LOT Summer School 2023

Course title

Canonical typology

Teacher

Greville Corbett

Affiliation: Surrey Morphology Group, University of Surrey (UK)

Email

Course level

Intermediate

Course prerequisites

There are no prerequisites. Valuable qualities include: curiosity about of linguistic diversity; familiarity with morphosyntactic glossing (check the Leipzig Glossing Rules); openmindedness; willingness to keep asking and discussing if things are not clear.

Course description

We start with a brief introduction to traditional typology, then concentrate on a recent development, Canonical Typology. The course will range over a wide range challenging and interesting languages. There will be ample opportunity for participants to participate with data, criticism and analyses.

Day-to-day program

Monday: Inflectional morphology: the typology of internal splits

A key notion in understanding language is ‘possible word (lexeme)’. While there are lexemes that are internally homogeneous and externally consistent, we find others with splits in their internal structure (morphological paradigm) and inconsistencies in their external behaviour (syntactic requirements). I first explore the characteristics of the most straightforward lexemes, in order to establish a point in the theoretical space from which we can calibrate the real examples we find. I then schematize the interesting phenomena that deviate from this idealization, including suppletion, syncretism, deponency, and defectiveness. Next I analyze the different ways in which lexemes are ‘split’ by such phenomena. I set out a typology of possible splits, along four dimensions: splits that are (i) based on the composition/feature signature of the paradigm versus those based solely on morphological form; (ii) motivated (following a boundary motivated from outside the paradigm) versus purely morphology-internal (‘morphomic’); (iii) regular (extending across the lexicon) versus irregular (lexically specified); (iv) externally relevant versus irrelevant: we expect splits to be internal to the lexeme, but some have external relevance (they require different syntactic behaviours).

I identify instances of these four dimensions separately: they are orthogonal, and therefore not dependent on each other. Their interaction gives a substantial typology, and it proves to be surprisingly complete: the possibilities specified are all attested. The typology also allows for the unexpected patterns of behaviour to overlap in particular lexemes, producing some remarkable examples. Such examples show that the notion ‘possible word’ is more challenging than many linguists have realized.

Tuesday: Syntax: the typology of external splits

‘Split’ is used extensively, in different ways: ‘case split’, ‘split agreement’ and many more. Yet there is a unifying notion. The lexicon divides into parts of speech (or lexical categories) and there are cross-cutting regularities (features); a split is an additional partition, whether in the part of speech inventory or the feature system. On this base an elegant typology can be constructed, using minimal machinery. The typology is based on four external relations (government, agreement, selection and anti‑government), and it specifies four types of split within each (16 possibilities in all). This typology (i) highlights less familiar splits, from diverse languages, and fits them into the larger picture; (ii) introduces and documents anti‑government; (iii) elucidates the complexities of multiple splits; (iv) clarifies what exactly is split, which leads to a sharpening of our analyses and applies across different traditions.

Wednesday: Interfaces: the relations between internal and external splits

Lexemes may be split internally, by phenomena such as suppletion, periphrasis, heteroclisis and deponency. Generalizing over these phenomena, which split a lexeme’s paradigm, we can establish a typology of the possible internal splits. There are also lexemes whose external requirements are split: they induce different agreement, for instance. Again, a typology of these splits has been proposed. The next logical step is to attempt a typology of the possible relations between internal and external splits. This is not straightforward, since we need to avoid spurious linkages. Four lines of argument are offered: (i) general plausibility: the internal-external linkage is compelling, and so other accounts require a degree of coincidence which is unlikely; (ii) overabundance: alternative inflectional forms link to different external requirements; (iii) variation in time and space: splits in inflection and in external requirements vary, while maintaining their linkage; (iv) pluralia tantum nouns: the different types of these nouns provide intriguing confirming evidence. Case studies include Asia Minor Greek, Polish, Russian, Scottish Gaelic, Sεlεε, Serbo-Croat (BCMS), Slovenian, Latin and Old Frisian. The clear instances which emerge, where an external split is demonstrably linked to an internal one, prove both surprising and significant. We discover that in split paradigms, besides overt overabundance, there may also be covertly overabundant cells. Furthermore, when external splits involve individual cells, these will not induce simple (consistent) agreement. This makes good sense, demonstrating that featural information is associated with lexemes in a natural default manner: at the lexeme level by default, unless overridden at the sub-paradigm level, unless in turn overridden at the level of individual cells.

Thursday: Hierarchies: Underpinning the Agreement Hierarchy I: Controllers

The Agreement Hierarchy consists of four principal target positions: attributive, predicate, relative pronoun and anaphoric personal pronoun. It constrains the distribution of alternative agreements, in that the likelihood of agreement with greater semantic justification increases monotonically as we move rightwards along the hierarchy. The Agreement Hierarchy covers a wide range of disparate data, and continues to figure regularly in work on theoretical syntax. Since the hierarchy was first proposed, typology has moved on. This means that to remain fit for the purposes for which it is currently used, the hierarchy needs an overhaul. The typology of agreement controllers is the area where the need is most urgent; this is therefore our focus. The canonical typology of controllers is shown to have two dimensions: lexeme to phrase, and local to extraneous (the latter involving honorific agreement, associative agreement, back agreement and ‘pancake sentences’). These two dimensions are amply illustrated. Finally, interactions between the different types of agreement controller are investigated, since these prove revealing for the typology. Besides making progress on the typology of agreement, the paper contributes to typology more generally, in incorporating insights from other typological disciplines.

