Category: Linguistics

Link roundup

Do you speak Scots? If you’re not sure, the text and audio samples at Aye Can will help you decide if you do. This is of particular relevance this year due to the 2011 Scottish Census.

Errol Morris, whose news essays have featured elsewhere on this blog (see here), has a compelling five-part essay ‘The Ashtray’ about his relationship with the philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn at the Institute for Advanced Study, and whose title derives from an object hurled at Morris by Kuhn (no, really!).

Popular Linguistics magazine is an important addition to the wealth of online resources relating to language and linguistics, with a particular focus on materials for nonspecialist readers. It promises to present material written by linguists (not just language mavens like Safire) in an accessible manner.

I had no idea that there were four distinct ways of saying ’10:15′ in German, or that they divided so neatly along well-defined isoglosses (lines marking distinctions in language). In North American English there would be similar, geographically-delimited variability but not for 10:15, but rather 10:45. Do you say ‘quarter to eleven’ or ‘quarter of eleven’?

Finally, as someone who has sent out two articles in the last ten days and desperately hopes not to get rejected, here is the Journal of Universal Rejection, the world’s most selective (and thus best) journal, with a 100% rejection rate. At least they promise to be prompt!

Numeration and Numeracy in Cognition, Language, and Culture

Last month, at the Society for Anthropological Sciences annual meeting in Charleston, SC, I organized a panel of some really interesting material on the broad topic of numeration. I want to take this opportunity (again) to thank all the presenters for their attendance and hard work. The abstracts (as also published in the conference program) were as follows:

Toward a cognitive, historical, linguistic anthropology of numerals
Stephen Chrisomalis (Wayne State University)

For over a century, the study of numeration, number systems and allied topics has been a key part of the comparative study of thought, language, and culture. The anthropology of numbers and mathematics has traditionally been a locus for unilinear evolutionary thought linked to notions of primitivity. The papers in this panel constitute a call for a culturally-grounded cognitive science of numeration within four of the disciplines of cognitive science (anthropology, linguistics, philosophy, and psychology).

Recent research in language evolution, linguistic relativity, and cultural aspects of mathematical cognition draw attention to the need for anthropologists to re-engage with this new agenda. First, the cross-cultural study of numerals allows the investigation and evaluation of universal and particular aspects of numeration and their relationship with social organization. Because numerals have multiple modalities (e.g., verbal, graphic, gestural), examining patterns in number systems beyond linguistics allows us to evaluate to what extent number concepts can be separated from language, including universal grammar. Finally, just as the cognitive anthropology of plant and animal taxonomy contributes to ecological and environmental anthropology, the cognitive anthropology of numerals and mathematics underpins economic anthropology and the anthropology of science.

Spatial-numeric associations in literates and illiterates
Samar Zebian (Lebanese American University, Beirut Lebanon)

Several independent studies have reported a cognitive association between small numbers and the left side of space and larger numbers andthe right side of space among individuals who read and write from left-to-right (SNARC effect). These associations are reversed for individuals who read and write from right-to-left. The SNARC effect has widely been taken as evidence that numbers are conceptualized as points along a mental number line, however there is growing evidence that this systematic spatial performance bias related to writing directionality is an instance of strategic processing rather than a reflection of inherent spatial attributes of numbers. In an attempt to explain the “deeper” origins of these associations researchers are examining the linkages between number and finger counting. The current study examines whether finger counting practices reveal consistent spatial-numeric associations and whether there are any spillover effects to other tasks that involve object sorting and counting and other non-counting but quantitative tasks such as line bisection and speeded parity judgment. If, in fact, finger counting practices and not the directionality of writing set up spatial-numeric associations than we should be able to observe the same type of spatial biases in literates and illiterates. Preliminary evidence suggests that the finger counting practices of literates and illiterates are not same and furthermore that the spatial biases found in finger counting are not observed across tasks.

