Teaching and Learning Guide for: Grammatical Categories and Relations: Universality vs. Language‐Specificity and Construction‐Specificity
Authors: Cristofaro Sonia 
Published: November 2010

This guide accompanies the following article: Sonia Cristofaro, ‘Grammatical Categories and Relations: Universality vs. Language‐Specificity and Construction‐Specificity’, Language and Linguistics Compass 3/1 (2009): 441–479. DOI: 10.1111/j.1749‐818x.2008.00111.x

Author's Introduction

A long‐standing assumption in linguistic analysis is that different languages and constructions can be described in terms of the same grammatical categories, for example, noun, verb, or adjective, and the same grammatical relations, for example, subject or object. Grammatical categories and relations correspond to classes whose members display at least partially overlapping properties, for example, they can all combine with the same inflection, or they can all occur in a particular syntactic slot. Particular categories or relations are often assumed to be universal, at least in the sense that they are taken for granted when describing the organization of any given language.

The categories and relations that can be defined for different languages and constructions, however, often do not display the same range of properties, which challenges the idea that one can actually posit the same category or relation in each case. As a result, there has been extensive debate in the functional‐typological literature as to whether or not grammatical categories and relations should be regarded as universal, or are valid for different languages and constructions anyway.

In a widespread approach, individual categories and relations are defined in terms of some selected properties. If the categories or relations that can be defined for different languages or constructions display at least some of these properties, then they are regarded as the same category or relation, even if they differ with regard to other properties. To the extent that all languages can be argued to have categories or relations with the selected properties, these categories or relations are regarded as universal. This approach is adopted both in a number of functional‐typological studies, and in generatively oriented analyses.

More recently, however, another approach to grammatical categories and relations has been developed within the functional‐typological framework. In this approach, there is no reason to assume a priori that individual categories and relations should be cross‐linguistically and cross‐constructionally valid, or, possibly, universal. If the categories and relations that can be defined for different languages or constructions display non‐overlapping properties, they should not be regarded as the same category or relation. Rather, individual categories and relations will be language‐specific and construction‐specific.

Author Recommends

1. (a) Farrell 2005:chap. 2

  (b) Schachter and Shopen 2007

 These references provide comprehensive, reader‐friendly overviews of the cross‐linguistic diversity of grammatical relations and parts of speech.

2. Anward, Moravcsik, and Stassen 1997

 This article provides a thorough overview of a number of major issues in the investigation of parts of speech systems cross‐linguistically, as well as an insightful list of prospects for future research in this field.

3. Keenan 1976

 This classical article is an early example of the prototype approach to grammatical categories and relations (in this case, subject). In particular, it provides a particularly clear illustration of the general idea that individual categories and relations can be defined in terms of a range of different properties, none of which is necessarily shared by all of the instances of the category or relation.

4. (a) Dixon 1994:chap. 5

  (b) Dixon 2006

 Dixon's approach to subject and adjectives is an example of the idea that, even if grammatical categories and relations display non‐overlapping properties cross‐linguistically, universal categories, and relations can be identified insofar as all languages display categories and relations that share some particular property.

5. Baker 2003

 This book might prove a bit too technical for readers uninterested in parts of speech as such or the fine details of a generative approach. However, it provides a particularly detailed example of how such an approach may reconcile the cross‐linguistic diversity of individual grammatical categories with the idea that these categories are a universal component of a speaker's mental grammar.

6. Dryer 1997

 This is one of the two articles by Dryer where the idea that grammatical categories and relations are language‐specific and construction‐specific has been proposed originally. A number of case studies are presented showing that the application of the same distributional criteria yields grammatical categories and relations with different properties from one language to another and sometimes from one construction to another within the same language. A compelling discussion is provided of the theoretical implications of these facts and the way they have been dealt with in previous approaches, both functionally and generatively oriented ones.

