Taking spoken language seriously

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Nikolaus Himmelmann
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 523828585

Most theoretical and typological work in linguistics proceeds on the (usually implicit) assumption that differences between spoken and written language can safely be ignored for the purposes at hand such as modelling word order alternations or typologizing ditransitive constructions. A major consequence of this assumption is the fact that typological or theoretical work making use of data from languages without a writing tradition – the large majority of the world’s languages – is often exclusively based on written transcripts of spoken language. The current proposal asks whether this practice and the assumptions underlying it are sound. To answer this question, two interrelated issues need further investigation. 1. What exactly happens in transcription; that is, what decisions do native speakers and re-searchers (have to) make when representing spoken language in writing? To what extent do these decisions provide evidence for grammatical structures? 2. When does the fact that data from unwritten languages are essentially spoken language data actually matter for grammatical analysis? Is it possible to provide a principled delimitation of the set of phenomena where typical features of spoken language are clearly relevant for grammatical analyses, and ones where spoken language features can safely be ignored? The project concerns morphosyntactic analyses where attention to the specific features of spoken (as opposed to written) language is generally not part of standard analytical procedures. This includes morphosyntactic topics such as constituent structure, word classes and grammatical relations, i.e. topics primarily related to morphosyntactic form, not function. In contrast, it is clear, and widely acknowledged, that for topics such as deictics, it makes a major difference whether or not one includes features of spoken language such as prosody, gesture or gaze in the analysis. Importantly, the current investigation does not presuppose that the differences between written and spoken language – and the concomitant differences in generating primary data – are relevant for all types of typological and theoretical enquiry. Rather, it is the goal of the project to determine when and where exactly the difference matters, and in which ways the process of producing primary data (transcription) itself may generate important data for such enquiries.

• DFG Programme: Reinhart Koselleck Projects