Rethinking Universals
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Edited by:
Jan Wohlgemuth
About this book
Universals of language have been studied extensively for the last four decades, allowing fundamental insight into the principles and general properties of human language. Only incidentally have researchers looked at the other end of the scale. And even when they did, they mostly just noted peculiar facts as ''quirks'' or ''unusual behavior'', without making too much of an effort at explaining them beyond calling them ''exceptions'' to various rules or generalizations.
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, is a reasonable and interesting challenge to any theory of how human language works.
The present volume for the first time compiles selected papers on the study of rare linguistic features from various fields of linguistics and from a wide range of languages.
Author / Editor information
Jan Wohlgemuth and Michael Cysouw, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
Topics
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i |
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vii |
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Michael Cysouw and Jan Wohlgemuth Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed |
1 |
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Harald Hammarström Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed |
11 |
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Thomas Hanke Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed |
61 |
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Alice C. Harris Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed |
91 |
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Pavel Iosad Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed |
105 |
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Andrej Malchukov Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed |
139 |
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Matti Miestamo Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed |
169 |
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Accounting for rare typological features in formal syntax: three strategies and some general remarks
Frederick J. Newmeyer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed |
195 |
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Jan Rijkhoff Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed |
223 |
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Søren Wichmann and Eric W. Holman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed |
241 |
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Jan Wohlgemuth Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed |
255 |
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279 |
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