7. Croft 2001

 In this book, the idea that grammatical categories and relations are language‐specific and construction‐specific is elaborated into a full‐fledged theory of grammar, and it is applied to a variety of grammatical domains, including part of speech categories, heads, constituency, and voice. Chapters 1, 2, and 4 provide a particularly detailed and in‐depth discussion of the distributional criteria that are standardly used to identify parts of speech, subject, and direct object.

8. Haspelmath 2007

 This article provides a particularly clear assessment of the idea that grammatical categories and relations are language‐specific, and explores the consequences of this idea for language description in an extremely reader‐friendly way.

Online Materials

While there are no online materials specifically devoted to the issue of the universality vs. language‐specificity and construction‐specificity of grammatical categories and relations, extensive information and references on the cross‐linguistic and cross‐constructional diversity of individual categories and relations can be obtained from the following sites:

The Feature website (<http://www.grammaticalfeatures.net/>): This website, maintained by the Surrey Morphology Group, aims to provide an inventory and description of grammatical features, ‘the elements into which linguistic units, such as words, can be broken down’. Many features correspond to traditional grammatical categories, such as tense, aspect, mood, person, case, and gender, and the website provides comprehensive overviews of their cross‐linguistic properties.

The Universals Archive at the University of Konstanz(<http://typo.uni‐konstanz.de/archive/>): This is a searchable collection of many of the linguistic universals on record. Information about the cross‐linguistic diversity of grammatical categories and relations can be obtained by searching for universals involving individual categories and relations and properties thereof (e.g., universals pertaining to parts of speech, case, number, gender, tense, subject, object, and the like).

The World Atlas of Language Structures Online (<http://www.wals.info/>): This is the online, searcheable version of Comrie, Dryer, Gil, and Haspelmath 2005. Based on language samples of varying size, information is provided about distribution of different values of 142 features in the world's languages. By describing features pertaining to individual categories and relations (including, e.g., head, case, tense, aspect, evidentiality, number, gender, demonstratives, articles, pronouns, adjectives, subject, and object), several chapters provide data of the cross‐linguistic diversity of these categories and relations.

Sample Unit

This syllabus is meant for a 6 h per week class on the specific topic of the article, that is, the cross‐linguistic and cross‐constructional validity of grammatical categories and relations, addressed in a functional‐typological perspective. References have been selected with the aim to point students to particularly exhaustive and detailed pieces of literature on the relevant issues, but the reading list may be reduced as appropriate. Alternatively, the syllabus could be used as part of a course in linguistic typology. In this case, while maintaining the general division between the various topics, the time devoted to each topic should of course be reduced, and the reading list could be limited to Keenan 1976, Dryer 1997, Croft 2001:chaps 1, 2, 4, and Bresnan 2001:chaps 1, 4, 6.

Week 1: Defining grammatical categories and relations

The major criteria are presented that have been used in the linguistic literature to define grammatical categories and relations. Semantic criteria are contrasted with grammatical criteria, and the basics of the distributional method for identifying grammatical categories and relations are outlined. Categories established based on theory‐internal criteria, such as ‘empty categories’ in generatively oriented theories, are also discussed.

Reading

Moravcsik 1994; Radford 1997:151–4; Adger 2003:chap. 7; Farrell 2005:chap. 2; Schachter and Shopen 2007.

Week 2: Grammatical categories and relations: Cross‐linguistic and cross‐constructional diversity

A number of data from different languages are discussed showing that the application of the same distributional criteria may yield categories and relations with different properties from one language to another and one construction to another. In addition to data from the theoretical literature on the topic, the discussion is supplemented with data from a variety of reference grammars.

Reading

Dryer 1997; Croft 2001:chaps 1, 2, 4.

