Talk:Standard Average European

Non-SAE

How about listing and discussing features notably absent in SAE but common in some other parts of the world? I think this would be an interesting topic, whether in this article or a different one. (which one?) --JWB (talk) 02:33, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Some are already listed on the article (distinction between inclusive and exclusive "we", for example...). AnonMoos (talk) 07:52, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

For example, it's striking that Indigenous languages of the Americas is a fairly long article with lots of lists, but has nothing on typology, despite the many differences with European languages. --JWB (talk) 18:25, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure that "Indigenous languages of the Americas" (a vast classification which is more geographical than cultural or linguistic) all have much of anything in common; you would probably have to break it down by regions or major language "stocks" to be able to find significant typological resemblances. AnonMoos (talk) 20:47, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, for example Johanna Nichols's Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time aggregates the whole world into 3 big buckets, Old World, New World, and "Pacific" (really Australasia synchronically) and finds systematic typological patterns. E.g. head-marking is extremely common in New World, much less so in Old World. --JWB (talk) 03:38, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Is 'melt' really an anticausative?

The article currently claims that among the common features of the European sprachbund there is a prominence of anticausative verbs in inchoative-causative pairs (e.g. in the pair The snow melts vs. The flame melts the ice, the intransitive verb is derived from the transitive).

I think this example simply is wrong — the transitive verb in this case is derived from the intransitive. This can be seen from the fact that there is a preference for the strong past tense for the intransitive verb. At least this is so in German, maybe the difference has eroded in English; in German, we would basically say The fire melted (or has melted) the ice but The ice molt (or has molten) in the fire. This pattern, whether present in Englih or not, clearly points to an ancient causative formation where the strong intransitive verb is he source of a weak intransitive with causative meaning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.43.225.129 (talk) 11:14, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

We would? I most definitely wouldn't: das Feuer schmolz das Eis/hat das Eis geschmolzen, das Eis schmolz im Feuer/ist im Feuer geschmolzen. The weak forms *schmelzte, *geschmelzt simply do not exist. Hängen ("to hang") used to follow this pattern: intransitive, strong hing, ist gehangen, transitive, strong hängte, hat gehängt. However, the abolition of the death penalty and the existence of the transitive compound verb aufhängen have thrown this into chaos. Do you know any other examples? David Marjanović (talk) 00:10, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Also, English has strong/weak forms of "hang" depending on whether it's ordinary hanging or the death penalty, so that may be the same thing going on. As for the OP, whether you think something is wrong means nothing. When you can *proof* something is wrong, then we're getting somewhere. Jalwikip (talk) 13:55, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Hoax?

Quite surprised by some big errors like "syncretism of comitative and instrumental cases". For instance Limousin Occitan makes a difference between "coma" (with sb) and "emb" (with sth). Cannot imagine how many other counter-examples could be found. --— J. F. B. ^{(me´n parlar)} 21:46, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Just because you can think of a counter example does not mean it's untrue, let alone a hoax. It holds in at least English (with), Dutch (met), German (mit), French (avec) and I think also Spanish (con), Portuguese (com) and Italian (con), and the Scandanvian languages (med/með). Just because it doesn't in Limousin Occitan doesn't mean anything. Don't troll please. Jalwikip (talk) 13:53, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Exactly, counter examples do not disprove the general tendency that the concept describes. It is an "average" not a universal. Probably every language has one or two features that violate one of the tendencies.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:27, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

numbering

The two lists of "euroversals" are numbered, though (as far as I can tell) neither is a sequence or a ranking. Normally I'd replace the numbers with bullets; here I hesitate because they may be part of quoted matter. Is that the case? Do the numbers have a meaning that I failed to detect? —Tamfang (talk) 18:58, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Seeing no objection ... —Tamfang (talk) 23:48, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Standard Average European/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

It's difficult to assess this article. A number of features are enumerated, but only half of them get an actual reference. No thorough examples either, thus very abstract. Finally, the influence of SAE on general linguistic theory building has not been addressed. I was unsure whether good Start or weak C class. G Purevdorj (talk) 20:50, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Last edited at 20:50, 29 July 2009 (UTC). Substituted at 06:52, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Clarification needed

>> Whorf likely considered Romance and West Germanic to form the core of the SAE <<

Well, did he or didn't he? That "likely" -- which suggests that he could have done, but it's only a surmise -- is out of place without some further evidence or explanation. -- Picapica (talk) 17:37, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Dutch & Frisian place surrounding the nucleus

"Haspelmath regards French and German as forming the nucleus of the Sprachbund, surrounded by a core formed by English, the other Romance languages, the Nordic languages, and the Western and Southern Slavic languages." Are Dutch and Frisian here to be considered with English, or are they considered part of the Nordic languages? Maybe it would be better to write: "Haspelmath regards French and German as forming the nucleus of the Sprachbund, surrounded by a core formed by the other Romance and Germanic languages, and the Western and Southern Slavic languages."Nickdenuijl (talk) 14:12, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

