Contrastive Linguistics and Linguistic Typology

7/27/2019 Contrastive Linguistics and Linguistic Typology

1/18

From contrastive linguistics to linguistic typology*

Johan van der AuweraUniversity of Antwerp (Belgium)

Abstract

The paper looks back at Hawkins (1986), A comparative typology of English andGerman, and shows on the basis of raising and human impersonal pronouns in English,Dutch, and German that contrastive linguistics can be taken as a pilot study in typology.It also pleads for doing the contrastive linguistics of three languages rather than of two,not least because the third language can teach us something about the other two.

Keywords: contrastive linguistics, typology, raising, human impersonal pronoun,semantic map

1. IntroductionIn the wake of Hawkins (1986), A comparative typology of English and German:Unifying the contrasts, this paper makes a case for allowing contrastive linguistics therole of pilot typology. It also sketches how contrastive linguistics as typology has tomeet the standards of both contrastive linguistics and typology and it pleads for doingmore contrastive linguistics with three languages rather than two.

2. Contrastive linguistics as pilot typologyOne way of comparing the current state of two fields is to compare what practitioners ofthese fields did at recent, important, and representative international conferencesspecifically devoted to these fields. I believe that the Sixth International ContrastiveLinguistics Conference held in Berlin in September 2010 and the 8 th InternationalConference of Linguistic Typology held in Berkeley in 2009 are such conferences. Atthe Berlin Contrastive linguistics conference, there was a pronounced preference instudying issues particular to two languages, rather than issues particular to more thantwo languages or general issues. This is shown in Table 1.1

Table 1. Number of languages covered at presentations at the Sixth International Contrastive LinguisticsConference (2010).

2 languages 62 %3 languages 8 %4 languages 4 %5 languages < 1 %

more than 5 languages < 2 %other < 25 %


2/18

2

Pairwise contrastive studies had titles such as those listed in (1).

(1) a.. Les marqueurs discursifs en franais et en allemand: Les raisons duneasymmetrie

b. Using a bidirectional parallel corpus for contrastive studies of Thai and

Germanc. Verbal complements of motion verbs: a diachronic perspective fromGerman and English

I assume that the focus on two languages is not really surprising given a classicaldefinition such as that of James (1980: 3) C[ontrastive] A[nalysis] is alwaysconcerned with apairof languages and not just a property of the work presented atthis conference, though if one wants more certainty, one should of course look at otherconferences and publications. Let us now look at the 2009 typology conference, andsimilarly assume that the program gives us a good idea about what typology amountsthis in this day and age. It turns out that this conference did not have any presentationon just two languages nor was there any on three, four or a few more. Of the categoriesused in Table 1 all the presentations would go under other. Some representative titlesare listed in (2).

(2) a. Phonotactic restrictions on ejectives: a typological surveyb. Epistemic complementizers - a cross-linguistic surveyc. Intonational focus marking in tone languages: The case of Beaver

(Northern Athabaskan)

To some extent this is a coincidence, for (2c) shows that one can be deemed typological

and focus on just one language. If that is justified, then one could surely engage intypology and focus on a language pair as well. Nevertheless, the contrast is quite strongand I think that current contrastive linguistics and typology are essentially differentdisciplines, with a possible overlap, but a modest one.

From the above point of view the title and the purpose of Hawkins celebrated1986 book,A Comparative Typology of English and German: Unifying the contrasts, isa little surprising. The book clearly deals with two languages, viz. English and German,but it also purports to be typology. Does Hawkins (1986) therefore count both ascontrastive linguistics and as typology? If we look at the reception of the book in thelast quarter century, the answer is clear. It is primarily the contrastive linguists and not

the typologists that have reacted to the book, partially supported it, and refined andfalsified some of its hypotheses. The verdict of Knig and Gast (2007), another EnglishGerman study, is clear: Hawkins (1986) is claimed as contrastive linguistics, andimportant contrastive linguistics, for that matter: it would have put the field on soliddescriptive foundations (Knig & Gast 2007: 2). Yet, interestingly, Hawkins did notreally see his book as a contribution to the field of contrastive linguistics. He ratherconsidered his work as a kind of linguistics which was to go in between generative andtypological linguistics. The latter two were contrasted along a few parameters. First,


