Ekkehard König

Language typology and language universals: An international handbook.

This handbook provides a comprehensive and thorough survey of our insights into the diversity and unity found across the 6000 languages of this planet. The 125 articles include inter alia chapters to the patterns and limits of variation manifested by various analoguos structures, constructions and linguistic devices across languages (for example, word order, tense and aspect, inflection, colour terms and syllable structure). Other chapters cover the history, methodology and the theory of typology, as well as the relationship between language typology and other disciplines. The majority of the the articles are written in English, some in French or German.

Language Typology and Syntactic Description: Speech act distinctions in grammar

Sentences like these are special insofar as their utterance in appropriate circumstances amounts to performing the action identified by the finite verb. The typical formal properties of such sentences in English include first person subjects, second person indirect objects, a present tense non-progressive active form of a speech act verb and the deictic adverb hereby, but performative sentences may also be in the passive voice, contain modal hedges and a nominalization instead of a verb:

Principles of areal typology

Principles of areal typology 1. Introduction 2. Critique of the notion of Sprachbund 3. Migration and language shift 4. Convenient fictions of areal linguistics and areal typology 5. Areal typology and the science of geography 6. Areal linguistics and sampling 6.1. Sampling of languages 6.2. Sampling of features 7. Sample areas 8. The areal distribution of some major typological features 8.1. Basic word order 8.2. Ergativity 8.3. Tense and aspect 9. Are statistical universals historical accidents? 10. The areal dimension of grammaticalization 1. References

Focused assertion of identity: A typology of intensifiers

Abstract Intensifiers such as himself/herself in English, ipse/ipsa in Latin, stesso/stessa in Italian, sam/samá in Russian, or selbst in German are most easily identifiable in terms of their prosodic and semantic properties. They are invariably in focus and therefore typically stressed, thus evoking specific types of alternative values. Based on a detailed discussion of the distribution and meaning of intensifiers in English, this article describes the major patterns of variation observable in the form of intensifiers across languages. Five types of intensifiers are distinguished on the basis of morpho-syntactic properties like inflection and agreement, and a number of implications and correlations between formal and distributional parameters of variation are pointed out.

Locally free self -forms, logophoricity, and intensification in English

The article discusses the distribution and meaning of ‘locally free reflexives’ (‘untriggered reflexives’, ‘viewpoint reflexives’, ‘perspective logophors’) in English. After a thorough assessment of the contextual constraints on the use of such locally free self -forms, three analyses are discussed and compared: (a) the view that such self -forms are bound by a minimal subject of consciousness within their discourse (Zribi-Hertz, 1989); (b) the view that the relevant forms exhibit essentially the same distribution as pronouns and that the choice between the two is motivated by discourse considerations (Reinhart & Reuland, 1993); and (c) the view that locally free self -forms are intensifiers without pronominal heads (Baker, 1995). It is shown that the third analysis is by far the most adequate one, and that both the distribution and the meaning of such expressions can be explained on the basis of this analysis if it is combined with a suitable semantic analysis of intensifiers.

Towards a typology of reciprocal constructions: focus on German and Japanese

Abstract The aim of this article is twofold: (a) to offer a detailed analysis of reciprocal constructions in German and Japanese against the background of a preliminary typology of such constructions developed in analogy to the one proposed by L. Faltz (1985) for reflexivity and (b) to examine the implications of these analyses for supporting and possibly refining this typology. Reciprocity is defined as the grammatical encoding of symmetric relations, and four different types of reciprocal constructions are distinguished. Languages typically have more than one strategy at their disposal, which can often be combined but may also contrast and differ in their interpretation. It is shown that symmetric predicates play an important role in reciprocal structures and provide in fact one of their historical foundations. Combinations of quantifiers (and alterity expressions like other), another important source for the development of reciprocal markers, are shown to manifest considerable variation across languages, which is not compatible with the view that they can simply be subsumed under the category “anaphor.” Our typological approach provides some new perspectives and perhaps even solutions for some traditional puzzles in the analysis of reciprocal constructions in German and Japanese.

Reciprocals and reflexives : theoretical and typological explorations

This collection of original papers is a representative survey of recent theoretical and cross-linguistic work on reciprocity and reflexivity. Its most remarkable feature isits combination offormal approaches, case studies on individual languages and broad typological surveys in one volume, showing that the interaction of formal approaches to grammar and typology may lead to new insights and results for both fields. Among the major issues addressed in this volume are the following: How can our current knowledge about the space and limits of variation in the relevant domain be captured in a structural typology of reciprocity? What light can such a typology shed on the facts of particular languages or groups of languages (e.g. Austronesian)? How can recent descriptive and typological insights be incorporated into a revised and more adequate version of the Binding Theory? How do verbal semantics, argument structure and reciprocal markers interact? How can we explain the pervasive patterns of ambiguity observable in these two domains, especially the use of the same forms both as reflexive and reciprocal markers? What are the major sources in the historical development of reciprocal markers? This combination of large-scale typological surveys with in-depth studies of particular languages provides new answers to old questions and raises important new questions for future research.

Converbs in cross-linguistic perspective : structure and meaning of adverbial verb forms : adverbial participles, gerunds

Unspecified Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: http://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-76655 Originally published at: Bickel, Balthasar (1998). Converbs in cross-linguistic perspective [review article of Haspelmath and König, eds., Converbs in cross-linguistic perspective: structure and meaning of adverbial verb forms adverbial participles, gerunds, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter 1995]. Linguistic Typology, 2:381-397.

A Semantic Analysis of German ‘Erst’

In this paper I would like to report on some aspects of comparative work on certain particles in German and related elements in English. The particles belong to the class of so-called ‘degree particles’ (Gradpartikel 1) and include a large number of elements in German, viz. auch, ausgerechnet, erst, gleich, gerade, jedenfalls, noch, nur, schon, sogar, zumindest etc. In English the corresponding class is very small and comprises also/too/ . . . either, even, only and perhaps one or two further elements. English counterparts of the German particles listed above also include the comparative construction as Ad as MP (=measure phrase) (e.g. as early as ten, as many as five, etc.) and a few other constructions.2

Temporal prepositions in English and German: A contrastive study

Abstract This paper gives a short overview of the main contrasts in the structure, meanings and uses of temporal prepositions in English and German. It is shown, in particular, that the deictic components of many prepositions and their uses in English (ago, come, since, in, etc.) are absent in their German counterparts. Among the lexical differentiations made in only one language special attention is given to the one between the two prepositions by and until in English, both of which are generally translated by the preposition bis in German. It is shown that this differentiation in English and its absence in German have a number of interesting consequences for the translation of time ad-verbials from one language into the other.