Relativism and Universalism in Linguistics - Fachbereich 10 ...

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English and German form their preterit and 2 nd participle with ablaut and –en, e.g. English
drink drank drunk, German singen sang gesungen ‘to sing’. Most verbs ending in -at’ in
Russian form a regular/productive present tense in which the -a- is retained, e.g. čitat’ čitaet
‘to read’, but approx. 200 irregular/non-productive verbs in -at’ drop the -a- and undergo
consonant interchange, e.g. pisat’ pišet ‘to write’. A comparison of exhaustive lists of the
irregular verbs with exhaustive lists of structurally comparable regular verbs in the three
languages has revealed that for English and German the VCs and CVs (the vowel + consonant
(cluster) and consonant (cluster) + vowel sequences) – for Russian just the VCs – of the stems
of the irregular verbs have a remarkably low rate of occurrence on the regular verbs, and thus
serve as phonotactic markers of irregular conjugation; e.g. in English the [��k] of drink, in
German the [��] of singen, in Russian the –is of pisat’. Moreover, a comparison with
monosyllabic words other than verbs in the three languages has revealed that the irregular
verb VCs (but not the CVs) have a remarkably high rate of occurrence in function words, as
opposed to full lexical words. Thus a phonotactic link has been established between irregular
verbs and function words. The research described is not yet complete, since a rule of
formation and a meaning for the irregular verbs are still to be found – it seems likely that the
irregular verbs will turn out to be resultative, as opposed to process-oriented – but the patterns
observed so far point in the direction of a phonotactic solution. Once again, any solution
found will be applicable in pedagogical grammars.
This ‘method of lexical exceptions’ has the following stages to it: (i) choose a construction
which is formally present in two or three languages and which has an unusually large number
of lexical exceptions; (ii) look for a formal correlation between your construction and its
exceptions on the one hand and some other category in your languages on the other (see
Beedham 2005).
In terms of relativism vs. univeralism the paper shows that structurally and typologically
diverse languages, in this case two Germanic languages and a Slav language, are more similar
in structure than previously thought if mistakes in their descriptions can be eradicated with the
aid of the method of lexical exceptions.
Reference
Beedham, Christopher. 2005. Language and Meaning. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Iconicity in language:
an integrated approach
De Cuypere, Ludovic / Willems, Klaas / van der Auwera, Johan
University of Gent / University of Gent / University of Antwerp
Ludovic.DeCuypere@ugent.be
Western thought has been fascinated by iconicity in language, viz. the resemblance between
linguistic forms and reality, ever since its earliest beginnings in ancient Greek philosophy.
Already from the start two basic views on iconicity are apparent. Proponents of iconicity hold
that iconicity offers a general account of linguistic forms. Opponents, on the other hand,
contend that iconicity is merely in the eye of the beholder. From the 1980s onwards, a vast
accumulation of studies arguing for iconicity in language may be witnessed. In particular,
iconicity has become a popular explanatory concept for morphological (e.g. Bybee 1985) as
well as syntactic structures (e.g. Haiman 1985). The age old opposition does not seem to be
resolved, however, for not everyone is convinced by the empirical “evidence”.
Our talk starts off by exploring the epistemological problems involved in the matter, which
we believe to be explanatory of this opposition. These problems are outlined through C. S.