3/18

3

generative grammar could be seen as starting from Chomsky (1965) and typology fromGreenberg (1966). Second, generative grammar, at least the version that was aroundthen, theorized starting from a language-specific perspective, whereas typology wasinherently cross-linguistic. Third, the language-specific nature tended to amount tostudying just one language (English in the case of Chomsky 1965), and the cross-

linguistic perspective even in the sixties meant more than just a handful (thirty inGreenberg 1966). Fourth, generative studies focused on many properties of languages(e.g. syntactic functions, subcategorization, derivation, degrees of grammaticalness inChomsky 1965), typology on just one (word order in the case of Greenberg 1966).These contrasts are summarized in Table 2.

Table 2. Hawkins (1986) contrast between generative and typological linguistics.

Generative linguistics Typological linguisticsStarts from Chomsky 1965 Starts from Greenberg 1966

Language-specific Cross-linguistic

One language Many languagesMany properties One property

What Hawkins intended to do was different, but it was to profit from both; (i) language-specific, but within a cross-linguistic frame of reference, (i) neither one language, normany, but two, and (iii) many properties, but deriving from just one. He called thisenterprise, probably not really meaning to contribute a new technical term, yetimportant enough to make it in the title of the book, Comparative Typology. SeeTable 3.

Table 3. Hawkins (1986) Comparative typology as in between generative and typological linguistics.

Generative linguistics Comparative typology Typological linguisticsStarts from Chomsky

1965Starts from Hawkins 1986 Starts from Greenberg 1966

Language-specificLanguage-specific against a cross-

linguistic backgroundCross-linguistic

One language Two languages Many languages

Many propertiesMany properties deriving from one

propertyOne property

We thus see that Hawkins did not describe his enterprise as contrastive linguistics,

despite the way the book was to be received, and that he was not primarily interested ina detailed description of English and German per se. Rather, [w]hat motivates it[Hawkins comparative typology] was still the search for principles that underlie cross-linguistic variation (Hawkins 1986: 3) and his German English study that was toillustrate this search could be taken as an elaborate argument for at least one suchprinciple, viz. that of the Conservation of Logical Structure, taken from the work ofKeenan (1972, 1978). Meaning, this principle states, can be preserved more or lessdirectly. With respect to English and German, Hawkins (1986) claimed, it is German


4/18

4

that illustrates direct mapping and English indirect mapping. This direct mappingentails a more complex grammar, observable in various subsystems, but, in return, itallows an easier access to the meaning. See Figure 1.

Semanticstructure English surface structure

German surface structure

Figure 1. The overall German English contrast.

Hawkins (1986) aimed to show the value of this kind of perspective with just twolanguages, but

The English/German contrasts [] suggest that there may be a continuum ofvariation with different language types getting their relative simplicity andcomplexity in different parts of the grammar [] Whether these kinds ofimplications can legitimately be drawn from our case study will have to awaitsimilar research on many more languages. [] in the mean time our case studycan define a paradigm for the similar comparison of many other languages.(Hawkins 1986: 7-8)

The German English comparative typology case can thus count as a pilot study inlinguistic typology. Or, more generally, since Hawkins (1986) was after all integratedinto contrastive linguistics (even though the author did not intend this), contrastivelinguistics as such can be seen as pilot typology.

3. The double standard for contrastive linguisticsAs pilot typology, contrastive linguistics has to meet the standards of typology as wellas those of contrastive linguistics, and, as I will show now, these standards are different.Consider Hawkins analysis of raising, more specifically subject to object raising. (3) isan example. The idea is that some third person is the subject of ill and, moreimportantly, as can be witnessed by the object form him rather than a subject form he, it

is also (or perhaps even exclusively) the object ofbelieve.

(3) I believe him to be ill.

Literally or metaphorically, him has been raised from the subject position of asubordinate clause to an object position of the main clause. (4) illustrates a non-raisedconstrual.

Further, more difficult to accessmeaning, simpler grammar

Closer, easier to access meaning,more complex grammar


5/18

5

(4) I believe that he is ill.

