Language vs individuals in cross-linguistic corpus typology

Danielle Barth, Nicholas Evans, Wayan Arka, Henrik Bergqvist, Diana Forker, Sonja Gipper, Gabrielle Hodge, Eri Kashima, Yuki Kasuga, Carine Kawakami, Yukinori Kimoto, Dominique Knuchel, Norikazu Kogura, Keita Kurabe, John Mansfield, Keiko Narrog, Desak P. Eka Pratiwi, Saskia van Putten, Chikako Senge, Olena Tykhostup

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

    Abstract

    There is a long tradition in linguistics of seeing each language as a powerful factor setting out predetermining grooves in how people express themselves. But how strong is this effect? We know that despite the forces of linguistic habit people nonetheless enjoy some freedom in formulating their thoughts. Can we measure the relative contributions of language structures and individual variation to how people formulate statements about the world? Do accounts of typological differences need to take individual variation into account, and is such variation more prevalent in some kinds of linguistic domains than others? In this paper, we deploy a parallax corpus across thirteen languages from around the world and explore four case studies of linguistic choice, two grammatical and two semantic. We assess whether differences are accounted adequately just by individual participant variation, just by language information, or whether taking into account both helps account for the patterns we see. We do this through comparisons of statistical models. Our results make it clear that participants using the same language do not always behave similarly and this is especially true of our semantic variables. We take this to be a strong caution that the behaviour of individual participants should be considered when making typological generalisations, but also as an exciting outcome that corpus typology as a field can help us account for intra- and inter-language variation.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationLanguage Documentation & Conservation
    EditorsHaig, Geoffrey & Schnell, Stefan & Seifart, Frank (eds.)
    Place of PublicationHonolulu
    PublisherUniversity of Hawai'i Press
    Pages179-232
    Volume1
    EditionFirst
    ISBN (Print)978-0-9979673-0-2
    Publication statusPublished - 2021

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