Arbeiten des Kölner Universalien-Projekts : akup
Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität zu Köln. Hrsg. der Reihe: H. Seiler
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Linguistic continua, their properties, and their interpretation – Hansjakob Seiler ; Skala und Kontinuum: Versuch einer Abgrenzung – Fritz Serzisko ; Der Skalenbegriff in der Linguistik mit einer Demonstration am Beispiel der deutschen Adverbien – Paul-Otto Samuelsdorff ; Kasusrollen im Tagalog: ein intrasprachliches Kontinuum der Kontrolle – Werner Drossard ; Zu einigen Skalen bei der Beschreibung sprachlicher Variation – Manfred Ostrowski Sprachliche Skalen im-typologischen Vergleich (erläutert am Beispiel der Dimension "Apprehension") – Ulrike Kölver
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In an earlier paper, I proposed a system for evaluating the relative descriptivity of lexical items in a consistent manner in terms of the interrelations of three metrics. The first of these, including five possible degrees of descriptivity, is based on the premise that the sum of the meaningful parts of a given form is or is not equal to the meaning of the whole. The second, also composed of five degrees, is based on paraphrase-term relations in which the logical quantifiers: all, some and no, are applied to the terms of the paraphrase in one test and to the meaningful parts of the term (linguistic form) in the reversibility test. Both tests are applied in the form of logical propositions. The third metric, with three degrees, deals with the relative explicitness of the meaningful parts of a given form: explicit, implicit or neither. […] This system was then tested in a pilot study involving the fairly limited and semantically homogeneous lexical domain of body-part terms in a specific language, Finnish. The purpose of the present paper is to subject comparable data from other languages to the same kind of analysis and compare the results in order to ascertain whether the generalizations arrived at with the Finnish data also hold for the other languages or, more specifically, which of these generalizations are more or less universal and which language or language-type specific? The additional languages to be examined here are: French, German, Ewe, Maasai and Swahili.
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Die folgende Vorlesung hat die universalen Dimensionen der Sprache zum Gegenstand, wie sie bis jetzt von der in Köln ansässigen Forschergruppe UNITYP erforscht und erarbeitet worden sind. ("UNITYP" steht für "Sprachliche Universalienforschung und Typologie mit besonderer Berücksichtigung funktionaler Aspekte.") Es handelt sich um eine vorläufige Bilanz, vorgestellt werden soll nicht eine monolithische, abgeschlossene Theorie mit endgültigen Resultaten. Daher sollten die bereits publizierten Ergebnisse "not as the final version of a ready-made theory of language" angesehen werden, "this would mean that the UNITYP-group has reached the end of its research and is no longer productive." (cf. Ramat 1984:365) Das erarbeitete Modell ist seiner Anlage nach offen. Das Ziel dieser Vorlesung besteht vielmehr darin, in eine bestimmte Art des linguistischen Denkens, in eine spezifische Methode des Herangehens an Sprachdaten einzuführen, mit dem Anspruch, dadurch zu einem besseren Verständnis sprachlicher Fakten beizutragen. Der Wert einer Theorie bemißt sich überhaupt daran, inwieweit sie imstande ist, zu einem besseren und tiefgreifenderen Verständnis des durch sie Systematisierten anleiten zu können. Auch insofern steht hier nicht lediglich die Präsentation fertiger Resultate, sondern die Vermittlung eines bestimmten linguistischen Sprachverstehens im Vordergrund, das zu eigenem Weiterarbeiten befähigen und anregen soll. Metawissenschaftlich-methodische Fragen, wie die nach dem, was ein sprachliches Faktum überhaupt ist, werden zunächst zurückgestellt.
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These notes grew out of my preoccupation with writing a grammar of a particular language, Cahuilla, which is spoken in Southern California and belongs to the Uto-Aztecan family. [...] The Introduction to the Grammar as a whole – of which two sections are reproduced here in a modified version – tries to integrate the synoptic views of the different chapters into a series of comprehensive statements. The statements cluster around two topics: 1. A presentation of Cahuilla as a type of language. 2. Remarks on writing a grammar.
