universal, for example in the case of syntactic sub- ject(e.g.,ergativelanguages),clausalcomplementation(incolloquialIndonesian, Englebretson2003),clausecombinations(inFinnishandJapanese,Laury&Ono 2014), and passives (in Newari,Abraham & Kulikov 1999). On the notion of unit in the study of human languages 3 Thisfurthersuggeststhatwemightevenbejustifiedtoaskwhetherparticu- lar linguistic properties we choose to focus on in analyzing particular languages are in fact an outcome of a very common tendency in our tradition of looking for language universals prematurely based on the observation of small numbers oflanguages.1 1.3 Cross-linguisticperspective and functional motivation Forthereasonsjustdiscussed,itisinterestingtofindrecenttypologicallyoriented research which also questions the universality of some linguistic units and cate- gories(e.g.,Dryer1997;Croft2001;Englebretson2003).Thisisperhapsbecause, due to the nature of their research, these linguists have had the opportunity to closelyobserveavarietyofstructuralpatternspresentedbytheworld’slanguages, and have gained a better grasp of how different languages can be. Regarding the common tendency for positing cross-linguistic structures, it has been suggested that if categories in different languages resemble each other, it may be because they share functions; the similarity we observe is likely to be aresultfromform-meaningisomorphy,notfromuniversalityofgivenstructural categories: The temptation that has led linguists in the past to posit structure in a cross- linguisticsenseisdrivenpreciselybythehighdegreeofsimilarityamongstruc- tures in different languages, a degree of similarity that leads to using the same labelsforsimilarstructuresindifferentlanguagesandeventuallytothereplica- tionoftheselabelsaslabelsforsomeunifiedcrosslinguisticphenomenon.But, once we recognize that the similarities that lead to these labels are themselves simplythereflectionofhighdegreesofisomorphismbetweendifferentstructures andagivenfunction,thentheneedforpositingcrosslinguisticstructuresshould evaporate. (Dryer 1997:137)2 This is an extremely interesting proposal partly because it attempts to motivate structural universals and clearly merits further work. Even more radically, there has been a suggestion that linguistic categories studied by linguists, called ‘crosslinguistic categories’ and used for comparative purposes, may not be and need not be real to speakers, or for particular lan- guages at all (Haspelmath 2010:665, 2018; see also Dryer 1997). According to 1. Lookingforlanguageuniversalsisalong-standingpreoccupationinlinguistics,whichcan endupmisrepresentingindividuallanguageswhichdonotfitthepatternsportrayedascom- mon (or even universal) by linguists. 2. Butwemayevenaskifandhowfunctionscanbeassumedtobesimilar.Thereisclearlya need to establish methods to establish functional equivalence for such endeavors to proceed.
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