Note that the object him is in no sense a Theme, Goal or Semantic Object ofbelieve. (3) does not imply that the speaker believes him. This is a criterial property andimplies I use the term raising in a restricted sense, like Hawkins (1986) for that

matter. The pair in (5) and (6) does not, therefore, illustrate raising, forJohn doesentertain a semantic relation to saw.

(5) I saw John smile.

(6) I saw that John smiled.

The term raising is furthermore only used for contrasts involving both a finite clausenon-raising construction and an infinitival raising construction. German (7) and (8) donot therefore illustrate raising either.2

(7) Ich glaubte mich betrogenI believed myself deceivedI belied myself to be deceived.

(8) Ich glaubte, dass ich betrogen war.I believed that I deceived was.I believed that I was deceived.

In English subject to object construction is a healthy construction and there arecurrently anywhere between 40 and 60 predicates that allow it (Hawkins 1986: 77; Nol

2001: 257259). German, however, lacks it altogether.

(9) *Ich glaube ihn krank zu sein.I believe him ill to be

I believe him to be ill.

Hawkins explains this in terms of the morphological simplicity of English vs. thecomplexity of German when it comes to nominal case and also, from a diachronicperspective, in terms of the fact that English lost most case morphology. If taken as atrue typological claim, it prompts one to turn to other languages with the expectation

that languages with rich case morphology will not allow subject to object raising andthe ones with poor or no case morphology will allow it. But, as Mair (1992: 171) hasshown, neither expectation is met. Latin has rich case morphology, but it allows raising.French, which has lost case morphology, has no raising and the same goes for otherRomance languages.


6/18

6

(10) Dico eos venisse.say them have.comeI say that they have come.(Bolkestein 1979: 15)

(11) *Je crois Jean tre intelligent.I believe Jean be intelligentI believe Jean to be intelligent.

Mair (1992: 171) correctly concludes that raising is not intrinsically connected to theabsence of inflection. However, bringing in Latin and Romance languages such asFrench does not prove that the absence or loss of inflection is not important in theparticular case of English as compared to German. Mairs critique thus only applies toHawkins hypothesis as a claim within typology, not as a claim within German Englishcontrastive linguistics.

4. A case for contrastive linguistics with three languagesIf one restricts oneself to just German and English, Hawkins claim about theconnection between the absence/disappearance of inflection and thepresence/appearance of raising remains plausible, and it gets further support from thefact that the asymmetry between German and English extends to two other kinds ofphenomena which have been called raising. (12) illustrates so-called subject tosubject raising.John is the subject of both ill and seems. (13) is a non-raised construal.

(12) John seems to be ill.

(13) It seems that John is ill.

It is not clear whether German allows it scheinen could be a predicate that allows it,but the fact that the raised constituent need not be a subject has been used against thisclaim, in which case scheinen would really a topic raiser (Hawkins 1986: 76).

(14) John scheint krank zu sein.John seems ill to beJohn seems to be ill.

(15) An dem Wagen scheint noch gearbeitet zu werden.on the car seems still worked to be

It seems that they are still working on the car.

So in German subject to subject raising is at best marginal.4 In English there are manypredicates that allow this construction, esp. the ones that can be taken as the passive


7/18

7

construals of subject to object raising Nol (2008) calls these nominative andinfinitive or NCI patterns and Knig and Gast (2007: 207-211) reportive. Again,German completely lacks this pattern.

(16) John is expected/meant/said/supposed to be ill.

Yet a third kind of movement is object to subject raising (also known as toughmovement).

(17) This book is easy to read.

(18) It is easy to read this book.

The book is the object of readbut the subject of easy. This phenomenon is arguablyfound in German, as is illustrated in (19).

(19) Dieses Buch ist leicht zu lesen.this book is easy to readThis book is easy to read.

It has been doubted, however, that there is more than a superficial similarity between(17) and (19), for (19) could be analyzed as a modal infinitive, such as illustrated in(20), the latter can be modified by an adverbial (see (21)), and since leichtcorrespondsto both easy and easily, one can take the leichtof (19) to be an adverb rather than anadjective (under the raising analysis) (see Comrie and Matthews 1990: 4750; Knigand Gast 2007: 67, 210).