Friday: Underpinning the Agreement Hierarchy II: (Generalized) semantic agreement

Agreement systems often allow alternatives: This family has/have lost everything. Therefore typology requires a means for generalizing over them. Instances like plural have are frequently termed “semantic agreement” (vs. “syntactic agreement” for singular has), but this notion has proved difficult. The challenge is to encompass the full typological range of alternative agreements. These include the core instances: (i) hybrid nouns like family; and (ii) constructional mismatches, such as conjoined nominal phrases, but also less obvious phenomena: (iii) split hybrids where neither alternative is straightforwardly semantic, both appear related to form, and (iv) examples like Scandinavian “pancake sentences”, which stretch semantic agreement towards pragmatics. These different types are comparable in that (i) the alternatives are realized by the normal agreement forms; and (ii) they are subject to the Agreement Hierarchy. Hence they demand a common treatment. To achieve this, I first unpack the Agreement Hierarchy constraint into the agreement target positions and the directionality implied by “semantic agreement”. I show how the latter arises from mismatches between the agreement information available from different sources. In the core instances, the information from one source is, typically, more evidently semantic than the other. But in other instances, this is less clear. I argue that it is more parsimonious to treat these less obvious phenomena as falling under the constraint of the Agreement Hierarchy, and as being part of the pattern of a Hierarchy of Agreement Sources, which gives different degrees of “generalized semantic agreement”. This reworking offers a more robust underpinning to the Agreement Hierarchy, and fits into a current trend in typology. A typology that works is no longer sufficient: we examine and justify the defining criteria, and relate them to the underlying attributes of the domain.

Reading list

Background and preparatory readings:

Greenberg, Josheph H. 1963. Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. In: Joseph H. Greenberg (ed) Universals of Language, 73-113. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Paperback edition 1966.] A great foundational paper; if you’ve read it, do read it again.

Haspelmath, Martin, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil & Bernard Comrie (eds) The World Atlas of Language Structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available online at: http://wals.info. Dip in to whatever looks interesting.

Corbett, Greville G. 2006. Agreement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [chapter 1 and references there]

Round, Erich & Greville G. Corbett. 2020. Comparability and measurement in typological science: The bright future for linguistics. Linguistic Typology, 24, 3, 489-525. A recent account of what canonical typology contributes. Take it slowly! Open access

Course readings:

Some of the course readings may seem challenging the first time. I’d suggest you have a go at them, and see how far you get. Please note the places where the going gets tough, and bring these to ask about in our sessions. We shall tackle the data carefully together.

Class 1:

Corbett, Greville G. 2015. Morphosyntactic complexity: a typology of lexical splits. Language 91.145-193. DOI: 10.1353/lan.2015.0003. Available online. This is the paper we shall work on; it would be good to read at least to page 149.

Surrey Lexical Splits Database.

This provides extensive material. Do browse about.

Class 2:

Corbett, Greville G. 2023. The typology of external splits. Language 99(1). 108-153. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/884311.This is a long paper; just make a start.

Class 3:

Corbett, Greville G. 2022. Splits, internal and external, as a window into the nature of features. Morphology 32.45-91. doi: 10.1007/s11525-021-09387-5. Open access. Brings the two previous topics together. Includes some tricky data, which we’ll take time over together.

Class 4:

Corbett, Greville G. 2010. Implicational hierarchies. In: Jae Jung Song (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Language Typology, 190-205. Oxford: Oxford University Press. At: www.academia.edu/6033174/Implicational_hierarchies. An introduction to hierarchies, which will be useful for understanding the main paper.

Corbett, Greville G. 2022. The Agreement Hierarchy revisited: the typology of controllers. Word Structure 15(3). 181-225. (Thematic issue The many facets of agreement edited by Tania Paciaroni, Alice Idone & Michele Loporcaro) https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.3366/word.2022.0208 (open access). It would be good to get to page 185 before our session.

Class 5:

Corbett, Greville G. 2023.The Agreement Hierarchy and (generalized) semantic agreement. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 8(1). pp. 1–39. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.9164

Further readings:

There is an extensive bibliography on Canonical Typology (with many items downloadable) at: tiny.cc/ctbib

Brown, Dunstan & Marina Chumakina. 2013. What there might be and what there is: an introduction to Canonical Typology. In Dunstan Brown, Marina Chumakina & Greville G. Corbett (eds) Canonical Morphology and Syntax, 1-19. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [a helpful introduction]

 Bond, Oliver. 2013. A base for canonical negation. In Dunstan Brown, Marina Chumakina & Greville G. Corbett (eds) Canonical Morphology and Syntax, 20-47. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [a good example of how it is done]

Corbett, Greville G. 2012. Features. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [might prove useful as background to the issues we shall deal with in morphology and syntax]