Volume 12, Issue 2

This paper presents several of the typologically most intriguing features of Hup, an endangered Nadahup (Makú) language spoken in the northwest Amazonian Vaupés region; these are differential object marking, evidentiality, noun classification, “bound” nouns and inalienable possession, and the multifunctional form teg . Each of these areas of Hup grammar and its typological significance are best understood within an approach that weaves explanation together with description, and in the process takes a view of language as a dynamic, non-autonomous system, which cannot be abstracted away from its own past or the culture and environment of its speakers.

Crosslinguistically, negatives change in a cyclical fashion. A particular negative weakens and is renewed by another element. In this article, I provide examples of two distinct negative cycles, one using an indefinite phrase and the other a verbal head as renewal. The examples are taken from Indo-European, Uralic, Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit, Haida, Afro-Asiatic, and Chinese. I also provide an account of both cycles using phrase structures and economy principles as in generative grammar.

This paper examines Differential R Marking (DRM) – i.e., the effects of animacy on the encoding of goals (R), as in ‘a linguist sent a book to the phonetician/to the town’ – from a crosslinguistic perspective. The phenomenon comprises three types, which are distinguished based on whether R can be marked in the same way as the transitive Patient or not (animate Rs usually allow this, while inanimate Rs usually surface as obliques). Even though DRM shares common features with Differential Object Marking (DOM), the two phenomena cannot be explained by the same functions. The findings of this article support the view that differences in object coding (comprising both DRM and DOM) are best explained by affectedness rather than ambiguity avoidance.

It is commonly accepted that the process of pidginization leads to a loss of inflectional morphology, but this loss is often not total. Lexifier inflections instead follow a cline of reduction: full retention – partial retention – partial lexicalization – full lexicalization – full loss. This article examines the retention of inflection in 29 languages that reflect a history of pidginization in their development, comparing the morphological richness of pidgins with their respective lexifiers. The results indicate an asymmetry between the retention of inherent and contextual inflections, such that pidgins express fewer grammatical categories via contextual inflection than do their lexifiers. The authors suggest that this may reflect a role of markedness (semantic relevance) in the preservation of inflection.