My inclination is to agree, but, since it is an attribution, it is probably better that we don't change the wording of what is being attributed to something different from what the attributee actually said because we think it is what they meant. Truly, we don't actually know how Dutch and Frisian were being considered by the dude, and they might not have been at all, for all we know; or alternatively, he might have been lumping them in with "German" (if Low German is considered "German", then logic would require that Dutch also fall under "German", as Low German is a hell of a lot closer to Dutch than to (High) German." So I think it is better to leave it as is...having them be unaccounted for isn't ideal, but since we dont know how or if he was categorising those languages, any wording on our part that does account for them would be speculative. 2600:1702:4960:1DE0:AD80:F27C:76D:C5D0 (talk) 20:39, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Criticsm / Acceptance in Linguistic

Parts of this seem rather weak or French/German biased to my amateur eyes. It would be nice to have either a criticism section in the article, or phrase or too on how accepted this idea is in linguistic science. Is this an idea from the 1930s that never gained mainstream traction, one that is considered interesting but never proven or disproven, or is it accepted linguistic teaching? Carewolf (talk) 08:50, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

@Carewolf: Really? There are three sources given at the bottom of the page. All are from the 21st century, and by well-known typologists (not all of whom are German), so the Modern European Sprachbund is pretty much just as accepted as other Sprachbünde. I'm not sure what's specifically to criticise about it, as it is a verifiable observation about the modern languages of Europe. Moreover, the originator of the notion, Benjamin Lee Whorf, was American, so I really don't get the remark about French/German bias. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:11, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

I asked because multiple of the "trends" or "features" listed are random stuff that just happened in either Franch or German, and one other random European language they had no direct connection to. And multiple features that are shared between even more languages than the listed features, but not French or German are oddly absent. The list of features honestly seem like junk science, even if the core idea of a European Sprachbund is correct. Carewolf (talk) 20:01, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Well, the Balkan Sprachbund is defined by "random stuff" too, and none of these features are even remotely exclusive to French or German. But you're welcome to draw up an alternative list and submit it to a linguistic journal, then we can cite it. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:30, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Carewolf -- It's not really a standard linguistic term of the type that linguists would commonly use in technical papers without any attempt at explanation or justification (such as "fricative", "noun phrase", or "Indo-European" etc), but on the other hand it's kind of a rough heuristic rule of thumb which still has some usage today... AnonMoos (talk) 23:23, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

@Carewolf: The idea was shortly mentioned before Benjamin Lee Whorf even but it was further described by him, initially not really as an example for a "sprachbund" but mostly to oppose European languages to Native American languages as a "clump". The research on Standard Average European really took off in the 90s when the project EUROTYP started and it spurred a lot of research in areal typology and comparative linguistics, like the WALS. Especially Martin Haspelmath, Johan van der Auwera, Bernd Heine/Tania Kuteva etc. are active researchers in this area. @AnonMoos:, the term is the technical term, too, "Standard Average European" is the name for the sprachbund and the research area within Eurolinguistics. @Carewolf: that you find the points random is because they are indeed mostly random (but not 100%). They are things that people could come up with in Eurolinguistics that are prominent in European languages but not elsewhere AND that haven't been inherited by Proto-Indoeuropean. There are probably still a lot more features that haven't yet been described in depth. These features came up via language contact, and things transferred by contact are mostly rather arbitrary and not as systematic as would be whole paradigms or grammatical categories by historical relationship. The results for SAE are very well established and as far as I know, no one really opposes the idea as a whole. (Rather just give it other names or labels, like "Contact Superposition area", Thomas Stolz) What is discussed are other layers, like substandard varieties and dialects, what other features should be included or excluded, the role of features that are also common in the rest of the world but still very, and significantly, prominent in Europe etc. Haspelmath has a rather strict definition of what counts, while Auwera might take into account more features or even definitions - like Heine (2006) describes how the Native American language Pipil is highly influenced by Spanish, which would make it a member of the periphery of SAE, when it comes to the same features. That opens the gate to a whole new discussion of European languages outside of Europe, like the topic around the "New Englishes". Why German and French are in the middle has to do with the history on the European continent and the role that German and French had historically. Since they both form the core/nucleus of the SAE sprachbund they are also described by Johan van der Auwera as the Charlemagne sprachbund that encompasses mostly only those two. One of the key points in the SAE sprachbund is that French and German have the most SAE features. Features that are of an SAE type that are pretty widespread in Europe but completely absent in French or German haven't been found yet. But no SAE postulate would exclude that, they explicitly say that SAE features might even appear in all core SAE languages but French and German. German for example does not have a suppletive form for the second ordinal number, only the first "erster", but "zweiter" from "zwei"). Also, a French/German bias would be close to an alleged "English bias", but English is surprisingly non-SAE typical, "only" as close as Greek and Romanian. Maybe those few points helped a bit. Zylbath (talk) 18:12, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Zylbath -- The term is only found in one of four linguistics dictionaries that I have on my shelves (five if you count two different editions of David Crystal's "A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics"), which does not really suggest that it's a core term among linguists, though I'm sure that it's well known among certain relatively small groups of researchers (and among some Whorf aficionados outside academic linguistics). AnonMoos (talk) 16:32, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

