Is it all about context?

Context seems to define so many aspects of what we consider as Language. On a phonological level, context of sounds determines the specific pronunciation for a given letter. On a lexicological level, the context of a sentence determines the specific word from a group of synonyms that can be used. Building on a corpus by Atkins and Levin solidifies this latter concept through the discussion of internally and externally caused words. Consider the following sentences: “The computer broke” and “The computer malfunctioned.” In these two sentences, the words “broke” and “malfunctioned” have relatively the same meaning. However, let’s consider two more sentences: “The boy broke the computer” and “The boy malfunctioned the computer.” In this case, the second sentence does not make sense. Either word can be used in the first pair of sentences, but only one of the two can be used in the second pair. Levin and research partner Rappaport Hovav would describe “break” as an externally caused word. The boy can break the computer, and so some external force can break the computer. “Malfunction,” on the other hand, is an internally caused work. The computer itself can malfunction, but it doesn’t make sense for some external force to “malfunction the computer.” Internally and externally caused words demonstrates the difficulty of defining specific words, both in their meaning and possible usages.

Breaking down the lexicon of “words” into smaller parts, the various lexicographical structures in the chapters by Haspelmath intrigued me. It was comforting to see specific pieces of what we generalize as the lexicon of a language and now have the vocabulary to talk about potential rules. Apart from the particulate words like word-forms, lexemes, word families, etc., I’m curious about the different terms that linguists use when discussing morphology. Haspelmath mentioned “process terms,” action words that animate language, and “static terms,” words that leave language as inanimate. How do these different terms affect the way linguists construct language rules? Is one considered a better way to talk about language? Or are process terms versus static terms just factual differences?

One final statement that caught my attention came in the Slobin reading. When concluding the arguments about differing categories of languages, Dan Slobin mentioned how the diversity of languages comes at the intersection of many interacting points. There are concrete places of differences, and the various combinations of these points are what result in an enormous diversity. When thinking about phonological differences in languages and morphological differences in language (and all the other categories of variation), is there any correlation? Do languages with similar phonology have similar morphology? Or are certain components of Language independent?