Startseite Crosslinguistic categories in morphosyntactic typology: Problems and prospects
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Crosslinguistic categories in morphosyntactic typology: Problems and prospects

  • Jan Rijkhoff EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 27. September 2016

Abstract

This article offers a new, transparent method to construe morphosyntactic categories for crosslinguistic research. It avoids the problem of categorial confusion attested in major post-Greenbergian studies in morphosyntactic typology, in particular in probabilistic typological investigations, which tend to mix up semantic and formal criteria and marginalize “statistically insignificant” morphosyntactic variants. These and other problems are avoided by using functional criteria as the starting point in identifying comparable forms and constructions in different languages. Subsequently formal and semantic criteria are employed to arrive at a morphosyntactic category whose members are sufficiently similar in terms of function, form, and meaning.

Abbreviations

1/3 

 1st/3rd person

acc

 accusative

art 

 article

dec 

 declarative

dir 

 direct

erg 

 ergative

gen 

 genitive

int 

 interrogative

inv 

 inverse

nc1 

 noun class 1

nc7 

 noun class 7

pp1 

 class 1 pronominal prefix

refl 

 reflexive

rel 

 relative clause

s 

 subject

sg 

 singular.

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Received: 2016-3-28
Revised: 2016-6-9
Published Online: 2016-9-27
Published in Print: 2016-10-1

©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton

Heruntergeladen am 8.9.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/lingty-2016-0010/pdf
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