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Dilbilgisinin yapısal kategorileri (klitik, ek, birleşik sözcük, sıfat, zamir, yönelme durumu, özne, edilgen, çift ünlü, koronal) dilbilimciler ve dil edinimi esnasında çocuklar tarafından varsayılmak zorundadır. Bu kategoriler yalnızca önceden belirlenmiş bir listeden seçilmek zorunda kalınsaydı, bu daha kolay bir iş olurdu. Bununla birlikte, böyle bir listenin varsayılabilmesine yönelik olarak sunulan öneriler hala ağırlıklı olarak Latince ve İngilizce dil bilgisel geleneğe bağlıdır. Böylece, betimleyici dilbilimcilerin, bütün dillerle ilgili olarak Boas'ın özel dile özgü kategorileri var sayma yaklaşımını benimsemekten başka seçeneği yoktur. Kuramcılar buna karşı sık sık direnirler, fakat karşılaştırmalı dilbilim çalışmaları, oldukça sınırlı bir durumdaki olası doğuştan kategoriler üzerinde birleşmemektedir. Tersine, nerdeyse yeni betimlenmiş her dil, var olan taksonomilere nerdeyse hiç uymayan bazı yeni 'çılgın' kategoriler sunar. Önceden belirlenmiş kategoriler için geçerli kanıt olmamasına rağmen, dilbilimciler hala, Tagalog dilindeki ang- öbeği bir özne mi yoksa konu mudur, Almancadaki er bir zamir mi yoksa bir belirleyici midir, Mandarin Çincesindeki mülkiyet kelimeleri sıfat mı yoksa fiil midir veya Romencedeki belirli artikel bir klitik mi yoksa son ek midir, gibi kategori tartışmalarıyla sık sık uğraşırlar. Dil betimlemesi için önceden belirlenmiş kategorilerin olmaması, bu tür soruların anlamsız olduğunu göstermektedir. Dilbilimcinin işi, gözlemlenen kategorileri şu anda kullanılan popüler kategorilerin içine uygun bir biçimde koymak yerine, olguları olabildiğince ayrıntılı bir biçimde betimlemektir. Tipoloji için önceden belirlenmiş kategorilerin olmaması, karşılaştırmanın kategori temelli değil substans temelli olması gerektiği sonucunu da doğurur. Çünkü kategorilerin tersine substans evrenseldir. Bu anlamda, bu substans görüşü yaygın bir biçimde kullanılan terminoloji (isim-tamlayan dizilimi, fiil-nesne dizilimi vs.) ile dolaylı olarak kabul edilmesine rağmen, Greenbergçi yaklaşımda açıkça tanınmıştır.
Structural categories of grammar (such as clitic, affix, compound, adjective, pronoun, dative, subject, passive, diphthong, coronal) have to be posited by linguists and by children during acquisition. This would be easier if they simply had to choose from a list of pre-established categories. However, existing proposals for what such a list might be are still heavily based on the Latin and English grammatical tradition. Thus, descriptive linguists still have no choice but to adopt the Boasian approach of positing special languageparticular categories for each language. Theorists often resist it, but the crosslinguistic evidence is not converging on a smallish set of possibly innate categories. On the contrary, almost every newly described language presents us with some "crazy" new category that hardly fits existing taxonomies. Although there is thus no good evidence for pre-established categories, linguists still often engage in category-assignment controversies such as Is the Tagalog ang-phrase a subject or a topic? Is German er a pronoun or a determiner? Are Mandarin Chinese property words adjectives or verbs? Is the Romanian definite article a clitic or a suffix? A consequence of the non-existence of pre-established categories for language description is that such questions are pointless. Instead of fitting observed phenomena into the mould of currently popular categories, the linguist's job is to describe the phenomena in as much detail as possible. A consequence of the non-existence of pre-established categories for typology is that comparison cannot be category-based, but must be substance-based, because substance (unlike categories) is universal. This has been recognized in the Greenbergian approach, though it is often hidden by widely practiced terminology ("noungenitive" order, "verb-object" order, etc.)Structural categories of grammar (such as clitic, affix, compound, adjective, pronoun, dative, subject, passive, diphthong, coronal) have to be posited by linguists and by children during acquisition. This would be easier if they simply had to choose from a list of pre-established categories. However, existing proposals for what such a list might be are still heavily based on the Latin and English grammatical tradition. Thus, descriptive linguists still have no choice but to adopt the Boasian approach of positing special language-particular categories for each language. Theorists often resist it, but the cross-linguistic evidence is not converging on a smallish set of possibly innate categories. On the contrary, almost every newly described