(20) Dieses Buch ist zu lesen.this book is to readThis book can be read.

(21) Dieses Buch ist in der Bibliothek zu lesen.this book is in the library .This book can be read in the library.

But even if the case for object to subject raising holds for German, there are few

predicates that allow it, maybe more than the five listed in Hawkins (1986: 78), but notmany more (van der Auwera & Nol 2011: 11-12). English, on the other hand, has atleast 50 predicates (van der Auwera & Nol 2011: 15).5 To conclude, there are arguablythree types of raising and for each type there is a strong asymmetry.


8/18

8

Table 4. Raising in English and German.

English Germansubject to object raising 40 - 60 predicates does not existsubject to subject raising 60 to 100 predicates at best 1 predicateobject to subject raising at least 50 predicates at best not much more than 5 predicates

Hawkins hypothesis is about English and German, which are West Germaniclanguages, and the hypothesis should therefore be relevant for other West Germaniclanguages too, and perhaps even for Germanic as a whole. Of the other West Germaniclanguages, the one that is easiest to bring in is Dutch. For Dutch, it has long beenclaimed that its grammar is in many ways intermediate between those of English andGerman. This claim goes back to at least Van Haeringen (1956), and thanks to Hninget al (2006), the fiftieth anniversary of the appearance of this book has led to a renewedinterest in this hypothesis, support and clarification (see also Vismans et al 2010). 6 Oneimportant point of clarification is that if Dutch is indeed intermediate between English

and German, it can be intermediate in more than one way. First, a phenomenon that isvery strong in English and very weak in German, is stronger in Dutch than in German,but not quite as strong as in English. Second, for one phenomenon, Dutch is likeGerman and for another one Dutch is like English and if there is a reason to generalizeover just these two phenomena, one could say that the mixed allegiance results in anoverall intermediacy.

In van der Auwera & Nol (2011), the raising facts of Dutch were contrastedwith those of English and German. If Hawkins claim about the relation between raisingand inflection is correct, then we expect Dutch to be intermediate for both phenomena,too. For raising, this expectation seems to be borne out. At least, for each of the threetypes of raising, the number of Dutch predicates allowing it is indeed in between thenumber accepted for English and Dutch. Table 5 summarizes the findings in van derAuwera & Nol (2011) and (22) to (27) illustrate the Dutch raising constructions, eachtime with a non-raising counterpart.

Table 5. Raising in English, Dutch, and German.

English Dutch Germansubject to object raising 40 - 60 predicates at best a handful does not existsubject to subject raising 60 to 100 predicates 10 predicates at best 1 predicate

object to subject raising at least 50 predicatesat least 30predicates

at best not much morethan 5 predicates

(22) Ik vind dat dit niet kan.I find that this not canI find that this is impossible.


9/18

9

(23) Ik vind dit niet kunnen.I find this not canI find this to be impossible.

(24) Het blijkt dat de pil helpt bij dat soort pijnen.

it seems that the pill helps at that sort painsIt seems that the pill helps with these sorts of pains.

(25) De pil blijkt te helpen bij dat soort pijnen.the pill seems to help at that sort painsThe pill seems to help with these sorts of pains.

(26) Dit boek is moeilijk te verkrijgen.this book is difficult to getThis book is difficult to get.

(27) Het is moeilijk dit boek te verkrijgen.it is difficult this book to getIt is difficult to get this book.

