Volume 61, Issue 4

An approach to the classification of languages through automated lexical comparison is described. This method produces near-expert classifications. At the core of the approach is the Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP). ASJP is applied to 100-item lists of core vocabulary from 245 globally distributed languages. The output is 29,890 lexical similarity percentages for the same number of paired languages. Percentages are used as a database in a program designed originally for generating phylogenetic trees in biology. This program yields branching structures (ASJP trees) reflecting the lexical similarity of languages. ASJP trees for languages of the sample spoken in Middle America and South America show that the method is capable of grouping together on distinct branches languages of non-controversial genetic groups. In addition, ASJP sub-branching for each of nine respective genetic groups – Mayan, Mixe-Zoque, Otomanguean, Huitotoan-Ocaina, Tacanan, Chocoan, Muskogean, Indo-European, and Austro-Asiatic – agrees substantially with subgrouping for those groups produced by expert historical linguists. ASJP can be applied, among many other uses, to search for possible relationships among languages heretofore not observed or only provisionally recognized. Preliminary ASJP analysis reveals several such possible relationships for languages of Middle America and South America. Expanding the ASJP database to all of the world′s languages for which 100-word lists can be assembled is a realistic goal that could be achieved in a relatively short period of time, maybe one year or even less.

In the Nakh-Daghestanian language family, person agreement is considered a recent innovation of a few isolated languages. Person variations in Akhvakh verb morphology are limited to the perfective positive and follow a typologically rare pattern, in which the same couple of verbal endings encodes a 1st person vs. 2nd/3rd person contrast in declarative clauses, and a 2nd person vs. 1st/3rd person contrast in questions. A comparison of the verb forms concerned by this distinction with other Akhvakh verb forms not involved in this mechanism suggests that, in Akhvakh, the emergence of this atypical pattern resulted from the reanalysis of a TAM distinction.

While language has been described in many previous linguistic theories as a static, self-contained system, it is viewed as a dynamic, open-ended phenomenon in recent studies on grammaticalization. In the present paper it is argued that both the genesis and the development of grammatical categories are the result of a general cognitive process that is creative in nature.

It will be claimed that given the highly situationally restricted context triggering the Absentive meaning under any of the available construals, the occurrence of the Ab-sentive is not a grammatical category. Nor is there a viable diachronic relation with the PP-Progressive in German and other languages such as English. Admittedly, this leaves unaccounted for the fine gradual distance-semantic difference between the Bare Infinitive and the PP-Progressive in German. What appears to provide a further argument against the general categorical status of this construal is the fact that reading does not emerge under any construction type in the Slavic languages.