Weeks 3–4: Cross‐linguistic and cross‐constructional validity

A number of functional‐typological approaches are examined which assume that the same grammatical categories and relations can be posited for different languages and constructions. Two possible views of grammatical categories and relations are discussed. First, grammatical categories and relations can be used as classification labels which indicate that a number of linguistic elements share some selected property. In this view, their cross‐linguistic and cross‐constructional diversity poses no particular problem. In a second view, grammatical categories and relations are conceived as proper components of a speaker's mental grammar. While this view is most closely associated with generatively oriented theories of grammar, it also underlies a significant part of the theoretical debate within the functional‐typological approach. In this view, the cross‐linguistic and cross‐constructional diversity of individual categories and relations needs to be accounted for at the theoretical level, and a number of approaches which do so are compared. In particular, some generatively oriented models are compared with the prototype approach elaborated within the functional‐typological framework.

Reading

Keenan 1976; Hopper and Thompson 1980, 1984; Dixon 1994:chap. 5; Bresnan 2001:chaps 1, 4, 6; Dixon 2006; Baker 2003:chaps 1–2.

Week 5: Cross‐linguistic and cross‐constructional specificity

Another approach to the cross‐linguistic and cross‐constructional diversity of grammatical categories and relations is examined. In this approach, which is becoming increasingly popular with typologists, the idea that individual categories and relations are cross‐linguistically and cross‐constructionally valid is abandoned. Instead, individual categories and relations (as represented in a speaker's mental grammar) are argued to be language‐specific and construction‐specific. The theoretical implications of this approach for language description are discussed. Attention is also focused on the general theoretical issue of whether the available linguistic evidence can actually be used as evidence for specific models of grammatical representation.

Reading

Dryer 1997; Croft 2001:chaps 1, 2, 4; Haspelmath 2004, 2007.

Focus Questions

 What criteria are usually used to identify grammatical categories and relations in a language?

 Do individual criteria make it possible to define categories and relations with the same properties from one language to another and one construction to another, e.g., do particular grammatical phenomena define the same classes of elements, and are the same classes of elements defined by the same grammatical phenomena?

 How are grammatical categories and relations used in linguistic analysis, that is, are they used as classification labels for different linguistic elements, or are they conceived as proper components of a speaker's mental grammar?

 If categories and relations are conceived as proper components of a speaker's mental grammar, how do we account for the fact that they display nonoverlapping properties from one language to another and one construction to another?

 Can the linguistic evidence about grammatical categories and relations be used as evidence for models of grammatical representation in a speaker's mind?

Seminar/Project Idea: What Evidence for What Grammatical Categories or Relations?

The aim of this project is to develop a student's awareness of the criteria that can be used to define grammatical categories and relations, and the fact that these criteria may give different results from one language to another and one construction to another. In an advanced class, each student can pick two or three grammars of different languages (possibly selected from a set of grammars that the instructor believes to be particularly detailed and user‐friendly), and focus on a category or relation that is used in all of these grammars, e.g., ‘adjective’, ‘subject’, ‘noun’, ‘serial verb’, or the like. Students can write a short article or give a presentation discussing the following points:

 On what grounds do the authors of each grammar posit the category or relation for the language? Do they use distributional criteria, and, if yes, what are these?

 What according to the author of the grammar are the properties of the category or relation in each language? Are these properties the same for the various languages, or are there any nonoverlapping properties?

 If the authors of the grammars use distributional criteria to define the category or relation, do they take into account all of the grammatical environments in which these criteria are in principle applicable in the various languages? For example, if a category or relation is defined in terms of case marking or verbal agreement, does the author of the grammar discuss all of the environments (e.g., all types of nominals, or all types of verbal forms) in which these criteria could be applied? Do these criteria give the same results in all of these environments, and, if not, are there any alternative categories or relations that could be posited?

 Are there any grammatical environments in the language in which these criteria are not actually applicable (e.g., nominal forms not inflected for case, or verbal forms not inflected for agreement)?

 Are there any distributional criteria that are not taken into account by the author of the grammar, and, if yes, do these criteria suggest positing categories or relations other than those under examination? For example, if a grammatical relation is defined in terms of case marking or word order, are there other grammatical phenomena in the language, e.g., verbal agreement, that define different classes of verb arguments?