Thus Dutch is an intermediate raiser. Since Hawkins sees the loss of inflectionas related and even causally related the expectation is that with respect to thisproperty Dutch is again in between English and German or that it is like English: whatis excluded is that the Dutch would inflect like German. The facts are clear: withrespect to nominal inflection, Dutch is like English, which means that the Dutchcombination of lack and loss of inflection and intermediate raising support the Hawkins

claims on German and English.The above argumentation certainly does not purport to show that the loss of

inflection would be the only factor that we need in order to explain the presence andprominence or lack thereof of raising in West Germanic. For one thing, it does notexplain the differences between the three types of raising. Note, for example thatsubject to object raising is more marked than either subject to subject raising or objectto subject raising in both German and Dutch see e.g. the contrast between, on the onehand, at best a handful and, on the other hand, 10 predicates and at least 30predicates for Dutch). Why should that be the case? The (causal) link to lack and lossof inflection does not explain this. For another thing, Tables 4 and 5 only focus on the

number of raising predicates, but a full characterization has to deal with otherproperties, too. Let us illustrate this with object to subject predicates.7 So far theexamples of English, German and Dutch ((17), (19) and (26)) contained the samecomplementizer, viz. English to, Geman zu and Dutch te. However, for some of thethirty odd predicates of Dutch allowing object to subject raising, te will not do. Theconstruction will need om te, glossable as in order to.


10/18

10

(28) a. *Dit boek is nuttig te lezen.b. Dit boek is nuttig om te lezen.

this book is useful in.order to readThis book is useful to read.

English does not have anything comparable and neither has German (German does havethe counterpart um zu, but it does not use it in this construction). So the exceptionalnature of Dutch is probably unrelated to its lack and loss of inflection.

The above argumentation also does not purport to show that contrastivelinguistics should restrict itself to three languages. On the contrary, adding Frisian,Yiddish etc. would definitely increase the understanding. The point is simple yet notsimplistic: (i) simple: for the study of raising, three-way contrastive linguistics provesto be better than two-way contrastive linguistics, (ii) but not simplistic: we learn aboutEnglish and German through the study of Dutch.

5. Pilot typology with three languagesIn the preceding section we saw how the study of a third language sheds light on thecontrastive linguistics of two other languages. Seen as pilot typology, however, anEnglish-Dutch-German study of raising is still much too simple and does not shed anylight on the facts of Latin of French. This does not mean that a contrastive linguisticswith three languages is doomed to be bad typology. There may indeed be areas ofgrammar where even a pilot study of just three languages and even related ones provides a decent initial typology. But three-way contrastive linguistics must remainpilot typology, for true typology is about all of the worlds languages through the prism

of a well argued and ideally large sample. I will illustrate this point with a study ofgeneric indefinite pronouns with human reference, once again using English, Dutch andGerman (see also Johansson 2007: 175-196).

In Englishyou is a pronoun that can be used generically. It will then also refer toman and woman in general, as in the title of aJames Bondbook and film.

(29) You only live twice.

The German film title had a different pronoun, viz. man. This is a little difficult togloss. one is an acceptable choice, but German also has the direct counterpart einer.

One could also suggest the English noun man, but the English word man does nothave this use or, better, not anymore. I will instead opt for the more abstract glossGEN (for generic).

(30) Man lebt nur zweimal.GEN lives only twiceYou only live twice.


11/18

11

Van der Auwera, Gast & Vanderbiesen (2011) is a contrastive linguistics account ofgeneric human pronouns in English, Dutch, and German. It pays attention to variousfrequency differences between the three languages, such as the fact that Dutch has theetymological counterpart to German man, viz. Dutch men, but that this pronoun isbecoming obsolete. Unsurprisingly therefore, the translator of (25) did not choose men,

but followed the Englishyoupath.

(31) Je leeft maar twee maal.you live only two timesYou only live twice.

The aim of the paper was to test Van Haeringens (1956) claim about the intermediateposition of Dutch in the area of generic human reference (a project that had alreadybeen started by Weerman 2006). But the paper also had a typological aim. The threelanguages, we claimed, allow for a skeleton map with universal relevance. Of course,just good it is only the application to more languages will show.This map is shown inFigure 2.

Figure 2. A semantic map for generic human reference and related uses.

This map is a so-called semantic map (see Haspelmath 1997, 2003; van der Auwera2008). It therefore embodies the typological prediction that each strategy that languagesuse in the domain of generic human reference covers a connected set of uses. The mapin question, built on the basis of English, Dutch and German, already shows nine uses.Only three of them are generic, six are not the specific ones but we have includedthem, for the markers used for generic reference typically have specific uses too. Let usnow survey the main pronouns used by the three languages.

