Crosslinguistic Corpus Studies in Linguistic Typology

Corpus-based studies have become increasingly common in linguistic typology over recent years, amounting to the emergence of a new field that we call corpus-based typology. The core idea of corpus-based typology is to take languages as populations of utterances and to systematically investigate text production across languages in this sense. From a usage-based perspective, investigations of variation and preferences of use are at the core of understanding the distribution of conventionalized structures and their diachronic development across languages. Specific findings of corpus-based typological studies pertain to universals of text production, for example, in prosodic partitioning; to cognitive biases constraining diverse patterns of use, for example, in constituent order; and to correlations of diverse patterns of use with language-specific structures and conventions. We also consider remaining challenges for corpus-based typology, in particular the development of crosslinguistically more representative corpora that include spoken (or signed) texts, and its vast potential in the future.

A template approach to pragmatic constituent order variation in modern Northern Mansi

Mansi belongs to the Ob-Ugrian branch of the Uralic language family. Northern Mansi constituent order and its pragmatic variation have not been examined comprehensively until now. This lack is filled in this article, by syntactic-pragmatic template analysis, using a new model of 9+1 templatic slots, which are filled with syntactic or pragmatic functions. Thus, this study is also an attempt to combine both pragmatic and syntactic levels in the same template analysis. Moreover, Rombandeeva’s (1979; 1984) earlier observations on Northern Mansi word order, and those of other scholars, are compared to those drawn here from contemporary data.

From case to topology

The Scanian dialect of Middle Danish underwent a range of changes and reductions in its case system. I argue that these changes were caused neither by phonological developments nor by language contact as often assumed, but by multiple processes of grammaticalisation. The present paper focuses on one of these factors: that the relatively predictable constituent order within the Middle Danish noun phrase made case marking redundant in its function of marking noun-phrase internal agreement between head and modifier(s). This redundancy caused the case system to undergo a regrammation where the indexical sign relations changed so that the expression of morphological case no longer indicated this noun-phrase-internal agreement, leaving only topology (as well as morphologically marked number and gender agreement) as markers of this type of agreement. This factor contributed to the subsequent degrammation of the entire case system.

Object-Verb in Early Modern English: Modelling Markedness

Although Verb-Object (VO) is the basic unmarked constituent order of predicates in Present-Day English, in earlier stages of the language Object-Verb (OV) is the preferred pattern in some syntactic contexts. OV predicates are significantly frequent in Old and Middle English, and are still attested up to 1550, when they “appear to dwindle away” (Moerenhout & van der Wurff 2005: 83). This study looks at OV in Early Modern English (EModE), using a corpus-based perspective and statistical modelling to explore a number of textual, syntactic, and semantic/processing variables which may account for what by that time had already become a marked, though not yet archaic, word-order pattern. The data for the study were retrieved from the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English (1500–1710) and the Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence (c.1410–1695), the largest electronic parsed collections of EModE texts. The findings reveal a preference for OV in speech-related text types, which are less constrained by the rules of grammar, in marked syntactic contexts, and in configurations not subject to the general linearisation principles of end-weight and given-new. Where these principles are complied with, the probability of VO increases.

On order and prohibition

The present article examines the claim in the literature that the negative first principle, i.e. the preference for the order negation-verb to verb-negation, is stronger in negative imperatives (or prohibitives) than in negative declaratives. To test this hypothesis, we develop – in contrast to earlier research – a systematic, three-way classification of languages, which is also operationalized as a ranking capturing the overall level of strength of the principle. This classification is applied to a genealogically and geographically balanced sample of 179 languages. In addition, we consider the role of several factors known to correlate with the position of negation – like its form, constituent order and areality. However, no cross-linguistic evidence is found for any difference in negation’s position between negative imperatives and negative declaratives. We therefore conclude that the hypothesis should be rejected.

Expanding the boundaries of Asian linguistics

While the general lines of the areal linguistic typology of Asia are well known, there are some less well understood pockets that promise to throw light on the overall range of variation within the continent. These include the indigenous languages of the Andaman Islands, which have for much of history stood apart from the population and language spreads that have characterized most of Asia. They fall into two families: Great Andamanese – the focus of this article – and Ongan. In some respects Great Andamanese languages go with the bulk of Asia, e.g. verb-final constituent order, but other aspects even of constituent order represent a mixture that matches neither the general Asian head-final type nor the Southeast Asian head-initial type. Some properties of Great Andamanese are typologically unusual, but do find presumably accidental parallels in languages spoken inside Asia, e.g. retroflex consonants, or elsewhere, e.g. body-part prefixes and verb root ellipsis.

Word order

Chapter 23 deals with word order (also called constituent order). The actual order of constituents in Latin is determined by a large number of factors, among which the syntactic factor is only a minor one. These various factors are discussed. Some constituents at the clause level are limited in their position, others are mobile, with their position mainly determined by pragmatic factors as discussed in ch. 22. At the noun-phrase and prepositional-phrase levels the relative order is mainly determined by contrast and emphasis. The relative order of clauses in complex sentences is discussed as well.