Michael Cysouw

Parallel texts: using translational equivalents in linguistic typology

Parallel texts are texts in different languages that can be considered translational equivalent. We introduce the notion ‘massively parallel text’ for such texts that have translations into very many languages. In this introduction we discuss some massively parallel texts that might be used for the investigation of linguistic diversity. Further, a short summary of the articles in this issue is provided, finishing with a prospect on where the investigation of parallel texts might lead us.

A Pipeline for Computational Historical Linguistics

There are many parallels between historical linguistics and molecular phylogenetics. In this paper we describe an algorithmic pipeline that mimics, as closely as possible, the traditional workflow of language reconstruction known as the comparative method. The pipeline consists of suitably modified algorithms based on recent research in bioinformatics, which are adapted to the specifics of linguistic data. This approach can alleviate much of the laborious research needed to establish proof of historical relationships between languages. Equally important to our proposal is that each step in the workflow of the comparative method is implemented independently, so language specialists have the possibility to scrutinize intermediate results. We have used our pipeline to investigate two groups of languages, the Tsezic languages of the Caucasus and the Mataco-Guaicuruan languages of South America, based on the lexical data from the Intercontinental Dictionary Series (IDS). The results of these tests show that the current approach is a viable and useful extension to historical linguistic research.

Lexical typology through similarity semantics: Toward a semantic map of motion verbs*

Abstract This paper discusses a multidimensional probabilistic semantic map of lexical motion verb stems based on data collected from parallel texts (viz. translations of the Gospel according to Mark) for 100 languages from all continents. The crosslinguistic diversity of lexical semantics in motion verbs is illustrated in detail for the domain of ‘go’, ‘come’, and ‘arrive’ type contexts. It is argued that the theoretical bases underlying probabilistic semantic maps from exemplar data are the isomorphism hypothesis (given any two meanings and their corresponding forms in any particular language, more similar meanings are more likely to be expressed by the same form in any language), similarity semantics (similarity is more basic than identity), and exemplar semantics (exemplar meaning is more fundamental than abstract concepts).

Rethinking universals : how rarities affect linguistic theory

Rarissima and rara, features and properties found only in one or very few languages, tell us as much about the capacities and limits of human language(s) as do universals. Explaining the existence of such rare phenomena on the one hand, and the fact of their rareness or uniqueness on the other, proves a reasonable and interesting challenge to any theory of how human language works.

Comment on “Phonemic Diversity Supports a Serial Founder Effect Model of Language Expansion from Africa”

We show that Atkinson’s (Reports, 15 April 2011, p. 346) intriguing proposal—that global linguistic diversity supports a single language origin in Africa—is an artifact of using suboptimal data, biased methodology, and unjustified assumptions. We criticize his approach using more suitable data, and we additionally provide new results suggesting a more complex scenario for the emergence of global linguistic diversity.

Some Structural Aspects of Language Are More Stable than Others: A Comparison of Seven Methods

Understanding the patterns and causes of differential structural stability is an area of major interest for the study of language change and evolution. It is still debated whether structural features have intrinsic stabilities across language families and geographic areas, or if the processes governing their rate of change are completely dependent upon the specific context of a given language or language family. We conducted an extensive literature review and selected seven different approaches to conceptualising and estimating the stability of structural linguistic features, aiming at comparing them using the same dataset, the World Atlas of Language Structures. We found that, despite profound conceptual and empirical differences between these methods, they tend to agree in classifying some structural linguistic features as being more stable than others. This suggests that there are intrinsic properties of such structural features influencing their stability across methods, language families and geographic areas. This finding is a major step towards understanding the nature of structural linguistic features and their interaction with idiosyncratic, lineage- and area-specific factors during language change and evolution.

Rara & rarissima : documenting the fringes of linguistic diversity

The papers in this book describe and analyze rara in individuallanguages, covering an extraordinarily broad geographic distribution,including papers about languages from all over the globe. Therange of theoretical subjects discussed shows an enormous breadth, ranging from phonology through word formation, lexical semantics tosyntax and even some sociolinguistics.

On the probability distribution of typological frequencies

Some language types are more frequent among the worlds languages than others, and the field of linguistic typology attempts to elucidate the reasons for such differences in type frequency. However, there is no consensus in that field about the stochastic processes that shape these frequencies, and there is thus likewise no agreement about the expected probability distribution of typological frequencies. This paper explains the problem and presents a first attempt to build a theory of typological probability purely based on processes of language change.

Very atypical agreement indeed

In their thorough reappraisal of the lengthy scholarly debate about pointing and directional verbs in sign languages, Lilo-Martin & Meier (LM&M, this volume) argue that (i) both pointing and directionality in sign language are comparable to person marking in spoken languages, and (ii) directionality in sign language is comparable to agreement in spoken languages. The first p roposition (i) is well-argued for, but the second (ii) is not. The authors seem to assume that by arguing for (i) they implicitly have argued for (ii), but this indicates a misconception of the meaning of the term agreement. Without taking any issue with Lilo-Martin & Meier’s arguments themselves (which in the case of person marking seem perfectly legitimate to me), their arguments do not substantiate the claim that directionality is similar to agreement in spoken language. At most, directionality seems to be an extremely non-canonical form of agreement, which, as the authors write themselves “may [ . . . ] be an indication that an analysis using another approach would be more successful” (LM&M §6.0). The problem seems to be that the authors equate the term ‘agreement’ with ‘inflectional person marking’. Unfortunately, this interpretation is widespread in current linguistic theory, but it has little theoretical or practical validity. In current linguistic practice two rather different notions of agreement are attested. The first notion, which I will designate as agreement/concord, defines agreement as some kind of systematic covariance of linguistic expressions, like in Italian singular il nuovo cuadro (‘the new picture’) vs. plural i nuovi cuadri (‘the new pictures’, Corbett 2006: 9). The second usage, which I will call agreement/inflection, reduces the notion of agreement to subject-verb c ovariance only. And even more extremely, in this tradition often agreement

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

Abstract The worlds 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 worlds 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.