English uses one,you, and they. One covers three areas, illustrated in (32) to(34). (32) and (33) are generic and include the speech participants. (34) is also generic,

specificunknownsingular

specificunknownplural

genericinclusive

conditional

genericinclusive

generic

exclusive

specificknownplural

specificknownsingular

specifichearer

plural

specifichearer

singular


12/18

12

but it does not include the speaker and the hearer: it is a claim about the eating habits ofthe Spanish and it is compatible with the speaker not being Spanish.

(32) One should always carry an umbrella.[generic, inclusive]

(33) When one travels, one should carry an umbrella.[generic, inclusive, conditional]

(34) In Spain one eats late.[generic, exclusive]

Note that as far as English one goes, there is no reason to separate the conditionalinclusive from the general inclusive use we will see that it is German that forces thisdistinction.

Englishyou is a little different: in its generic uses it always includes the speakerand the hearer. The people that live twice include the speaker and the hearer, and whenone in (35) is substituted byyou, the speaker and hearer are taken as Spanish, at least asfar as eating goes.

(35) In Spain you eat late.

In the specific realm,you refers to the hearer, singular or plural.Whereas generic you is always inclusive, one is both inclusive and exclusive,

generic they is exclusive only.

(36) In Spain they eat late.

They can be used in (32) and (33), too, but then it becomes specific, either referring toan unknown but yet specific set of people or to a known set of people. The specific,unknown use is exemplified in (37). They here refers to those specific people that areresponsible for tax policies, maybe members of the government or members of thefinance department or perhaps the political party that has put this item on the agenda.Of course, they can also refer to known people, a context illustrated in (38).8

(37) Did you hear the news already? They have raised the taxes again.

(38) Did you hear what George Osborne and David Cameron have done? They haveraised the taxes again.

Figure 3 maps the relevant uses ofone,you, and they.


13/18

13

Figure 3. A semantic map for uses ofone, you and they.

For Dutch,ze they is similar to English they andje you is similar to Englishyou, except that the specific use of Dutch je has to be singular. Dutch does not haveanything corresponding to English one, but it has men. Dutch men has four uses: thetwo generic inclusive ones, the generic exclusive one, and the specific unknown pluralone.

(39) Men/je moet altijd een paraplu meenemen.GEN/you must always an umbrella take.along

One/you must always take along an umbrella.

(40) Als men/je op reis gaat, moet men/jeIf GEN/you on trip goes must GEN/youeen paraplu meenemen.

an umbrella take.alongIf one travels, one should take along an umbrella.

(41) In Spanje eet/eten men/ze laat.in Spain eats/eat GEN/they lateIn Spain one/they eats/eat late.

(42) Men/ze heeft/hebben de belastingen weer verhoogd.GEN/they has/have the taxes again raisedThey have raised the taxes again.

Figure 4 is the map for Dutch.



genericinclusive

conditional

genericinclusive

genericexclusive

specificknownsingular

specifichearerplural

specifichearer

singular

specificknownplural

they one you


14/18

14

Figure 4. A semantic map for uses ofze, men andje.

German has man, which is like men (except that it is frequent and men is not),du you, which is like English you and Dutch je, it hardly has sie they9, and then ithas the etymological counterpart to English one, viz. einer, but it is used in a differentway. Nominative einer only has one generic use, viz. the inclusive one, and only inconditionals. In the conditional in (39), one can see that the anaphor in the apodosis iserhe. (40) shows that man does not have that problem.

(39) Wenn einer eine Reise macht, dann soll er einen

when one a trip makes, then should he anRegenschirm dabei haben.umbrella along haveWhen one makes a trip, one should bring along an umbrella.

(40) Wenn man eine Reise macht, dann soll man einenwhen IMP a trip makes, then should IMP an

Regenschirm dabei haben.

umbrella along haveWhen one makes a trip, one should bring along an umbrella.