Zero’s beginnings: the Mayan case
John Justeson (SUNY, Albany)

This paper addresses linguistic and (Mayan) historical evidence concerning the origins of a numerical concept of zero. Comparative linguistic evidence suggests that zero is not part of basic numerical cognition; rather, it develops out of computing practices of mathematical specialists. Specifically, while zero is often assumed to be prerequisite to the invention of positional notation, it seems on the contrary to emerge as a notational device within such systems. This is clearly the case in Mesoamerica. A system of place-value notation arose in Guatemala and Mexico among Mayans and epi-Olmecs by 36 BCE, with no symbol corresponding to a zero coefficient. Although data is limited, circumstantial evidence is consistent with the following scenario for the emergence of a numerical zero: Mayan calendar specialists developed discourse practices, associated with calendrically-timed ritual events, that used the word “lacking”; the associated dates were represented in a new, non-positional system of notation, which replaced positional notation except in calculating tables; the sign for “lacking” was transferred from the new notation into these tabular positional notations; as a side effect of the algorithms that specialists used to add and subtract positional numerals, the “lacking” symbol was reinterpreted numerically.

Methodological reflections on typologies for numeral systems
Theodore R. Widom and Dirk Schlimm (McGill University)

Past and present societies worldwide have employed well over 100 distinct notational systems for representing natural numbers, some of which continue to play a crucial role in intellectual and cultural development today. The diversity of these notations has prompted the need for classificatory schemes, or typologies, to provide a systematic starting point for their discussion and appraisal. In the present paper we provide a general framework
within which the efficacy of these typologies can be assessed relative to certain desiderata. Using this framework, we discuss the two influential typologies of Zhang & Norman and Chrisomalis, and present a new typology which takes as its starting point the principles by which numeral systems represent multipliers (the principles of cumulation and cipherization), and
bases (those of integration, parsing, and positionality). We argue with many different examples that this provides a more refined classification of numeral systems than the ones put forward previously. We also note that the framework can be used to assess typologies not only of numeral systems, but of many domains.

Social relationships as a lexical source for numeral terms in Amazonia
Cynthia Hansen and Patience Epps (The University of Texas at Austin)

Due to the relatively high degree of etymological transparency found in the numeral systems of Amazonia, it is possible to see the range of lexical sources from which the numeral terminology emerges. In this paper, we present the range of strategies used to create numeral terms below 5, based on an extensive survey of the numeral systems of close to 200 Amazonian languages conducted by the authors. More specifically, we discuss a strategy that is well-attested in Amazonia but that is not attested elsewhere in the world: a ‘relational’ strategy where terms for 4 (and sometimes 3-10) are built using a social relationship term, such as ‘sibling’ or ‘companion’. We propose that this strategy mirrors a gestural counting strategy found throughout the region where fingers are grouped in pairs.

Cultural variation in numeration systems and their mapping onto the mental number line
Andrea Bender and Sieghard Beller (University of Freiburg)

The ability to exactly assess large numbers hinges on cultural tools such as counting sequences and thus offers a great opportunity to study how culture interacts with cognition. To obtain a more comprehensive picture of the cultural variance in number representation, we argue for the inclusion of cross-linguistic analyses. In this talk, we will briefly depict the specific counting systems of Polynesian and Micronesian languages that were once derived from an abstract and regular system by extension in three dimensions. The linguistic origins, cognitive properties, and cultural context of these specific counting systems are analyzed, and their implications for the nature of a (putative) mental number line are discussed.

From ancient to digital archives

Belatedly, I note that Numerical Notation features prominently in the annual report of the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project published online last month (the section on my book is near the end). Matt Stolper, the head of the project, graciously gave me permission to reprint the Old Persian cuneiform tablet Fort. 1208-101 in my book, as it features the first evidence of the Old Persian numerals for the higher hundreds (in the numeral phrase ‘604’), and is the only known Old Persian document that serves an administrative function. Ultimately, the tablet was chosen by my editors to grace the extremely attractive cover.

