LINGUIST List 5.1393

Mon 05 Dec 1994

Disc: Using the comparative method in syntax

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1. Martin Haspelmath, comparative method in syntax
2. Jacques Guy, Re: 5.1370 Can the comparative method be applied to syntax?
3. , Re: 5.1370 Can the comparative method be applied to syntax?

Fritz Newmeyer asks if it is legitimate to apply the comparative method
in syntax. My answer is Yes, but it is more difficult.

The main reason why one sees more work on historical-comparative syntax
than fifty years ago is that syntax has become much more prestigious in
recent decades. I don't think that there was a shift from a once
"standard" view that syntactic reconstruction is impossible. Bernhard
Delbrueck's historical-comparative syntax of Indo-European, published a
hundred years ago, clearly showed that comparative syntax is both
possible and fruitful, but perhaps too difficult to attract many followers.
The view that historical-comparative syntax is impossible was defended in
some detail in Lightfoot's (1979) Principles of Diachronic Syntax, but
few researchers seem to have been discouraged by Lightfoot's attitude.

It is true that Latin syntax could hardly be reconstructed from modern
Romance languages, but neither could Latin morphology, and even the view of
Latin phonology that we would get from Romance is very distorted. Our
reconstruction of protolanguage grammar is always imperfect, but that is
no reason not to attempt reconstruction.

The main error on Lightfoot's side is that there is no syntactic analog
to the regularity of sound change. It's just a bit more complicated in
syntax--just like syntax is more complicated overall than phonology. Basically,
the analog to phonemes and words are words and sentences. True, the difference
between words and sentences is that in general sentences are not stored in
the lexicon. But neither are many complex words (rendering morphological
reconstruction similarly difficult, but nobody seems ever to have objected to
morphological reconstruction), and some sentences are actually stored,
e.g. proverbs and idioms, which often show syntactic archaisms. And since
earlier syntax often survives in "fossilized" form in later morphology,
we have another rich source of data for diachronic syntax.

In addition to regularity of change, we need general principles of change
for plausible reconstruction, e.g. phonological principles that predict
likely changes like assimilation, lenition, segment loss, etc. In syntax,
similar principles of change exist as well: Spatial nouns become spatial
adpositions, certain general verbs become tense and aspect markers,
allative case markers become dative case markers, purposive verb forms
become infinitives, etc. All these processes (instances of
grammaticalization) are irreversible changes and provide safe guides for
linguists seeking to make sense of daughter language diversity by
reconstructing a proto-syntax. The massive regularities of
grammaticalization are generally ignored in generative studies of
syntactic change (indeed, Lightfoot argues that there are no genuine
principles of diachronic syntax), but if one takes them into account,
they help in the difficult task of reconstruction.

Martin Haspelmath (Free University of Berlin)

Message 2: Re: 5.1370 Can the comparative method be applied to syntax?

Theoretically, there is no reason why the comparative method could not
be applied to syntactic properties. However, there are two practical,
very great, impediments:

1. Syntax dealing with word order, what is word order?
 And further which word order in which environments?
 E.g.: Ich verstehe Sie.
 Ploetzlich verstehe ich Sie.
 (subordinating conjunction) ich Sie verstehe.
 Un grand homme.
 Un homme grand.
 Ma chemise propre.
 Ma propre chemise.

2. How do we measure the difference? How far is SVO from
 SOV? From VSO?

Not only we do not know how to describe syntactic properties
satisfactorily, but we do not know how to measure their differences, or,
it boils down to the same, their similarities. Now, you can validly
argue that a binary scale (same, different, and no shades of grey in
between) is good enough. Remains that you do not reach valid comparisons
on the basis of a single feature, but of many. If languages X and Y
have n identical features out of N, we are tempted to say that their
syntactic similarity is n/N. But that is true if and only if each
feature has the same weighting. On top of that, we do not even know what
constitutes *one* feature. For instance, we may consider SVO as
consisting of two to three features:

1. Relative order of subject and verb
2. Relative order of verb and object
3. Relative order of subject and object where necessary
 to disambiguate.

And further, how do we specify free SV order for instance? Via a ternary
relation (precede, follow, free), thus order = (free,S,V) or a binary
relation (precede,follow) and a union, thus order = (precede,S,V)
+(follow,S,V)?

Too many questions unanswered, I fear even unaddressed. Too many
questions issuing from them. We cannot, I think, found a proper
methodology on such shaky grounds. We'd better be content with arguing
futilely until we are blue in the keyboard. Or else set about
tackling those questions, a daunting task.

j.guytrl.oz.au

Message 3: Re: 5.1370 Can the comparative method be applied to syntax?

I would add to Fritz Newmeyer's caveats about limitations to syntactic
reconstruction these fairly obvious two:

1. for many syntactic dimensions, the choices are so few that chance
resemblances are so probable as to obscure the evidence of common ancestry.

2. there is consideration non-arbitrariness in syntactic systems, so that,
again, resemblance arises from other than common ancestry.

Larry Gorbet lgorbetmail.unm.edu
Anthropology & Linguistics Depts. (505) 883-7378
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM, U.S.A.