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Kant, Piaget et Unityp
(1988)
Le livre de H. Seiler, "Apprehension. Language, Object and Order", présente un grand intérêt même pour und épistémologue ne disposant pas d'une formation de linguíste. A cela il y a au moins deux raísons: en premier lieu "Apprehension. Language, Object and Order" étudie la notion d'objet introduisant la DIMENSION de l'APPREHENSION et, en deuxième lieu, à travers l'étude des langues elle vise une universalité fonctionelle de l'activité cognitive. La notion d'objet est traditionellement importante pour toute recherche épistémologique et ces dernières années elle a été définitivement liée aux recherches sémantiques (Tugendhat 1976: 48). "Apprehension. Language, Object, and order" englobe cet aspect; en effet, le terme de APPREHENSION indique l'activité de saisie notionelle de l'objet telle qu'elle apparaît dans les langues. La structure des langues, mise en évidence dans cette DIMENSION de l'APPREHENSION, est considerée comme la manifestation (REPRAESENTATIO) d'un concept, le REPRAESENTANDUM. Dans notre cas, il s'agit du concept d'objet, dont la richesse esst détectable par la complexité de la REPRAESENTATIO línguistique, qui en met en évidence la nature fonctionelle. Mais sa nature polymorphe, apparaissant dans les TECHNIQUES de la DIMENSION, fait que la saisie due réel mise en oeuvre par ce concept ne pourra pas se reduire à une simple perception de l'objet. En developpant les recherches de "Apprehension. Language, Object and Order", on purra dépasser non seulement les conceptions de la sémantique fondées sur la notion d'adéquation (ou de satisfaction), mais aussi celle qui se réclament d'un 'jeu de vérification' (Tugendhat 1976: 265). Ces conceptions, loin de se vider de leur sens, seront intégrées dans un cadre plus général. En effet, la nature même de l'objet dépend, dans sa définition et dans sa saisie, de cette activité. Le dépassement de la notion d'adéquation amène à une reformulation de l'ontologie, que l'ensemble de "Apprehension. Language, Object and Order" suggère. Il faudra introduire, à mon avis, une conception constructiviste.
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The aim of this contribution is to embed the question of an antinomy between "integral" vs. "partial typology", inscribed as the topic of this plenary session, into the comprehensive framework of the dimensional model of the research group on language universals and typology (UNITYP). In this introductory section I shall evoke some cardinal points in the theory of linguistic typology, as viewed "from outside", viz. on the basis of striking parallelisms with psychological typology. Section 2 will permit a brief look on the dimensional model of UNITYP. In section 3 I shall present an illustration of a typological treatment on the basis of one particular dimension. In section 4 I shall draw some conclusions with special reference to the "integral vs. partial" antinomy.
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Why should we engage in language universals research and language typology? What do we want to explain? It is a fact that, although languages differ significantly and considerably. indeed, no one would deny, that they have something in common; how else could they be labelled 'language'? - There is obviously unity among them, no matter how vaguely felt and for what reasons: Scientific, practical, moral, etc. Neither diversity per se nor unity per se is what we want to explain. There is no reason whatsoever to consider either one of them as primary, and the other as derived. What we do want to explain is "equivalence in difference" – cf. our motto – which manifests itself, among others, in the translatability from one language to another, the learnability of any language, language change – which all presuppose that speakers intuitively find their way from diversity to unity. This is a highly salient property which deserves to be brought into our consciousness. Generally then, our basic goal is to explain the way in which language-specific facts are connected with a unitarian concept of language – "die Sprache" – "le langage".
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Using Ultan's theory of descriptivity grading as a starting point, I will attempt to capture this differential utility in terms of [...] criteria of literalness, explicitness and syntactic complexity. I will first briefly present his System and investigate some generalizations which he has proposed on the basis of his study of body part terminologies in numerous languages. I will apply his theory to nouns in this and four other semantic domains, in three North American Indian languages. I will test his generalizations and propose some new ones. I will then present an alternative system of descriptivity grading and compare the results of its application with those of Ultan's system. In the final section I will suggest another methodology for quantification. An appendix at the end of the paper lists all of the descriptive lexical items mentioned, graded according to both systems.