4 ms·

All languages have either exactly the same adjective order as English, or exactly reversed.

by kleton 5y ago

skrebbel 5y ago
> All languages This would amaze me. How sure you are about this? Or do you mean something like "all languages I speak"?
- kleton 5y ago
  Stacked adjectival modification and the structure of nominal phrases Gary-John Scott (2002)
  - sinkasapa 5y ago
    Speaking as a linguist, Cartography, the theory espoused by this work, is a highly controversial approach. The claim needs to be taken with a grain of salt. It isn't a statement of fact but an argument for a hypothesis that has not been thoroughly tested using a rigorous empirical methodology. I am a linguist who works in the field, performing basic research on languages that have very little documentation. I am aware of how tentative initial grammars of many of the world's languages are because I am involved in writing them myself. These works are the primary data that most linguistic theorists tend to use when making broad typological claims, i.e. claims about all languages. Theoretical works like Gary-John Scott are essentially meta-studies, secondary reinterpretations of primary research. This is fine for generating hypotheses but it is not valid to claim that a grammar, itself, is truth. Grammars, themselves, are essentially theories. They may be very preliminary. My point is that there is a telephone game aspect to these types of works at any point in the chain from native speaker to typologist errors, biases and misrepresentations may have occurred. Additionally, it is important to realize that the methods used in primary linguistic research are underdeveloped. The following paper, which is still in press, outlines some of the empirical issues faced by linguists researching understudied languages: Empirical evidence in research on meaning, Tonhauser and Matthewson: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.730.2636&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.730... One thing that someone with a science background may find surprising is that the methodological suggestions made by the authors are so modest. They include the notion that one should control the context in which a stimulus is provided, that one should have a clearly stated hypothesis when eliciting linguistic judgments and also clearly state what question was put to the speaker. Sadly, these are controversial in linguistic research, indicating just how underdeveloped many areas of our discipline are. Gary-John Scott might happen to be right (I doubt it) but if so, it is not because they have made their case scientifically. They have only provided sufficient evidence to motivate a hypothesis.
    - erdevs 5y ago
      Does the hypothesis in question seem to hold for, say, the world's top 10 languages (by, say, # of living fluent speakers globally)? Top 30? I'm genuinely curious. And also trying to discern whether your point is that many-- but not necessarily _all_-- current languages seem to conform to this hypothesis, or that actually very few seem to.
      - kleton 5y ago
        This is known as Universal 20 of Greenberg 1963. Not so universal, but you have to get down to languages way out of the top 30 like Chechen to find one that don't obey the typical rule. Of 576 languages catalogued in Dryer 2018, 113 are English-like, 182 are English-reversed, and the rest somewhat varied.
        codeulike 5y ago
        Thats fascinating
presentation 5y ago
I've been speaking Japanese for years and while I've been told my Japanese is messed up in many different ways, adjective order has never been one of them. As far as I'm aware, the ordering is much more based on what you wish to emphasize than any set order.

All languages have either exactly the same adjective order as English, or exactly reversed.

by kleton 5y ago

All languages have either exactly the same adjective order as English, or exactly reversed.

> All languages This would amaze me. How sure you are about this? Or do you mean something like "all languages I speak"?

kleton 5y ago
Stacked adjectival modification and the structure of nominal phrases Gary-John Scott (2002)
- sinkasapa 5y ago
  Speaking as a linguist, Cartography, the theory espoused by this work, is a highly controversial approach. The claim needs to be taken with a grain of salt. It isn't a statement of fact but an argument for a hypothesis that has not been thoroughly tested using a rigorous empirical methodology. I am a linguist who works in the field, performing basic research on languages that have very little documentation. I am aware of how tentative initial grammars of many of the world's languages are because I am involved in writing them myself. These works are the primary data that most linguistic theorists tend to use when making broad typological claims, i.e. claims about all languages. Theoretical works like Gary-John Scott are essentially meta-studies, secondary reinterpretations of primary research. This is fine for generating hypotheses but it is not valid to claim that a grammar, itself, is truth. Grammars, themselves, are essentially theories. They may be very preliminary. My point is that there is a telephone game aspect to these types of works at any point in the chain from native speaker to typologist errors, biases and misrepresentations may have occurred. Additionally, it is important to realize that the methods used in primary linguistic research are underdeveloped. The following paper, which is still in press, outlines some of the empirical issues faced by linguists researching understudied languages: Empirical evidence in research on meaning, Tonhauser and Matthewson: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.730.2636&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.730... One thing that someone with a science background may find surprising is that the methodological suggestions made by the authors are so modest. They include the notion that one should control the context in which a stimulus is provided, that one should have a clearly stated hypothesis when eliciting linguistic judgments and also clearly state what question was put to the speaker. Sadly, these are controversial in linguistic research, indicating just how underdeveloped many areas of our discipline are. Gary-John Scott might happen to be right (I doubt it) but if so, it is not because they have made their case scientifically. They have only provided sufficient evidence to motivate a hypothesis.
  - erdevs 5y ago
    Does the hypothesis in question seem to hold for, say, the world's top 10 languages (by, say, # of living fluent speakers globally)? Top 30? I'm genuinely curious. And also trying to discern whether your point is that many-- but not necessarily _all_-- current languages seem to conform to this hypothesis, or that actually very few seem to.
    - kleton 5y ago
      This is known as Universal 20 of Greenberg 1963. Not so universal, but you have to get down to languages way out of the top 30 like Chechen to find one that don't obey the typical rule. Of 576 languages catalogued in Dryer 2018, 113 are English-like, 182 are English-reversed, and the rest somewhat varied.
      - codeulike 5y ago
        Thats fascinating

presentation 5y ago

I've been speaking Japanese for years and while I've been told my Japanese is messed up in many different ways, adjective order has never been one of them. As far as I'm aware, the ordering is much more based on what you wish to emphasize than any set order.