This comparative study presents an overview of Place/Goal/Source coding strategies in 35 languages and discusses asymmetries across different types of Ground arguments. The genealogically balanced sample was created using a novel computer-assisted approach which detects information-dense descriptions of languages. The comparison of data uncovers a variety of coding patterns across and within languages that leads to general Goal-Source asymmetry. Asymmetry can be shown to arise frequently due to different degrees of verb-conflation especially in the relation of Goal, and with inherently spatial Ground arguments such as spatial adverbials. Most sample languages do not show a consistent coding strategy that holds for (i) Place/Goal/Source expressions with the same Ground type and (ii) Goal and Source expressions across different Ground types, such as common nouns, interrogatives, adverbials, animates and toponyms. Grammatical distinctions of Goal and/or Source are employed by less than half of the sample, and Source expressions are more often subject to strategies unique to their relation such as iconically ordered Source expressions, deictic coding or contextual resolution.
The present study is concerned with the encoding of concessive conditionals in Cappadocian Greek, a critically endangered variety of Modern Greek. Concessive conditionals are a type of adverbial clauses that link an open set of antecedents in their protasis to a consequent in their apodosis: 'if {p 1 , p 2 , p 3 , & mldr;}, then q'. Three subtypes are distinguished: scalar, alternative, and universal concessive conditionals (SCCs, ACCs, and UCCs). Although these structures tend not to be investigated systematically in the literature, preliminary cross-linguistic observations suggest that they are prone to borrowing. Given that Cappadocian grammar has been thoroughly influenced by Turkish for almost nine centuries, the present study pays special attention to features that can be explained by contact-induced change. Moreover, Cappadocian concessive conditionals are of particular typological interest because Greek and Turkish differ considerably in how they encode concessive conditionals. Based on a dataset of 80 tokens, gathered from a 103,770-word corpus, some instances of matter and pattern replication are identified in ACCs and UCCs. In the majority of coding strategies, however, Cappadocian concessive conditionals retain their Greek profile whilst also exhibiting a notable idiosyncratic feature in that most UCCs lack nonspecificity marking. This study adds to our knowledge about this nearly extinct variety of Asia Minor Greek, identifying instances of matter and pattern replication that had previously gone unnoticed. Furthermore, it contributes to the study of language contact in general, in which concessive conditionals have so far received little attention.
This article studies the potential motivation (or, on the contrary, accidentality) of the consonantal nature of conative animal calls (CACs) as contrasted with the vocalic nature of interjections. The authors examine this issue by drawing on data from Gorwaa and locating them within a broader typological context. The evidence presented suggests that Gorwaa CACs exhibit a markedly consonantal character, manifested through a set of more specific phonetic properties, which stands in stark contrast with the vocalic character of interjections; and both correlations are not accidental. The close relationship of interjections with vocalicity and that of CACs with consonantality stems from the more general distinct tendencies of the two categories towards sonority. Such opposite sonority tendencies are, in turn, motivated: in the case of interjections, by the similarity of more sonorous phones with emotive cries; and in the case of CACs, by the acoustic suitability of less sonorous phones for alerting, drawing attention, and chasing away interlocutors and the mimicry (or morphism) of noises made by animals (the less sonorous properties of which stem in turn from their own acoustic suitability and an animal ' s physio-anatomy).
The article deals with the pseudo-cleft construction (also known as wh-cleft) in Lithuanian, a Baltic language. It focuses on the syntactic and morphosyntactic changes that have set the Lithuanian pseudo-cleft apart from its source construction, the specificational copular construction. It is argued that this pseudo-cleft has become monoclausal as a result of a process in which the kernel component of the pseudo-cleft construction (consisting of relative pronoun, relative-clause verb and copula/focus marker) became non-compositional and started occupying a slot corresponding to that of the simple-clause verb. This process may have been driven by the morphosyntactic marking assigned by the relative-clause verb being copied onto the focus noun phrase and subsequently being reanalysed as governed by the pseudo-cleft kernel component as a whole. As a result of these processes, the Lithuanian pseudo-cleft is superficially still similar to the original specificational construction from which it derives, but certain morphosyntactic and syntactic features betray it as being monoclausal. The Lithuanian pseudo-cleft is further considered against a cross-linguistic background to point out that it represents a non-trivial and typologically interesting instantiation of the more general process of development of clefts and pseudo-clefts into monoclausal structures.