Stolper alludes indirectly in the report to the serendipitous inclusion of this tablet in my research. I’ll be more direct: online publication and open access to the research findings of the Archive are the only reason I was able to integrate this important artifact into my research, at what was a fairly advanced stage of publication. If Stolper and his co-author Jan Tavernier had not published their findings directly online (Stolper and Tavernier 2007), enabling me to rapidly track it down once the media began to report on the tablet’s analysis, I could never have discussed it. (I should also give full credit to my wife, who first alerted me to the news articles on Fort. 1208-101). There are other arguments, such as cost, in favour of this model of publication, but access and speed – especially in fields like this, where data can lie unpublished for decades – are absolutely critical.

Romeyka

Happy New Year! I’m not a believer in new year’s resolutions but I do intend to post more frequently here over the next couple of months, at least with news items of interest.

Check out this interesting article in the Independent yesterday presenting Ioanna Sitaridou’s claim that Romeyka, an endangered dialect of Pontic Greek still spoken by around 5000 Muslim Greeks on Turkey’s Black Sea coast, preserves features of archaic Greek not known in any other modern variety. For instance, Romeyka preserves the use of the infinitive in various contexts in which you would never find it in standard Greek, or (apparently?) even in the Pontic Greek spoken in Greece and the diaspora. Sitaridou is completely correct in noting,”What we don’t yet know is whether Romeyka emerged in exactly the same way as other Greek dialects but later developed its own unique characteristics which just happen to resemble archaic Greek.” There doesn’t appear to be a formal publication associated with this article, but I’ll be looking out for one.

Review: von Mengden, Cardinal Numerals

This review appeared originally in the LINGUIST List at http://linguistlist.org/issues/21/21-5213.html

AUTHOR: von Mengden, Ferdinand
TITLE: Cardinal Numerals
SUBTITLE: Old English from a Cross-Linguistic Perspective
SERIES: Topics in English Linguistics [TiEL] 67
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2010

Stephen Chrisomalis, Department of Anthropology, Wayne State University

SUMMARY

This monograph is a systematic analysis of Old English numerals that goes far
beyond descriptive or historical aims to present a theory of the morphosyntax of
numerals, including both synchronic and diachronic perspectives, and to
contribute to the growing linguistic literature on number concepts and numerical
cognition.

The volume is organized into five chapters and numbered subsections throughout
and for the most part is organized in an exemplary fashion. Chapters II and
III, where the evidence for the structure of the Old English numerals is
presented, will be of greatest interest to specialists in numerals. Chapter IV
will be of greatest interest to specialists in Old English syntax. Chapter V is
a broader contribution to the theory of word classes and should be of interest
to all linguists.

The author begins with an extensive theoretical discussion of number concepts
and numerals, working along the lines suggested by Wiese (2003). Chapter I
distinguishes numerals (i.e., numerically specific quantifiers) from other
quantifiers, and distinguishes systemic cardinal numerals from non-systemic
expressions like ‘four score and seven’. As the book’s title suggests, cardinal
numerals are given theoretical priority over ordinal numerals, and nominal forms
like ‘Track 29’ or ‘867-5309’ are largely ignored. Cardinal numerals exist in
an ordered sequence of well-distinguished elements of expandable but
non-infinite scope. Here the author builds upon the important work of Greenberg
(1978) and Hurford (1975, 1987), without presenting much information about Old
English numerals themselves.

Chapter II introduces the reader to the Old English numerals as a system of
simple forms joined through a set of morphosyntactic principles. It is
abundantly data-rich and relies on the full corpus of Old English to show how
apparent allomorphs (like HUND and HUNDTEONTIG for ‘100’) in fact are almost
completely in complementary distribution, with the former almost always being
used for multiplicands, the latter almost never. This analysis allows the
author to maintain the principle that each numeral has only one systemic
representation, but at the cost of making a sometimes arbitrary distinction
between systemic and non-systemic expressions. This links to a fascinating but
all-too-brief comparative section on the higher numerals in the ancient Germanic
languages, which demonstrates the typological variability demonstrated even
within a closely related subfamily of numeral systems.