But man has another problem, it only occurs in the nominative, and when the sentencerequires a dative or accusative man, generic, whether inclusive or exclusive, the dativeand accusative forms ofeinerdo the job.



genericinclusive

conditional

genericinclusive

genericexclusive

specificknown

singular


specifichearer

singular

specificknown

plural

ze men je


15/18

15

(41) Es kommt einem zugute, dass ...It comes one to.good thatIt is to ones benefit that.

(42)In Spanien wird einem das Essen erst am spten

in Spain is one the food only at.the lateAbend serviert.evening servedIn Spain one gets served food only late at night.

Einer, einem and einen can also serve specific uses, both known and unknown, and beequivalent tojemand.

(43) Da steht einer/jemand auf der Strasse und ichthere stands somebody on the street and Iweiss (nicht) wer das ist.

know not who that isSomebody is standing on the street and I (dont) know who it is.

These German facts are mapped in Figure 5.

Figure 5. A semantic map for uses ofeiner, einem/einen, man and du.

I claim and hope that the map is a reasonable pilot hypothesis for studying worldwide variation. The map will prove to be too simple. French on, for example, is a mantype pronoun that has extended its terrain to include the first person plural inclusivewe. This use has to be added. But adding this use does not disturb the basic geometry



genericinclusive

conditional

genericinclusive

genericexclusive

specific

knownsingular


specifichearer

singular

specificknownplural

einer einem/einen man du


16/18

16

of the skeleton map that was arrived at so far. There may, of course, be other uses,which may prove to be less easy to accommodate, but only future work will tell.

6. ConclusionThe conclusion of this paper can be summarized in five points. First, much in the spiritof Hawkins (1986) contrastive linguistics can be seen as pilot typology. Second, fordoing contrastive linguistics there is nothing sacrosanct about restricting oneself to twolanguages. Third, if one intends ones contrastive linguistics as pilot typology, thenstudying three languages is obviously better than two. Fourth, even though contrastivelinguistics can count as pilot typology, the demands and falsifiability of contrastivelinguistics and typology are different. More specifically: an explanation may well bevalid for a difference between two or three languages, without having universal validity.Fifth, one can use a third language to make a point about two other languages.

Notes

* Thanks are due to the Belgian Federal Government (Federal Science Program, IAP-grant P6/44).Further thanks go to two anonymous reviewers and to the editors of both this issue and the journal.1 Not surprisingly, the language that is most involved in the pairs or n-tuplets is English. The winning

pair is English-Spanish, a fact that bears witness to the Spanish origin of the International ContrastiveLinguistics Conferences (the first four were held in Santiago de Compostela, under the impulse of LuisIglesias Rbade and Mara de los ngeles Gmez Gonzlez).2 I do not, of course, deny that the constructions illustrated in (5) to (8) are not related nor that there areyet other constructions resembling subject to object raising (see e.g. Mair 1992, 1993). The point of this

section only concerns subject to object raising in a restricted sense of the term.3 Once again, the notion of raising is a restricted one. For instance, John ceased to be ill orThe riverthreatens to flood the city are not considered as raising constructions, for they lack non-raisingcounterparts (*It ceased that John is ill, *It threatens that the river floods the city).4 This claim does not mean that (14) is marginal, only that the status ofscheinen as a subject to subjectraising is doubtful, and also, as we will elaborate a bit more, that there is no other German subject tosubject construction.5 Van der Auwera & Nol (2011: 16) also make the point, advanced earlier by Mair (1994:6), that if thefacts illustrated by (17) to (21) should not be analyzed as raising, the English German asymmetry remainsand it is at least a raising like asymmetry about the availability of both a personal and an impersonalconstrual.6 This intermediacy perspective has also been found useful for Romance, see Lamiroy (2011).7 For another illustration, note that the subject to object raising illustrated with Dutch (22) and (23)involves a bare infinitive rather than the to infinitive found in English.8 Perhaps they should cover singular uses, on account of sentences such as They are knocking at the door:it is your mother(see Siewierska & Papastahi 2011: 583).9 It does, however, have a specific use of the demonstrative die those, offering a very good translation ofthe tax raising example.