I think I understood your answer a bit differently. I thought you meant, that the term itself is not the scientific name for this linguistic area. But even in the way you meant it and responded to my reply, I think it is a rather common research area that is known in typology or general linguistics. At least, that was my impression during my studies at university and among linguists. I think there are always certain linguistic phenomena that need some further explanation that go beyond the basic knowledge as "fricative", but SAE does not seem to me to be some ivory tower knowledge. But I might be completely wrong and it might be because I am influenced by the typological affiliation of my university (or the fact that it is located in Europe), that can also be an explanation. But as to the OP remark, SAE is not something that is a crazy idea of one person that is completely unproven. It is one of the main pillars of Eurolinguistics and mostly quite agreed upon. Zylbath (talk) 15:06, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Medieval sprachbunds

One of the points on the article is a highly-condensed summary of results of linguistic change. There was a kind of medieval sprachbund, including most Germanic and Western Romance languages, where there was a contrast between a simple past, and a compound perfective which was expressed by HAVE + past participle for transitive verbs, and by BE + past participle for intransitive verbs. In modern English, the semantic contrast between simple past and perfective is very much alive, but all verbs now use HAVE as the auxiliary. In French and spoken German, there is now not really much of semantic contrast between simple past and perfective, but the morphological perfective construction (with HAVE for transitive and BE for intransitive) is still in use. So I guess what "SAE" has in common is different evolutions of the medieval situation... AnonMoos (talk) 01:16, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Also, English being "surprisingly non-SAE typical" is not too surprising, since it didn't participate in many continental assimilations. There was a late medieval sprachbund of the non-island Germanic languages (heavy influence of German on mainland Scandinavian) which English was left out of. One case of English displaying surprising independence with respect to European cultural norms was junking the whole tu/vous distinction by the early 18th century (though of course that was post-medieval). AnonMoos (talk) 01:29, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Problematic sentence

conjunction "A and-B" instead of "A-and B", "A-and B-and", "A B-and", or "with"(?); - bolding, italics, and question mark added by me
I do fail to see what is the difference between the first two on this list, or how either one of them differs from just plain "A and B", or how any of those three (including the one I mentioned just now but the article didn't) can demonstrated one way or another. Examples would be helpful as this is extremely abstract. And wrt "with", is mentioning that really necessary? That, to me, just seems to make the whole matter more difficult to understand as it tosses another dimension onto this feature...thx 2600:1702:4960:1DE0:AD80:F27C:76D:C5D0 (talk) 03:28, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Let me check the source cited (Haspelmath 2001) and I'll try to see what exactly that sentence is talking about. Erinius (talk) 04:07, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

So, Haspelmath gets that from another source, Stassen 2000, which might be clearer if we can access that. So, apparently there's some distinction between 'and' languages, which use a more symmetric particle (like, 'and') to connect two noun phrases and 'with' languages, which apparently have a more asymmetrical and "comitative" particle (like 'with') to connect noun phrases. And there are different types of 'and' strategies, the dominant one in Europe and the only one in SAE is 'A and-B' apparently. I'll be honest, I don't know what the difference between 'A and-B', 'A-and B', and plain 'A and B' are. But mentioning 'with' is pretty necessary. Erinius (talk) 04:23, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Oh and yeah I don't have access to Stassen 2000, it's published by DeGruyter, you could try seeing if you have access here. Erinius (talk) 04:25, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

I can access it via my university. The distinction is simple: A-and B means that a clitic or suffix is added to the first subject/part, while A and-B is a conjugator like English "a man and a woman". Stassen mentions Ross (1967) and Dik (1968) who argue that "A and B" construction could also be analysed in many/some languages in a way that the "and" is more affiliated with the second NP than the first, but not in a subordinating way. I suppose that is why Stasser uses the form with a hyphen to the B in "A and-B". There are many examples, Basque is like English "Ander eta Mikel" > Ander and Mikel, or Cebuano "bir ug tubig" > beer and water. They are A and-B languages. An example for A-and B would be Manam "moáne-be áine" > man-and woman. Many of them allowing also A-and B-and, like Beja: "aní-wå barúk-wå; mēk-wå lága" > you and I, a donkey and a calf. An example for A B-and is Latin: "senatus populus-que" > the senate and the people. I hope that helped a bit to understand it. Zylbath (talk) 13:45, 4 April 2022 (UTC)