Crosslinguistic categories, comparative concepts, and the Walman diminutive
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Matthew S. Dryer
Abstract
In this article, I consider the notions of crosslinguistic categories and comparative concepts as they apply to a diminutive category in Walman, a language in the Torricelli family spoken in Papua New Guinea. I discuss three interpretations of the question of whether the Walman diminutive is a gender. One interpretation is the question whether the Walman diminutive is an instance of a crosslinguistic category of gender. I argue that this interpretation is problematic since it assumes the existence of crosslinguistic categories and I argue that there is no reason to believe that crosslinguistic categories exist, since the similarities among languages can be explained without appeal to crosslinguistic categories. A second interpretation involves a question of how the diminutive fits into the grammar of Walman, whether the diminutive should be considered a third value of a feature in the grammar of Walman which has two clear values, masculine and feminine. I argue that the evidence supports the view that the Walman diminutive is not a gender in this sense. The third interpretation is whether the Walman diminutive is an instance of a comparative concept of gender. But the answer to that question depends on how one defines gender as a comparative concept.
Abbreviations
- 1/2/3
1st/2nd/3rd person
- dim
diminutive
- f
feminine
- m
masculine
- neg
negation
- obj
object
- perf
perfective
- pl
plural
- sg
singular
- subj
subject.
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©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Lexical flexibility in Oceanic languages
- Sampling for variety
- Discussion
- Of categories: Language-particular – comparative – universal
- The challenge of making language description and comparison mutually beneficial
- Crosslinguistic categories, comparative concepts, and the Walman diminutive
- Crosslinguistic categories in morphosyntactic typology: Problems and prospects
- On categorization: Stick to the facts of the languages
- Comparative concepts and language-specific categories: Theory and practice
- Some language-particular terms are comparative concepts
- On the right of being a comparative concept
- On linguistic categories
- Thoughts on language-specific and crosslinguistic entities
- Describing languoids: When incommensurability meets the language-dialect continuum
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Lexical flexibility in Oceanic languages
- Sampling for variety
- Discussion
- Of categories: Language-particular – comparative – universal
- The challenge of making language description and comparison mutually beneficial
- Crosslinguistic categories, comparative concepts, and the Walman diminutive
- Crosslinguistic categories in morphosyntactic typology: Problems and prospects
- On categorization: Stick to the facts of the languages
- Comparative concepts and language-specific categories: Theory and practice
- Some language-particular terms are comparative concepts
- On the right of being a comparative concept
- On linguistic categories
- Thoughts on language-specific and crosslinguistic entities
- Describing languoids: When incommensurability meets the language-dialect continuum