Chapter III deals with complex numerals, a sort of hybrid category encompassing
various kinds of complexities. The first sort of complexity, common in Old
English, involves the use of multiple noun phrases to quantify expressions that
use multiple bases (e.g. ‘nine hundred years and ten years’ for ‘910 years’).
The second complexity is the typological complexity of Old English itself; the
author cuts through more than a century of confusion from Grimm onward in
demonstrating conclusively that there is no ‘duodecimal’ (base 12) element to
Old English (or present-day English) — that oddities like ‘twelve’ and
‘hundendleftig’ (= 11×10) can only be understood in relation to the decimal
base. The third is the set of idiosyncratic expressions ranging from the
not-uncommon use of subtractive numerals, to the overrunning of hundreds (as in
modern English ‘nineteen hundred’), to the multiplicative phrases used
sporadically to express numbers higher than one million. Where a traditional
grammar might simply list the common forms of the various numeral words, here we
are presented with numerals in context and in all their variety.

Chapter IV presents a typology of syntactic constructions in which Old English
numerals are found: Attributive, Predicative, Partitive, Measure, and Mass
Quantification. In setting out the range of morphosyntactic features
demonstrated within the Old English corpus, the aim is not simply descriptive,
but rather, assuming that numerals are a word class, to analyze that class in
terms of the variability that any word class exhibits, without making
unwarranted comparisons with other classes.

In Chapter V the author argues against the prevalent view that numerals are
hybrid combinations of nouns and adjectives. While there are similarities,
these ought not to be considered as definitional of the category, but as results
of the particular ways that cardinal numerals are used. Because it is
cross-linguistically true that higher numerals behave more like nouns than lower
ones, this patterned variability justifies our understanding the cardinal
numerals as a single, independent word class. It is regarded as the result of
higher numerals being later additions to the number sequence — rather than
being ‘more nounish’, they are still in the process of becoming full numerals.
They are transformed from other sorts of quantificational nouns (like
‘multitude’) into systemic numerals with specific values, but retain vestiges of
their non-numeral past.

EVALUATION

This is an extremely important volume, one that deserves a readership far beyond
historical linguists interested in Germanic languages. It is not the last word
on the category status of cardinal numerals, cross-linguistic generalizations
about number words, or the linguistic aspects of numerical cognition, but it
represents an exceedingly detailed and well-conceived contribution to all these
areas. While virtually any grammar can be relied upon to present a list of
numerals, virtually none deals with the morphosyntactic complexities and
historical dimensions of this particular domain that exist for almost any
language. Minimal knowledge of Old English is required to understand and
benefit from the volume.

The specialist in numerals will be struck by the richness and depth of the
author’s specific insights regarding numerical systems in general, using the Old
English evidence to great effect. Because it is one of very few monographs to
be devoted specifically to a single numeral system, and by far the lengthiest
and theoretically the most sophisticated (cf. Zide 1978, Olsson 1997, Leko
2009), there is time and space to deal with small complexities whose broader
relevance is enormous. The volume thus strikes that fine balance between
empiricism and theoretical breadth required of this sort of cross-linguistic
study rooted in a single language.

With regard to the prehistory of numerals, we are very much working from a
speculative framework, and where the author treads into this territory, of
necessity the argument is more tenuous. It may be true that for most languages,
the hands and fingers are the physical basis for the counting words, but
Hurford’s ritual hypothesis (1987), of which von Mengden does not think highly,
is at the very least plausible for some languages if not for all. These issues
are not key to the argument, which is all the more striking given that they are
presented conclusively in Chapter I.

