Why can't we talk to each other?: Why can't we listen?

In a very thoughtful review of Fritz Newmeyer's Language Form and Language Function, Martin Haspelmath (2000) poses the (partially rhetorical) question Why can't we talk to each other? which is also the title of the piece. The "we" in question are formalists* and functionalists, who—despite the best efforts of linguists like Newmeyer and Haspelmath—seem locked in a Middle East-style conflict without compromise or meaningful concession. One of the reasons for non-talking, Haspelmath proposes, is that our fundamental goals are incompatible. This may be so, but I think there is a simpler explanation: a conversation requires listeners as well as talkers, and we just don't listen.

Let me climb off the fence for a change, to make clear which kind of non-listening I'm referring to.

Do Asians really think differently from Westerners? - Revised Version

Link to PDF file


This is the revised draft version of the article on Asian-Western differences in visual recall, which has been resubmitted to Cognitive Linguistics. It should be cited as Tajima, Y. & N. Duffield (2011) On Japanese-Chinese differences in picture description and recall. Ms. Keio University and University of Sheffield. Submitted.

Head-First: On the head-initiality of Vietnamese clauses

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This is the final draft version of an article on CP and 'Yes-No' questions in Vietnamese that will appear in 2012 in a Mouton volume edited by Daniel Hole and Elisabeth Löbel on the Linguistics of Vietnamese [title forthcoming]. This paper will form the basis of section 1 of Chapter 3 of my forthcoming monograph. This version should be cited as Duffield, Nigel (2011) Head-First: On the head-initiality of Vietnamese clauses, ms. University of Sheffield.

How flabbergasting is Extragrammaticality?

Recently, I have been forced to think a bit harder about the concept of Extra-grammaticality, which is basically the idea that some elements of a linguistic utterance are not analyzed as part of the abstract, underlying sentential representation (even if they are legitimate lexical items that may, on another occasion, be so analyzed). The context for this concern is a paper that I recently submitted to a leading journal, which—the paper, that is—was tossed back at me after being savagely rejected by one of the reviewers. One of the many things the reviewer objected to was a section in which, in passing, I entertained the proposal that utterance final Q-morphemes in East Asian languages such as Vietnamese and Mandarin might be extra-grammatical in the sense defined above; in the particular case at hand,  which concerns the analysis of interrogative không, I was in fact rejecting such a proposal for không. But no matter: the mere suggestion of extra-grammaticality was enough to horrify, indeed flabbergast, the reviewer of the afore-unnamed journạl. Verbatim, if not literally (whatever the literal meaning of flabbergast might be, I think he was exaggerating). Quoth he: (“[The] statement ...that “many languages have lexical elements that are extra-metrical in this sense—present in utterances but not in sentences..."... left me flabbergasted.”

For this, and doubtless other, sounder, reasons, the reviewer was minded to urge rejection of the paper, and the editor duly complied.

Getting the GIST4 (September 29th-30th)

It will be very good to come back to Belgium, and to linguistics, after too long away. If you are interested why don't you join us...

On 9 Jun 2011, at 00:13, Reiko Vermeulen wrote:

Emotional Distance and Deixis

Teaching a subject area that you are relatively unfamiliar with has several advantages, not least of which is that it is is easy to make discoveries, which in turn makes teaching more fun. I'm not pretending, by the way, that these are true discoveries—that is to say, facts previously unknown to linguistic science—only that they are not in the textbook I am teaching from, and that they are new to me.

Here at Kobe College I am teaching a two semester course entitled Meaning and Cognition. For the most part, it is a straight Intro to Semantics course, though in every lesson I try to think of a cognitive angle on a particular topic, as much as anything to inject something interesting into a subject that can be jaw-droppingly dull if not seasoned in some way or other with cute facts.

So today, I was teaching Deixis