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Faculty of Arts and HumanitiesGeneral Linguistics (Department of Linguistics)

UNITYP

The term UNITYP is a syllable word combining the two terms (linguistic) universal(ies) and (linguistic) typology. The detailed German title was: "Sprachliche Universalienforschung und Typologie unter besonderer Berücksichtigungfunktionaler Aspekte". This stands for the work carried out by a linguistic research group at the University of Cologne in the field of universals using linguistic typology methods between 1972 and 1992, thanks to funding from the German Research Foundation.

 

History

In 1972, Hansjakob Seiler began a new type of research project for which he was able to recruit a number of collaborators on a voluntary basis. Just one year later and in the following years, funding was approved by the German Research Foundation (DFG), which turned the private initiative of an individual into a project of the German Research Foundation (DFG). An official research group was established in 1978. Full-time and part-time staff could now be employed. Former employees who had obtained a position outside Cologne became associate members. Prominent linguists such as the internationally renowned linguist Christian Lehmann also emerged from such former employees. In 1992, six years after Seiler's retirement and twenty years after the project was founded, the UNITYP research group ended its work. Until then, it had published four different publications (akup [Arbeiten des Kölner Universalienprojektes], LW [Linguistic Workshop] I-III, Language Universals [die Akten eines Kongresses von 1978]. The Language Universals Series, vol. 1 (i, ii, iii), 2-8); countless papers on her project have been published. These works related to a number of so-called dimensions, namely:

  • APPREHENSION
  • IDENTIFICATION
  • NOMINATION
  • NUMERATION
  • DETERMINATION
  • POSSESSION
  • PARTICIPATION
  • SITUATION
  • LOCALIZATION

 

Conception:

The UNITYP project works with a specific functional approach that distinguishes between a cognitive-conceptual domain and a linguistic dimension. For example, the cognitive concept of POSSESSION consists of a relationship between a possessor and a possession, and the older distinction between alienable and inalienable possession is incorporated. Linguistically, various constructions, so-called techniques such as "I have a book" and "I own a book", are recorded, but also nominal techniques such as "my book", "my father", whose differences only become clear when they are transformed into a construction with a possessive verb, which is not possible in all cases ("I own a book" vs. "*? I own a father"). In both the cognitive and the linguistic domain, therefore, there is a diversity that cannot simply be resolved categorially or by recourse to a deep structure in the sense of formal approaches.

Mental concepts are invariant and present in all languages, i.e. universal. Linguistic techniques, on the other hand, are variable and can differ from language to language. For example, the nominal technique of adding a possessive adjective to a noun is present in many languages, such as most European languages, but not in North American Cahuilla, which uses possessive prefixes and possessive classifiers instead. The task of linguistics is to combine as many techniques as possible into one concept. However, the relationship between variants and the invariant is not a direct relationship. It is realized via three hierarchically graded levels:

  1. the level of individual language facts
  2. the level of language comparison, at which techniques of linguistic realization of a concept are compared
  3. the level of cognitive concepts

There are the following techniques for the concept POSSESSION: a construction of possessive pronoun + noun (e.g. "my house") or possessive affix + classifier + noun ("my pet dog"); a case construction (e.g. with genitive: "Susanne's house" or as a constructus relation, where the bearer noun is marked by the status constructus: Old Hebrew beth-el: "house of God" [beth = status constructus to bajit]), a verb such as haben, gehören (e.g. e.g. "the house belongs to Susanne"), or an apparently spatial construction for the possessive expression (e.g. in West African Akan, where the sentence "he/she has a red bicycle" would literally mean "he/she is on a red bicycle").

According to an important finding of the UNITYP project, techniques for expressing a certain concept can be arranged in a continuous manner in a so-called dimension. At one pole of the dimension is the global capture of the concept, at the other pole the explicit capture of the same relationship. The continuum unfolds in such a way that additional information is entered step by step.

In the concept of POSSESSION, the dimension is as follows: At one end there is a possessive noun such as head; the relation to a possessor is already contained in it (head is always someone's head). Constructions such as "mein/dein/sein Kopf" introduce person-differentiating information, i.e. the possessive relation becomes more explicit. Verbal constructions with haben, besitzen etc. also allow differentiation, e.g. according to tense, which gives the possessive relationship a temporal reference (cf. "Susanne has a house" and "Susanne had a house"). From this dimension it can also be seen, for example, that the increasing explicitness in the linguistic representation of the concept of POSSESSION is accompanied by an increase in the possessor's control over the possessum. This can be seen, for example, in the two verbs haben and besitzen, which express the possession relationship in different explicit ways: The full verb besitzen implies more control of the possessor than haben, which is semantically vague and can also be used as an auxiliary verb (cf. "Susanne has a house" and "Susanne owns a house").

The distinction between invariant concepts and variable techniques also provides a sound basis for comparing languages. Before the tertium comparationis of the concept, the different individual language techniques can be compared. Here, universals research looks for individual concepts such as the concept of OWNERSHIP; language typology has the task of looking for similar strategies for expressing a particular concept in the languages of the world and grouping them into techniques.

The principle explained above of describing the concept OWNERSHIP in a continuum of possible techniques of representation can also be applied to other concepts, e.g. to the invariants object, number, locality, process, polarity, etc. (see also above at the end of this section). (see also above at the end of the section "History"). Future research will have to clarify whether it can be applied to all conceivable concepts.

 

Source: WIKIPEDIA

Literature

  • Hansjakob Seiler (ed.): Linguistic Workshop I. Vorarbeiten zu einem Universalienprojekt. Fink, München 1973.
  • Hansjakob Seiler (ed.): Linguistic Workshop II. Arbeiten des Kölner Universalienprojekts 1973/74. Fink, München 1974.
  • Hansjakob Seiler (ed.): Linguistic Workshop III. Arbeiten des Kölner Universalienprojekts 1974. Fink, München 1975.
  • Hansjakob Seiler (ed.): Language Universals. Papers from the Conference held at Gummersbach/Cologne, Germany, October 3-8, 1976. Narr, Tübingen 1978.
  • akup, Arbeiten des Kölner Universalienprojekts. Hansjakob Seiler (ed.), Institut für Sprachwissenschaften, Universität zu Köln, Nr. 1-89.
  • Language universals series, Hansjakob Seiler (ed.), vol. 1/1, 1/2, 1/13, vols. 2-8, Tübingen, Gunter Narr Verlag.
  • Thom, Réné, 1994. Reflections on Hansjakob Seiler’s continuum. In Catherine Fuchs & Bernard Victorri (eds.), Continuity in Linguistic Semantics, 155-167. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.