Roundtable Pitch
Bert Le Bruyn
Translated language
What these factors are and if/how they interact is an empirical question that – due its complexity – requires serious theorizing.
Target Language Lexicon and Grammar
TLLG influence is strong enough to arrive at meaningful generalizations about language variation on the basis of translated data.
Assumptions in Contrastive and Typological work
Translated language
My take
1. Despite all the necessary caveats, I do not find these assumptions particularly shocking...
Level 1: Asserting existence
Example 1
Dayal (2004)
Languages with number marking do not allow singular nouns without a determiner to take on an indefinite reading.
Core languages in Dayal (2004): Hindi and Russian.
Disagreement in subsequent literature on Russian.
Example 2
Definiteness in German and Mandarin
Definiteness is often associated with uniqueness and anaphoricity.
According to Jenks (2018), Mandarin makes the same distinction more generally (bare noun vs. demonstrative).
According to Schwarz (2009), German makes a distinction between the two in the prepositional domain (am vs. an dem).
Level 2: Interpreting variation
When do Hindi and Marathi allow for bare singulars with an indefinite interpretation?
> work in progress...
When does Mandarin allow its bare nouns to get an anaphoric reading?
> see Bremmers, Liu, van der Klis & Le Bruyn (2023) for a proposal
Falsifiable claim
paving the way for replication and triangulation
Example 2
The have-perfect
Have or Be in present tense + past participle (j’ai chanté, Ich habe gesungen, ik heb gezongen, he cantado, I have sung, etc.)
Broad literature but generally focus on one or two languages.
English have/be+pp
Dutch
have/be+pp
Spanish
have/be+pp
German
have/be+pp
French
have/be+pp
English
have/be+pp
Spanish
have/be+pp
Dutch
have/be+pp
German
have/be+pp
French
have/be+pp
Current relevance
Hodiernal events
Past events: statement of fact
Past events: part of storyline
States holding at some point in the past
These interpretations can all be translated into falsifiable claims and checked through replication and triangulation.
My take
1. Despite all the necessary caveats, I do not find these assumptions particularly shocking...
2. Especially for Level 1 studies (‘Asserting existence’)...
3. For Level 2 studies (‘Interpreting variation’), these assumptions are working assumptions and require a replication- or triangulation-based research design.