The complexity of valency class systems remains an underexplored dimension of typological variation. Drawing on data from BivalTyp, a database cataloging valency patterns of 130 bivalent verbs across 120 languages, this paper proposes three metrics to quantify this complexity. Two of these metrics - the ratio of intransitive verbs among bivalent verbs and the entropy in the distribution of bivalent intransitive verbs across valency classes - are strongly positively correlated, reflecting different aspects of the overarching valency class complexity. The third metric, the entropy of all bivalent verbs across valency classes, captures both of these facets. Languages tend to gravitate toward moderate complexity values, avoiding overly simplistic or excessively complex valency class systems. However, significant variation exists, primarily driven by areal and genealogical factors. Valency class complexity, as measured and discussed in this paper, is empirically interwoven with numerous other parameters of morphosyntactic typology, suggesting that it is a fundamental factor in shaping linguistic diversity. Specifically, languages with large case inventories, a high prevalence of non-verbal predicates, and a preference for satellite-framed constructions in motion events are hypothesized to favor more complex valency class systems. Furthermore, complex argument-encoding devices tend to favor postverbal positions, aligning with the principles of incremental processing and the minimization of processing effort. Overall, this study contributes to understanding how efficiency pressures influence typological distributions.
This study uses a quantitative approach to investigate subject realization in 659 clauses in Uruangnirin, an endangered Austronesian language of eastern Indonesia. In this language, subjects may be referenced in the clause with an NP, pronoun or zero pronoun, and they are optionally indexed on the verb. We establish that the most common combination is to drop the subject in the clause while indexing it on the verb. We find that verbs are more likely to be inflected if the subject of the clause is a speech act participant (SAP), if it is a zero pronoun or an NP, or if it is a patient. When comparing overt subject expression with zero expression we find that non-SAPs, subjects of transitive clauses, new subjects and subjects with high referential distance are more likely to be expressed as an NP. We also identify variables that play a role in the choice of alternative strategies.
This article offers new insights on the ongoing debate surrounding number categories in Welsh, namely whether the collective-singulative distinction can be regarded as a full number category in its own right, separate from the more common singular-plural category. Based on new data obtained from online questionnaires, it will be argued for the first time that some "morphological collectives" are in fact being used in a singular manner in contemporary varieties of Welsh. The potential relevance of this emerging development to the variation patterns of Welsh diminutives will therefore be probed. Moreover, the implications of this study's findings for some previous research on morphological typology will be explored, as well as their possible pertinence to studies of the acquisition of Welsh.
The diverse dialects of Kurdish have long been the subject of scholarly debate on syllable structure, and this study examines the syllabification of Central Kurdish within the Optimality Theory framework. Data from a mini-corpus, drawn from native Central Kurdish speakers and enriched with findings from studies on Northern and Southern Kurdish dialects, provide the foundation for this investigation. The methodology involves extracting the constraints governing Central Kurdish's syllable formation, where the nucleus consistently requires a single vowel and the onset is obligatory in a CV pattern that may extend to include a glide (forming CGV) at word-initial positions. The permissible coda appears either as a singleton or as part of a consonant cluster. Findings indicate that Central Kurdish and Southern Kurdish converge on a shared constraint ranking, producing the canonical C(G)V(C)(C) structure. Northern Kurdish dialects, however, display greater variation, with some allowing an unrestricted second consonant (C(C)V(C)(C)) and others restricting cluster composition. A Hasse diagram is employed to visualize these constraint relationships, highlighting Optimality Theory's capacity to model both a core, maximally constrained syllable structure and peripheral trends. These results provide crucial insights into the dynamic interplay of phonological constraints that shape syllable structure across Kurdish dialects, advancing a unified typological understanding of the language.
The linguistic diversity present in South Asia stems from its historical mix of cultures, as well as its heterogeneous topography. This diversity can be observed in numeral systems, which play an important role in cognitive and cultural history. We provide the first typological overview of numeral systems in South Asia, presenting a database of 122 languages - mostly Austroasiatic, Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, and Tibeto-Burman, with a majority of data from original fieldwork. We also provide a framework for analyzing numeral systems based on the internal ordering of their complex numerals (teens, crowns, running numbers, hundreds, and thousands). Quantitative analyses based on decision trees and phylogenetic regressions suggest that internal ordering of complex numerals are generally stable in each language family along history, although horizontal transmission due to historical contact phenomena are observed as well. Our study also has a societal impact: the diversity of numeral systems featured here is quickly disappearing, and we claim that it is of the utmost importance to document and preserve it.
