Published by De Gruyter Mouton

Volume 14 Issue 2-3

Issue of Linguistic Typology

Contents
Journal Overview

November 4, 2010

The change from labial to palatal as glide hardening

Nicoleta Bateman

Page range: 167-211

Abstract

This article analyzes cases of labial palatalization wherein a labial shifts its major place of articulation to a palatal, as in Romanian and Tswana. These cases are situated within a typological study of palatalization, and it is argued, based on diachronic evidence, that they arose not through direct palatalization of the labial, but through a series of sound changes that affected a palatal glide following the labial. An articulatory account of palatalization is argued to offer the best explanation for the rarity of such cases of labial palatalization.

November 4, 2010

Agentivity and stativity in experiencer verbs: Implications for a typology of verb classes

Elisabeth Verhoeven

Page range: 213-251

Abstract

Experiencer-object verbs are known to deviate from the prototype of transitive verbs. Previous studies have shown that a subset of these verbs is stative and non-agentive and argue that this semantic peculiarity accounts for particular non-canonical syntactic properties. This article shows that the stativity/non-agentivity of experiencer verbs is subject to typological variation. The empirical evidence comes from an experimental study on speaker's intuitions, which shows that some experiencer-object verbs in German and Modern Greek differ from canonical transitive verbs in agentivity and stativity, while experiencer-object verbs in Turkish, Yucatec Maya, and Chinese display the semanto-syntactic properties of canonical transitive verbs.

November 4, 2010

Dealing with diversity: Towards an explanation of NP-internal word order frequencies

Michael Cysouw

Page range: 253-286

Abstract

The world's linguistic diversity is large, probably much larger than many linguists would want to admit. Dealing with this diversity is a central objective for worldwide crosslinguistic investigations. This article argues that to deal with diversity it is extremely fruitful to work with probable structures instead of possible structures, with models instead of theories, and with levels of justification instead of right or wrong. This is illustrated with the order of demonstrative, numeral, adjective, and noun within a complex noun phrase. Different NP-internal orders have strongly differing frequencies among the world's languages. Various models to capture these frequencies are proposed and compared to each other, and it will be argued that very simple models are sufficient. For example, a highly adequate model only refers to the fact that noun and adjective tend to occur together, nouns and demonstratives prefer to occur at the phrase boundary, and noun-adjective order is slightly more frequent than adjective-noun order. The same approach will also be used to model sentence word order frequencies, including areal preferences as random effects. Using such probabilistic models allows for a new take on typological explanations. In and of itself, a probabilistic model is no explanation. However, a well-fitting model instantiates a reformulation of the original phenomenon to be explained into smaller, more tractable phenomena.

November 4, 2010

Syllable structure: The limits of variation, by San Duanmu

Juliette Blevins

Page range: 287-291

November 4, 2010

From polysemy to semantic change, edited by Martine Vanhove

Elizabeth Closs Traugott

Page range: 292-299

November 4, 2010

Cyclical change, edited by Elly van Gelderen

Ekkehard König

Page range: 299-304

November 4, 2010

Bilingualism and the Latin language, by James N. Adams

Chiara Gianollo

Page range: 305-319

About this journal

Open Access

As part of De Gruyter‘s Subscribe to Open program, we plan to transform Linguistic Typology to Gold Open Access in 2024. For details on S2O, please see here.

Objective

Linguistic Typology provides a forum for all work of relevance to the study of language typology and cross-linguistic variation. It welcomes work taking a typological perspective on all domains of the structure of spoken and signed languages, including historical change, language processing, and sociolinguistics. Diverse descriptive and theoretical frameworks are welcomed so long as they have a clear bearing on the study of cross-linguistic variation. We welcome cross-disciplinary approaches to the study of linguistic diversity, as well as work dealing with just one or a few languages, as long as it is typologically informed and typologically and theoretically relevant, and contains new empirical evidence.

Linguistic Typology is published by De Gruyter Mouton for the Association for Linguistic Typology (ALT). For membership and subscription details, contact the Secretary: Dmitry Idiatov

Article formats

• Research articles
• Target articles with peer commentary (If you have an idea for one, contact the Editor)
• Special issues (If you have an idea for a Special Issue, contact the Editor)
• Debates (contact the Editor)
• Language profiles, family portraits and areal surveys
• Review articles (reviewing two or more books, or a whole subject area)
• Book reviews (all book reviews are commissioned by Review Editors)
• Methodological contributions (e.g., reports on and reviews of toolkits, databases, software, collection of texts and corpora, archival collections resulting from fieldwork etc.) These should include a discussion of how/why the material is of typological relevance.
• Squibs (very short and often humorous pieces on a very specific topic intended to encourage debate)
• Contact the Editor if you have an idea that is not represented here