New Challenges in Typology

Transcending the Borders and Refining the Distinctions

Patience Epps, Alexandre Arkhipov, Patience Epps, Alexandre Arkhipov

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9783110219050
• eBook ISBN: 9783110219067
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The volume brings together seventeen chapters by typologists and typologically oriented field linguists who have recently completed their Ph.D. theses. Through their case studies of selected theoretically relevant issues the authors highlight the mutual importance of language description, on the one hand, and of cross-linguistically informed theory, on the other. Faced with new data from previously unknown languages and even from lesser-studied varieties of European languages, linguists constantly have to deal with the inadequacy of established concepts and typologies, being pushed to further refine their classifications and to question the accepted borderlines between different categories, types, and levels of linguistic description.

The scope of the individual contributions to the volume varies from worldwide typological samples to family-internal typology to in-depth studies of single languages. The range of linguistic domains addressed include tonology, morphology, syntax, and lexical classes. Among the phenomena scrutinized are clitics, tones, case, agreement/indexation, localization, pluractionality, desideratives, lability, comitative constructions, raising, verb formation, nominal classification, parts of speech, and predicates of change. More general theoretical and methodological issues addressed include such topics as markedness, grammaticalization, lexicalization, and the integration of linguistic data and description.

The book is of interest to typologists and field linguists, as well as to any linguists interested in theoretical issues in different subfields of linguistics. A particular contribution of the volume is to present a synthesis of typological and descriptive approaches to the study of language, and to highlight the fact that broader typological study and the focused investigation of particular languages are interdependent ventures that necessarily inform each other.

Table of contents

• Frontmatter
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• Patterns of clitic placement: Evidence from ‘mixed’ clitic systems
• Eton tonology and morphosyntax: A holistic typological approach
• A hierarchical indexation system: The example of Emerillon (Teko)
• Where differential object marking and split plurality intersect: Evidence from Hup
• Syncretisms and neutralizations involving morphological case: Challenges for markedness theory
• Towards a typology of ‘attachment’ markers: Evidence from East Caucasian languages
• Revisiting perfect pathways: Trends in the grammaticalization of periphrastic pasts
• Individual-level meanings in the semantic domain of pluractionality
• The symbiosis of descriptive linguistics and typology: A case study of desideratives
• Comitative as a cross-linguistically valid category
• Towards a typology of labile verbs: Lability vs. derivation
• Towards the typology of raising: A functional approach
• Historical pathways in Northern Paiute verb formation
• Reference and predication in Movima
• All typologies leak: Predicates of change in Lowland Chontal of Oaxaca
• Multidimensional typology and Miraña class markers
• Steps toward a grammar embedded in data
• Backmatter