A potential limitation of the volume is that, by restricting his definition of
numerals to cardinals (by far the most common form in the Old English corpus),
the author is forced into an exceedingly narrow position, so that, ultimately,
ordinals, nominals, frequentatives, and other forms are derived from numerals
but are not numerals as a word class, but something else. But the morphosyntax
of each of these forms has its own complexities — think of the nominal ‘007’ or
the decimal ‘6.042’ – that deserve attention from specialists on numerals.
Numerals may well be neither adjectives nor nouns, but omitting the clearly
numerical is not a useful way to show it. Similarly, the insistence that each
language possesses one and only one systemic set of cardinal numerals is
problematic in light of evidence such as that presented by Bender and Beller
(2006).

When comparing with other sorts of numerical expressions, e.g. numerical
notations, the author is on shakier grounds. It is certainly not the case, as
the author claims that the Inka khipus had a zero symbol, and it is equally the
case that the Babylonian sexagesimal notation and the Chinese rod-numerals did
(Chrisomalis 2010). Similarly, the author seems to suggest that in present-day
English, any number from ‘ten’ to ‘ninety-nine’ can be combined multiplicatively
with ‘hundred’, whereas in fact *ten hundred, *twenty hundred, … *ninety hundred
are well-formed in Old English but not in later varieties.

It is curious that von Mengden does not link the concept of numerical ‘base’ to
that of ‘power’, but rather to the patterned recurrence of sequences of
numerals. Rather than seeing ’10’, ‘100’ and ‘1000’ as powers of the same base
(10), they are conceptualized as representing a series of bases that combine
with the recurring sequence 1-9. But a system that is purely decimal, except
that numbers ending with 5 through 9 are constructed as ‘five’, ‘five plus one’
… ‘five plus four’, would by this definition have a base of 5 even though powers
of 5 have no special structural role and even though 5 never serves as a
multiplicand. This definition is theoretically useful in demonstrating that Old
English does not have a duodecimal (base-12) component, but as a
cross-linguistic definition will likely prove unsatisfactory.

Because the Old English numerals are all Germanic in origin, with no obvious
loanwords, it is perhaps unsurprising that language contact and numerical
borrowing play no major role in this account. Yet on theoretical grounds the
borrowing of numerals, including the wholesale replacement of structures and
atoms for higher powers, is of considerable importance cross-linguistically.
Comparative analysis will need to demonstrate whether morphosyntactically,
numerical loanwords are similar to or different from non-loanwords.

The author has incorporated the work of virtually every major recent theorist on
numerals, and the volume is meticulously referenced. There are a few irrelevant
typos, and a few somewhat more serious errors in tables and text that create
ambiguity or confusion, but no more than might be expected in any volume of this
size.

This monograph is a major contribution to the literature on numerals and
numerical cognition. Its value will be in its rekindling of debates long left
dormant, and its integration of Germanic historical linguistics, syntax,
semantics, and cognitive linguistics within a fascinating study of this
neglected lexical domain.

REFERENCES:

Bender, A., and S. Beller. 2006. Numeral classifiers and counting systems in
Polynesian and Micronesian languages: Common roots and cultural adaptations.
Oceanic Linguistics 45, no. 2: 380-403.

Chrisomalis, Stephen. 2010. Numerical Notation: A Comparative History. New York:
Cambridge University Press.

Greenberg, Joseph H. 1978. Generalizations about numeral systems. In Universals
of Human Language, edited by J. H. Greenberg. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Hurford, James R. 1975. The Linguistic Theory of Numerals. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Hurford, James R. 1987. Language and Number. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Leko, Nedžad. 2009. The syntax of numerals in Bosnian. Lincom Europa.

Olsson, Magnus. 1997. Swedish numerals: in an international perspective. Lund
University Press.

Wiese, Heike. 2003. Numbers, Language, and the Human Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Zide, Norman H. 1978. Studies in the Munda numerals. Central Institute of Indian
Languages.