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It has long been observed that many languages from all over the world require that certain grammatical categories (e.g., person, number, tense, modality) occur in the “second position” of a clause. Much of the research into second position has developed formal explanations for this recurring pattern, based on interactions between morphosyntax and phonology. In this article I explore how pragmatics of information packaging interacts with these other features in the development of such morphosyntactic architecture in three North-Central Australian languages: Warlpiri, Wambaya, and Garrwa.

The Tai languages of Assam (India), among them Tai Khamti, are characterised by AVO/SV constituent order, conditioned by a complex interplay of pragmatics, particularly focus structure. Greenberg considered Tai Khamti, a postpositional language, an exception to his Universal 4 (whereby “SOV” languages are postpositional), but this article demonstrates that it is not an exception. Older Tai languages, such as Ahom, had VO structure. However, modern Khamti and Phake exhibit both VO and OV, depending on the pragmatic structure of the clause. This change is partly due to marking animate O arguments in adpositional phrases, so that constituent order is not required for disambiguation, and partly due to contact with verb-final languages that dominate the Northeast India linguistic area.

While New Indo-Aryan languages are a common example of morphological ergativity, the range of variation in ergative marking and agreement among these languages has not been examined in detail. The goals of this article are twofold. We first present a typology of ergative marking and agreement in Indo-Aryan languages, demonstrating that a progressive loss of ergative marking has occurred to varying degrees in different systems. This process is manifested in two distinct strategies of markedness reduction: loss of overt subject marking in the nominal domain and loss of marked agreement in the verbal domain. Using the framework of Optimality Theory, we account for the typology in terms of universal subhierarchies of markedness. Extending the analysis to dialect variation in one language, Marathi, we show that the dialect typology parallels the crosslinguistic typology, but only within the range permitted by changes already present in the parent language (Old Marathi). Furthermore, the dialect typology includes additional hybrid case-agreement systems predicted by our analysis.

Two of the major assumptions that common statistical tests make about random sampling and distribution of the data are not tenable for most typological data. We suggest to use randomization tests, which avoid these assumptions. Randomization is applicable to frequency data, rank data, scalar measurements, and ratings, so most typological data can be analyzed with the same tools. We provided a free computer program, which also includes routines that help determine the degree to which a statistical conclusion is reliable or dependent on a few languages in the sample.

Guido Seiler, Präpositionale Dativmarkierung im Oberdeutschen. ( Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik , Beihefte, 124.) Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2003, 283 pages, ISBN 3-515-08318-9, EUR 60. (Frans Plank) Nicole Kruspe, A Grammar of Semelai. (Cambridge Grammatical Descriptions, 3.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 520 pages, ISBN 0-521-81497-9, EUR 106.70. (N. J. Enfield)

For over seven years T he U niversals A rchive has now been available on the internet in the form of a searchable archive, enabling its on-line users either to retrieve particular universals or sets of them (in terms of any words or word parts, or combinations of words or word parts, that occur in archive entries) or to browse through the archive for general instruction or entertainment. Although, with currently over 2,000 entries, T he U niversals A rchive is the most extensive collection of linguistic universals, it is a far cry from being comprehensive, not to mention other shortcomings. Nonetheless, over the years, many typologists appear to have found it a useful resource for research and teaching; and much valuable feedback was received by the archivists.

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