This volume examines specific features of noun phrase structure and the role of demonstratives in the individuation and definiteness of nominal referents. These phenomena are particularly significant and underexplored in the genetically unrelated South American languages represented in this volume. The analysis focuses on the distribution and function of determiners, the presence or absence of overt markers, and the influence of semantic, pragmatic and discourse-contextual factors. The conceptual framework emphasizes determination, individuation, and definiteness. Determination modifies noun phrases through elements such as articles, demonstratives, possessives, and quantifiers, linking referents to discourse. Individuation describes how entities acquire referential status, from generic to specific, shaped by both structural and contextual factors. Definiteness concerns the identifiability of referents for speaker and hearer, distinguishing unique or familiar entities from indefinite ones. While articles often encode definiteness, several languages examined here rely primarily on demonstratives, which can also convey features such as proximity, animacy, temporality, and other semantic distinctions. Drawing on text corpora, these analyses provide new insights into the expression of definiteness and referentiality in natural discourse, contributing to the typological understanding of determination in article-less languages.
This study explores the structural strategies to express participant individuation in Wichi (Mataguayan). Individuation is understood as the discursive operation that transforms a generic or non-referential concept into a contextually anchored referent, making it trackable within discourse. Drawing on a referential framework that views reference as a mental and communicative operation between interlocutors, the study focuses on how Wichi introduces new referents using bare common nouns devoid of explicit individuation markers within the noun phrase. The analysis reveals that individuation strategies in Wichi may extend beyond the noun phrase into relative clauses, juxtaposed clauses, and even across sentence boundaries. It also explores the role of anaphoric and inter-referent relations in individuation strategies. Methodologically, the study employs qualitative-quantitative analysis of a textual corpus source from primary fieldwork data.
This study presents a detailed overview of the so-called intangible demonstrative yu- in Hup (Naduhup, Brazil). Analyzing its distribution in spontaneous speech data from narratives and conversation, we show that the demonstrative has a variety of discourse-managing functions, which have traditionally received less attention in the typological literature on demonstratives. We first present anaphoric and different discourse-deictic uses of yu-, and then analyze a number of conventionalized constructions based on the intangible demonstrative. We show how these constructions signal relations between different discourse segments and how they are used for opening and closing discourse topics. Finally, we discuss several functions of the intangible demonstrative yu- in Hup that are reminiscent of predicative demonstratives in other languages. Besides describing the particular distribution and functions of a demonstrative in a lesser described South American indigenous language, our study aims at contributing to a better understanding of what additional discourse-managing functions demonstratives can have.
Referential expressions in a language may vary depending on the degree of individuation assigned to each referent mention by the speaker and/or the assumed identifiability of the referent in discourse - that is, definiteness. This study examines how individuation and definiteness are expressed in Santiago del Estero Quichua (Quechua, Argentina) and their impact on noun phrase structure. Through empirical analysis using a text corpus, it was found that the morphology of the noun phrase, including determiners, quantifiers, adjectives, possessive suffixes, and case marking interact to signal different degrees of individuation and definiteness. In this language, the outermost positions (initial and final) of the noun phrase are typically reserved for discourse-referential modifiers, which play a key role in specifying and grounding referents. This conforms to the typological expectation that discourse-referential modifiers are semantically located in the outer layer of the noun phrase - an organization reflected iconically in the syntax. The study offers new insights into the noun phrase structure of Santiago del Estero Quichua, highlighting features such as differential object marking and flexible noun-adjective word order, which remain understudied. Moreover, they contribute to the understanding of how individuation and definiteness are expressed across world languages and the typology of noun phrase structures.
Tapiete is a Southern Tupi-Guarani language spoken by about 2,800 people in the region of the Western Gran Chaco, in Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay, South America. Like other languages in this linguistic family, Tapiete does not show definite or indefinite articles. Speakers express different degrees of definiteness using other grammar resources such as bare nouns, demonstratives, numerals, and an alienable/inalienable possession system. The aim of this article is to provide an initial study of definiteness in Tapiete based on the analysis of semantic and pragmatic functions of demonstratives in contrast with other definiteness strategies available in the language. The research is based on representative oral textual data collected from long-term field work. In Tapiete, bare nouns and nouns from the inalienably possessed group express mostly unique or weak definite values while adnominal demonstratives signal strong definite referents by way of anaphoric and exophoric referential relations. Demonstratives are very productive for marking discourse topics and indexing speech event facts (spatial and time deixis, speech participants, discourse genre), as well as identifying and reintroducing a referent within discourse.
