Some language-particular terms are comparative concepts
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David Beck
Abstract
Haspelmath (2010) draws a categorial distinction between language-particular terms – terms used in the description of specific languages – and comparative concepts – terms used for crosslinguistic comparison. This seems like a valid distinction for a lot of terminology, but it is also true that there are “portable” terms that are suitable both for the description of specific languages and for crosslinguistic comparison. This descriptive metalanguage is analogous to the descriptive vocabulary employed in other observational sciences, and its elaboration is an important enterprise for both descriptivist and comparative linguists.
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©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
- 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
Articles in the same Issue
- 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
