A functionalist typology of redundancy

Abstract

Syntagmatic redundancy involves the multiple expressions of a single meaning within a phrase or clause. It is often claimed to be a linguistic universal that serves to facilitate expressivity, processing, and learnability. However, there is little empirical evidence supporting this theory. This paper combines a typological study of concord, a form of syntagmatic redundancy in which a lexical and a grammatical item with overlapping meanings are expressed in the same phrase or clause, with a functional analysis of concord. The purpose of the study was to find out if redundancy is indeed universal or whether there are cross-linguistic restrictions. The goal of the functional analysis was to provide better understanding of what motivates different forms of redundancy. Reference grammars of a 50-language variety sample were analyzed for the existence and communicative functions of four types of concord. The results show that argument concord and temporal concord are nearly universal, whereas only a subset of languages allow for negative concord and plural concord. Two functional principles are shown to motivate concord: the need to be precise, and the need to emphasize crucial information. These principles lead to distinct types of redundancy: The need to be precise results in accidental redundancy in the case of an obligatory grammatical marker, whereas the need to emphasize information invokes purposeful redundancy. The two types of redundancy are shown to be fundamentally distinct in their communicative nature as well as their characteristic diachronic development.

Redundancy can benefit learning: Evidence from word order and case marking

“…In these studies, we cannot tell whether the redundant cue itself was fully mastered (i.e. used correctly in production and perception), and whether mastering it facilitated learning of the whole system (see discussion in Leufkens, 2020). In natural languages, redundant linguistic cues need to be learned as part of the linguistic system.…”

“…Unlike a pointing gesture which can direct attention to a certain element even if pointing is not used in subsequent productions, the learner is expected to learn both how to use case marking to identify thematic assignment, and how to produce the correct case marking when they speak. For this reason, languages with redundant morphemes are considered more complex (Bentz et al, 2016;Dahl, 2004;Lupyan & Dale, 2010), and the possible learning advantage they confer is debatable (Leufkens, 2020). On the one hand, redundancy affords the listener additional cues for the relation to be learned (Audring, 2014;E.…”

“…At the same time, however, redundancy is attested in different forms across languages (Hengeveld & Leufkens, 2018;Leufkens, 2020;Trudgill, 2009;Wit & Gillette, 1999). For example, many languages have agreement patterns between an argument and a verb even when both are obligatory and mark the same meaning (Haig & Forker, 2018).…”

Complexity and Its Relation to Variation

“…• Quantifying transparency (McWhorter, 2007;Miestamo, 2008;Sinnemäki, 2008;Nichols, 2009;Anderson, 2015;Leufkens, 2015Leufkens, , 2020Audring, 2017) • Based on grammars and other published analyses and descriptions of linguistic structures or lexical items, i.e., on the language system or structure • Based on corpora, i.e., manifestations of language use (Juola, 2008;Bentz et al, 2015Bentz et al, , 2016Bentz, 2016;Ehret and Szmrecsanyi, 2016;Ehret, 2017) Researchers have adopted two types of measurements for ontological complexity. The first is based on counting; the second measurement aims at quantifying the degree of transparency.…”

“…2 Leufkens (2020) specifically focuses on four types of syntagmatic morphosyntactic redundancy and concludes that we have to distinguish between two kinds of redundancy, which differ in function and diachronic origin. The first type is called accidental redundancy and it arises in the case of obligatory morphosyntactic markers.…”