language presents us with some "crazy" new category that hardly fits existing taxonomies. Although there is thus no good evidence for pre-established categories, linguists still often engage in category-assignment controversies such as Is the Tagalog ang-phrase a subject or a topic? Is German er a pronoun or a determiner? Are Mandarin Chinese property words adjectives or verbs? Is the Romanian definite article a clitic or a suffix? An important consequence of the non-existence of pre-established categories for language description is that category assignment controversies like those just seen are pointless. There is usually no way to resolve them, because no universally applicable necessary and sufficient criteria for defining a priori categories can be given. Working without the assumption that pre-established categories exist implies a fairly substantial reorientation of the work of both descriptive and typological linguistics. In descriptive linguistics, this reorientation has a long history going back at least to Boas and de Saussure, but despite their influence, the idea that structural categories of language form are given to us in advance has kept reasserting itself. By shedding the assumption of a priori categories descriptive linguists can avoid getting into category -assignment controversies and can concentrate on refining their descriptions. Typologists must realize that they cannot base their comparisons on formal categories, and need to resort to semanticpragmatic or phonetic substance as a foundation of their classifications and generalizations. Linguists whose business is to describe smaller, less well-known languages that are not taught widely in schools or universities are generally careful to define the categories they use and do not assume that they can take them off some shelf. By contrast, linguists who engage in descriptive work on the "big rich languages" often seem to get embroiled in category-assignment controversies, and they seem to find the notion of innate universal categories much less problematic than descriptive linguists of smaller languages. Common practice among typologists who are likely to be readers of this journal reflects my postulates, so again, I am perhaps telling the news to the wrong audience. However, my personal experience tells me that while typologists are generally doing the right things, they are not necessarily aware of the generality of the claim that categories are languageparticular. Especially with regard to categories such as affix, clitic, word, and clause, even functionally oriented typologists who would never post a universal subject category seem to persist in the assumption of universality. And there are some typologists who emphasize the non-universality of some categories, only to replace them by a set of other universal categories. Finally, generative typologists normally define their universal categories in semantic terms, like functionally oriented typologists, but they are not explicit about it, and sometimes they even claim, contrary to fact, that their definitions are based on formal properties of language. Much of this has been widely recognized by descriptive linguists and typologists, but it seems that the full consequences of radical language-particularity have yet to be digested by linguists. Maybe language description and language comparison will turn out to be much more difficult than has been thought so far. It is true that by asking the wrong questions (about assignment to supposedly pre-established categories), linguists are often prompted to look for further evidence that they might otherwise have overlooked. In this way, category-assignment controversies indirectly play a positive role, and many category -assignment controversies have led to clarifications and new insights. In this way, such controversies have not been totally sterile, but have at least had some positive side effects, even though it has not been possible to resolve them. A consequence of the non-existence of pre-established categories for language description is that such questions are pointless. Instead of fitting observed phenomena into the mould of currently popular categories, the linguist's job is to describe the phenomena in as much detail as possible. A consequence of the non- existence of preestablished categories for typology is that comparison cannot be category-based, but must be substance-based, because substance (unlike categories) is universal. This has been recognized in the Greenbergian approach, though it is often hidden by widely practiced terminology ("noun-genitive" order, "verb-object" order, etc.). |
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