{"id":333,"date":"2018-09-08T15:33:58","date_gmt":"2018-09-08T13:33:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lilec.it\/list\/?page_id=333"},"modified":"2019-02-24T20:51:04","modified_gmt":"2019-02-24T19:51:04","slug":"universalist","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.lilec.it\/list\/universalist\/","title":{"rendered":"universaLIST"},"content":{"rendered":"

List constructions in typological and cognitive perspective<\/strong><\/h1>\n
3-year project funded by the LILEC Department, Alma Mater Studiorum \u2013 University of Bologna<\/h5>\n

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Project overview
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The universaLIST<\/strong> project, embedded in the larger research network LIST \u2013 Listing in Natural Language<\/em><\/a> \u2013 aims at investigating list constructions in the languages of the world adopting a typological and cognitive perspective.<\/p>\n

Lists comprise a wide range of phenomena that are usually considered as separate linguistic entities. By \u2018list\u2019, here, we mean “the syntagmatic concatenation of two or more units of the same type (i.e. potentially paradigmatically connected) that are on a par with each other, thus filling one and the same slot within the larger construction they are part of” (Masini, Mauri & Pietrandrea to appear). We consider as occurrences of lists phenomena such as coordination<\/strong> (The system allows <\/em>gas, electricity and water <\/em>meters to be read<\/em>), repetition<\/strong> (some people are <\/em>very very very <\/em>touchy<\/em>), reformulation<\/strong> (they now had <\/em>lifts, or rather elevators<\/em>), but also \u2013 at the morphological level \u2013 (co<\/strong>-)compounding<\/strong> (Chuvash, Turkic: se\u0306t-\u015bu<\/em> \u2018dairy products, lit. milk-butter\u2019, cf. W\u00e4lchli 2005: 138) and (full) reduplication<\/strong> (Sundanese, Austronesian: haya\u014b-haya\u014b <\/em>\u2018want very much, red-want\u2019, cf. Moravcsik 1978: 321).<\/p>\n

Interestingly, all these devices are linked to each other not only by their structure, but also by the array of functions they convey in both intra- and cross-linguistic perspective. These functions include: intensification<\/strong> (English, Indo-European: he is <\/em>very very<\/em> bright<\/em>, cf. Moravcsik 1978: 301; Thai, Tai-Kadai: d\u00edidii <\/em>\u2018to be extremely good\u2019, from dii <\/em>\u2018to be good\u2019, cf. Moravcsik 1978: 321); approximation<\/strong> (English, Indo-European: fifty or fifty-five<\/em>=around fifty(five); Mandarin Chinese, Sino-Tibetan: s\u0101n-s\u00ec<\/em> \u2018three or four, lit. three-four\u2019); categorization or hypernym-creation<\/strong> (English, Indo-European: knife and fork<\/em>=cutlery; Chuvash, Turkic: erex-sa\u0306ra <\/em>\u2018alcoholic beverages, lit. vodka\/wine-beer\u2019, cf. W\u00e4lchli 2005: 141); generalization<\/strong> (English, Indo-European: night and day<\/em>=always; Tagalog, Austronesian: araw-gabi <\/em>\u2018always, lit. day-night\u2019, cf. W\u00e4lchli 2005: 139).<\/p>\n

The universaLIST<\/strong> project aims at: (i) giving a comprehensive large-scale typological account of lists; and (ii) identifying possible recurrent and conventionalized pairings of form and function, i.e. constructions<\/em> in the Construction Grammar sense (Hoffman & Trousdale 2013; cf. Croft 2001 for its typological application); (iii) exploring the existence of a unique underlying device connecting all the phenomena mentioned above and whether this (possible) device is cognitively grounded and, thus, potentially universal.<\/p>\n

Since lists are thought to manifest themselves at different levels (from morphology to syntax and discourse), their typological study raises theoretical and methodological issues. Indeed, from a practical point of view, lists are far from being simple to find in descriptive grammars. For this reason, doing typology in the traditional way turns out to be quite hard. Consequently, a new methodology for bringing out the data is needed. We propose a three-level study<\/strong> allowing both a horizontal and a vertical investigation. Firstly, the traditional examination of descriptive grammars is pivotal and allows achieving a preliminary survey of how languages work (in this case, a variety sample is the better option). Secondly, a qualitative analysis of corpora and texts of a (smaller) language sample can be particularly useful to detect naturally occurring lists (corpora of spoken language would be especially useful, if available). The third level is connected to the second one, namely: a more quantitative analysis of large annotated corpora of few selected languages, which would provide data to draw some generalizations. This three-level investigation probably represents the best solution to study a non-canonical phenomenon like lists. However, this method requires a strict cooperation with linguists that are experts of specific linguistic areas; this would allow to work on data of particular languages and, consequently, to have a more detailed and comprehensive understanding of how lists work in these languages.<\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n