17/18

17

References

Bolkestein, A. Mt. 1979. Subject-to-object raising in Latin.Lingua 48:15-34.Chomsky, N. 1965.Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Comrie, B. and S. Matthews. 1990. Prolegomena to a typology of tough movement.In Studies in typology and diachrony: Papers presented to Joseph H. Greenbergon his 75th birthday, W. Croft, K. Denning and S. Kemmer (eds), 4358.Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Greenberg, J. H. 1966. Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to theOrder of Meaningful Elements. In Universals of Language, J.H. Greenberg (ed),73-113. Cambridge, Massachusets, and London, England: MIT Press.

Haspelmath, M. 1997.Indefinite pronouns. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Haspelmath, M. 2003. The geometry of grammatical meaning: semantic maps and

cross-linguistic comparison. In The New Psychology of Language. Vol. 2, MichaelTomasello (ed), 211-43. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.

Hning, M., U. Vogl, T. van der Wouden and A. Verhagen (eds.). 2006. Nederlandstussen Duits en Engels: Handelingen van de workshop op 30 september en 1

oktober aan de Freie Universitt Berlin. Leiden: Stichting NeerlandistiekLeiden.

Hawkins, J. A. 1986. A comparative Typology of English and German: Unifying thecontrasts. London: Croom Helm.

James, Carl. 1980. Contrastive analysis. London: Longman.Johansson, S. 2007. Seeing through multilingual corpora. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Keenan, E. L. 1972. On semantically based grammar.Linguistic Inquiry 3:413-461.Keenan, E. L. 1978. Language variation and the logical structure of universal

grammar. InLanguage Universals. H. Seiler(ed), 89-123.Tbingen: Gunter Narr.

Knig, E. and V. Gast. 2007. Understanding English-German Contrasts. Berlin: E.Schmidt.

Lamiroy, B. 2011. Degrs de grammaticalisation travers les langues de mmefamille. In Mmoires de la Socit Linguistique de Paris. L'volutiongrammaticale travers les langues romanes, 167-192. Leuven: Peeters.

Mair, C. 1992. Raising in English and German: Formal explanation, functionalexplanation, or no explanation at all, In New departures in contrastivelinguistics. Vol. I, C. Mair and M. Marcus (eds),. 167-176. Innsbruck: Universitt.

Mair, C. 1993. A cross-linguistic functional constraint on believe-type raising inEnglish and selected European languages. Papers and Studies in Contrastive

Linguistics 28:5-19.Mair, C. 1994. Crosslinguistic semantic motivation for the use of a grammatical

construction in English and German. X is impossible to do / X ist unmglich zuschaffen. Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 29:5-15.

Nol, D. 2001. The passive matrices of English infinitival complement clauses:Evidentials on the road to auxiliarihood. Studies in Language 25:255296.

Nol, D. 2008. The Nominative and Infinitive in Late Modern English: a diachronicconstructionist approach.Journal of English Linguistics 36:314-340.


18/18

18

Siewierska, A. and M. Papastathi. 2011. Third person plurals in the langauges ofEurope: typological and methodological issues.Linguistics. 43:575-610.

van der Auwera, J. 2008. In defense of classical semantic maps. TheoreticalLinguistics 34: 39-46.

van der Auwera, J. & D. Nol. 2011. Raising: Dutch between English and German.Journal of Germanic Linguistics 23:1-36.

van der Auwera, J., V. Gast & J. Vanderbiesen. 2011. Impersonal pronouns in English,Dutch and German. Paper presented at the 2011 Germanic Sandwich conference,Oldenburg, 17 September 2010.

Van Haeringen, C.B. 1956.Nederlands tussen Duits en Engels. Den Haag: Servire.Vismans, R., M. Hning & F. Weerman (eds.) 2010. Dutch between English and

German. Special issueJournal of Germanic Linguistics 22(4).Weerman, F. 2006. Its the economy, stupid! Een vergelijkende blik op men en man,

In Hning et al. (eds), 19-47.

Authors address

Johan van der AuweraCenter for Grammar, Cognition, and TypologyUniversity of AntwerpPrinsstraat 13B-2000 AntwerpBelgium

[email protected]

Contrastive Linguistics and Linguistic Typology

Documents

Transcript of Contrastive Linguistics and Linguistic Typology