In a less advanced class, or if less time is available, instructors may present students with selected data from different languages showing that (i) the same grammatical phenomenon defines different classes of elements from one language to another or one construction to another, or (ii) different languages have the same classes of linguistic elements, but these are defined by different constructions. Based on this data, students will be asked to posit grammatical categories and relations for the various languages, discuss the evidence for these categories and relations, and compare their properties from one language to another and one construction to another. The following sections provide an illustration of the kind of data that could be used and the questions that could be raised.

Grammatical relations

Examine the following data from Kambera and Chontal. What grammatical relations can be defined for the two languages based on the distribution of person markers? Do these relations have the same properties in the two languages? Do these relations have the same properties in different constructions within the same language, e.g., different clause types, or perfective vs. imperfective verb forms?

Parts of speech

The following data from Kiowa and Tobeo illustrate the distribution of property words (‘big’, ‘beautiful’, ‘clever’, and the like) and words that describe processes (‘forget’, ‘come’, ‘break’, and the like) in the two languages. Is there evidence that these two word types form separate classes (distinct part of speech categories, that is) in the two languages? Do some property words behave differently from others?

Abbreviations

ACC
accusative

AG
agent

ART
article

CL
classifier

DU
dual

EMP
emphasis marker

IMPF
imperfective

INV
inverse

MOD
mood marker

NEG
negation

NMZ
nominalizer

NOM
nominative

OBJ
object

PAT
patient

PERF
perfect

PFV
perfective

PL
plural

PRES
present

PTCPL
participle

SG
singular

SUB
subordinator

Works Cited

Adger, D. 2003. Core syntax: a minimalist approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Anward, J., E. Moravcsik, and L. Stassen. 1997. Parts of speech: a challenge for typology. Linguistic Typology 1–2. 167–84.

Baker, M. C. 2003. Lexical categories: verbs, nouns, and adjectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bresnan, J. 2001. Lexical‐functional syntax. Oxford: Blackwell.

Comrie, B., M. Dryer, D. Gil, and M. Haspelmath (eds). 2005. The World Atlas of language structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Croft, W. 2001. Radical construction grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dixon, R. M. W. 1994. Ergativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dixon, R. M. W——. 2006. Adjective classes in typological perspective. Adjective classes: a cross‐linguistic typology, ed. by R. M. W. Dixon and A. Y. Aikhenvald, 1–49. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dryer, M. 1997. Are grammatical relations universal? Essays in language function and language type, ed. by J. Bybee, J. Haiman and S. A. Thompson, 115–43. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Farrell, P. 2005. Grammatical relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Genetti, C. 2007. A grammar of Dolhaka Newar. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Haspelmath, M. 2004. Does linguistic explanation presuppose linguistic description? Studies in Language 28. 554–79.

Haspelmath, M——. 2007. Pre‐established categories don't exist: consequences for language description and typology. Linguistic Typology 11—1. 119–32.

Hopper, P., and S. A. Thompson. 1980. Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language 56. 251–99.

Hopper, P. J., and S. A. Thompson. 1984. The discourse basis for lexical categories in universal grammar. Language 60. 703–52.

Keenan, E. L. 1976. Towards a universal definition of ‘‘subject’’. Subject and topic, ed. by C. N. Li, 303–33. New York: Academic Press.

Klamer, M. 1998. A grammar of Kambera. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Knowles, S. 1984. A descriptive grammar of Chontal Maya (San Carlos dialect). Ph.D. dissertation, Tulane University.

Moravcsik, E. 1994. Distribution. Encyclopedia of language and linguistics, ed. by R. E. Asher and J. M. Simpson, 1052–4. Oxford/Aberdeen: Pergamon Press and Aberdeen University Press.

Radford, A. 1997. Syntactic theory and the structure of English: a minimalist approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schachter, P. and T. Shopen. 2007. Parts‐of‐speech systems. Language typology and syntactic description. 2nd Edition, volume 1: Clause structure, ed. by T. Shopen, 1–60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Watkins, L. J. 1984. A grammar of Kiowa. Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press. With the assistance of P. McKenzie.