From the perspective of a study of reference in discourse, this article focuses on the domain of demonstratives in Mapuzungun. After initially recognizing the basic opposition between the demonstrative formatives fa- and fe- (anchored/not anchored in the speech situation), our analysis focuses on the neutral demonstrative pronoun fey, which we define as deriving from fe-. Currently, fey indicates a third person not marked for proximity/distance. We explore its grammaticalization trajectories and synchronic functions in discourse, alone, in coalescence with the postposition mew - feymew 'then, therefore' - and in compounding with the demonstrative pronoun t & uuml;fa 'this' - fey-t & uuml;fa 'this here'. In the stages following the loss of the deictic content in fey, we distinguish between its anaphoric and discourse-deictic uses. While in the former case, fey refers to a previously mentioned participant, in the latter, fey (also feymew similar to feymu) either refer to precedent discourse chunks or function as connectors creating discursive cohesion. Compounded with the proximal demonstrative t & uuml;fa, a recovery of its deictic content is identified. The corpus includes texts of different genres transcribed in ELAN. The analysis considers fragments of a narrative (epew 'story') and a procedural text, incorporating examples from other discourses.
Albanian has been studied in the past as part of the Balkan Sprachbund, but also in terms of its affiliation to the language area defined as "Standard Average European" (SAE). The present paper argues in favour of considering the particular role of contact-induced changes in Italo-Albanian varieties and their possible impact on the position of the latter in such typological constructs, especially with regard to its SAE features.
The present work is devoted to the complementizer system of three Arb & euml;resh dialects spoken in the province of Crotone, in Calabria. Unlike standard Albanian (to which Arb & euml;resh is genetically related) that has two different complementizers, and unlike Italian (which has been the contact language for more than five centuries) that has only one complementizer, the complementizer system of the Arb & euml;resh dialects considered here has four different lexical items, corresponding to the English 'that/what'. They have a well-defined distribution. The element se selects declarative/indicative clauses. Sa and ku introduce complements to modal, aspectual, causative and control verbs and select subjunctive clauses. & Ccedil; is used to introduce both relative and exclamative sentences. Based on distributional tests in relation to Topic and Focus phrases, and on the interaction of these complementizers with the subjunctive particle t & euml;, I argue that these four elements occupy different positions within the CP domain. In particular, modifying Rizzi's system (1997), who splits the CP field in two different heads, Force and Finiteness, I argue that the CP system of the Arb & euml;resh varieties has four different heads.
The paper explores how the concept of home in Goal constructions is expressed in comparison to common nouns ( comm s) and toponyms ( topo s) in a sample of one hundred languages world-wide. In previous studies, it has already been shown that topo s in spatial constructions are more often zero-marked or bear a shorter marker than comm s in the same role. Furthermore, it has been found that some languages have a small set of certain nouns that receive special treatment similar to topo s, ‘one’s house’ commonly being one of them. Based on these findings, the strategies used to express the movement home are evaluated and set in relation to comm s and topo s both qualitatively and quantitatively.
One aspect of conjunction behaviour in language contact is the degree to which conjunctions in specific functions are borrowable. The literature has proposed several implicational and causal borrowing hierarchies, which suggest that certain functions and categories of conjunctions tend to be borrowed at earlier stages of language contact than others. These hierarchies are tested in the present study on the basis of data from seven alloglottic languages of Italy – of Germanic, Slavic, Albanian, and Greek origin. The empirical data supports, in general, the proposed borrowing hierarchies, though with certain limitations. A range of new research questions emerges from the analysis of conjunctions in language contact.
This paper argues for considering familiarity a candidate for the status of parameter in the domain of the Grammar of Names. The evidence in support of this claim is drawn from the Special Toponymic Grammar of twelve genealogically, typologically, and geographically different languages. It is shown that place names of the same class are frequently subject to a division into two subcategories, namely, on the one hand, place names that are familiar in some way to the participants of the communicative event and, on the other hand, place names which speakers and/or hearers are not familiar with. The different degrees of familiarity correlate with structural differences on the expression side. The rules that determine the morphosyntactic behaviour of familiar place names do not correspond one-to-one with those that regulate the morphosyntax of non-familiar place names. The data suggest that familiarity is spelled out differently across the languages of the world. It is concluded that further cross-linguistic research might reveal that familiarity is not restricted to the Special Grammar of Toponyms. This is why familiarity needs to be investigated in-depth in follow-up studies.
