Relativism and Universalism in Linguistics - Fachbereich 10 ...

182 Workshops
identify a class of indefinite Cs (typically interrogative ones), along with a class of definite Cs
(typically declarative ones).
Complementizer selection then shows that, at least in subordinating languages,
complementation is best characterized in terms of formal features which account for common
patterns, despite apparent differences which can be restricted to the lexicon. At the same time
it allows to draw on the similarities between Cs and determiner-like elements, such as
pronouns, showing that there is a further cross-linguistic unification which can be best
expressed in term of features.
Constrained Relativism Is Nothing but Implicit Universalism
Struckmeier, Volker
University of Cologne
volker.struckmeier@uni-koeln.de
According to the crude version of relativism outlined in the conference proposal, languages
should differ from one another because extralinguistic factors make them differ. However,
this view may contain a conceptual fallacy. The discipline of linguistics has developed
various models and theories that would seem to constrain the degree to which languages can
actually differ for language-external reasons, namely quite simply the degree to which
language-internal considerations force them to be similar to one another. It is immediately
obvious, that any relativist theory that allows for restrictions (e.g. of the formalist or the
functionalist type) on the variability of languages falls short of a complete description of
language: While some portions of language can be shown to vary, others will unavoidably fall
into the domain of universalist necessity.
I will show that the typology of sentence types can cover yet one more semantico-syntactic
phenomenon, namely the possibility to express attribution. I will present a common
morphosyntactic structure for attributes in German, which is in effect structurally parallel to a
relative clause. Attributes in German, then, constitute nothing but yet one more sentence type.
This sentence type is to be expected on formalist grounds, because it comprises no new
machinery whatsoever and should thus arise from the free “tinkering” of a minimalist syntax
left to play. My representation also allows for a semantic analysis that regards attribution as
an expectable (if not necessary) kind of structure in so far as it completes a system of
“reference types”. This semantic representation might, I suppose, just as well be reinterpreted
as a piece of functionalist evidence to the effect that languages might differ in morphosyntactic
realizations for a given semantic operation, but not in the set of the semantic
operations that these realizations serve to express. As the system of reference types also
include predicative and referential structures, the major linguistic operations constitute
conceptually necessary pieces of a system ou tout se tient from both a formalist and
functionalist perspective.
It can be claimed, then, that attributive, predicative and referential structures constitute
something we can expect from any and all languages. Typological investigations seem to
support this assumption in that all languages cater for these necessities in some way. If this is
indeed the case, the question of relativism vs. universalism boils down to a much more
modest (if somewhat malevolent) question: Given that universalism seems to be a logical
necessity for major linguistic operations, what is actually left for a relativist theory to decide?
To put it the other way round: If the relativist position cannot provide a substantial set of
phenomena that are actually variable in the languages of the world, it actually amounts to
nothing more than a description of the periphery that surrounds the universalist grammar it
then logically implies.