Volume 13, Issue 1

German disallows embedded infinitival ( wh -)interrogatives. Although cross-linguistic comparison has not been undertaken to any broader extent, most accounts attribute this gap to properties of complementizers and the C-system. By contrast, this gap will here be linked to a correlation between non-finite ( wh -)interrogatives and the indefinite-interrogative affinity present in the inventory of wh -pronouns of many languages. The claim will be defended that, if a language has embedded non-finite ( wh -)interrogatives, then its pronominal system does not have a robust indefinite/interrogative ambiguity. In addition to a crosslinguistic survey, it will be sketched – with particular reference to German – how to relate these two domains in terms of clausal typing and the illocutionary force of non-finite (root) interrogatives.

After a brief discussion of what The world atlas of language structures can and cannot (easily) be used for, the critical emphasis is on value assignments for the 140 features mapped. In particular, in an attempt to replicate the value assignments for one language, well-described and much-analysed German, a non-negligible proportion of the values assigned is found to be problematic, in the sense of being arbitrary or uncertain in view of analytic alternatives, unappreciative of dialectal variation, unclear as to what has been coded, or factually erroneous. To give an impression of progress in areal linguistics over the last century, WALS is then compared with an earlier world atlas of language structures, that of Wilhelm Schmidt (1926): for the features mapped in both atlases, despite substantially improved factual knowledge about languages, there is considerable congruity of the areal distributions shown.

Confronting low data reduction typologies, as established by using data from parallel texts, with the high data reduction typologies of WALS reveals a systematic bias of WALS typologies toward highly bimodal distribution. Properties with a distribution supporting a discrete feature analysis in many languages are likelier to be represented in WALS and to be represented accurately. This bias has important consequences when WALS typologies are interpreted theoretically or further processed statistically.

Since Greenberg's groundbreaking publication on universals of grammar, typologists have used semantic categories to investigate (constraints on) morphological and syntactic variation in the world's languages and this tradition has been continued in the WALS project. It is argued here that the employment of semantic categories has some serious drawbacks, however, suggesting that semantic categories, just like formal categories, cannot be equated across languages in morphosyntactic typology. Whereas formal categories are too narrow in that they do not cover all structural variants attested across languages, semantic categories can be too wide, including too many structural variants. Furthermore, it appears that in some major typological studies semantic categories have been confused with formal categories. A possible solution is pointed out: typologists first need to make sure that the forms or constructions under investigation do the same job in the various languages ( functional sameness ); subsequently this functional selection can be narrowed down on the basis of formal or semantic criteria to construct a set of elements that is similar enough to allow for crosslinguistic comparison ( formal and semantic similarity ).

WALS was designed with the goal of providing a “systematic answer” to questions about the geographical distribution of language features. In order to achieve this goal, there must be an adequate sample of the world's languages included in WALS . In this article we investigate to what extent WALS fulfils its aim of maximizing the genealogical diversity of the samples of languages included. For this we look at the core-200 sample (included on almost all maps) as well as the 1,370 sample for the feature OV/VO word order (the sample with the largest number of languages). The genealogical diversity in these samples is compared against a database of “what could have been done”, i.e., a database of which language families have adequate descriptive resources for the task at hand. In the 200 sample, we find a highly significant overinclusion of Eurasian languages at the expense of South American and Papuan languages. In the 1,370 sample, we find a highly significant overinclusion of North American languages at the expense of South American and Papuan languages. It follows that statistics based on these WALS samples cannot be used straightforwardly for sound inferences about the distribution of the features in question.

The ease with which WALS allows users to combine features from two maps and determine numbers of languages of the resulting types means that there is a danger of misusing the data from WALS to arrive at unsupported conclusions regarding typological correlations. I examine two instances where the overall numbers suggest a correlation and show that in only one of the two instances is there any reason to believe that there is in fact a correlation. In the case where the apparent correlation turns out to be an illusion, namely between tone and the order of object and verb, the illusion arises because most of the tone languages in WALS are in two areas which happen to be primarily VO. This illustrates the need to examine how the languages are distributed geographically. But this is information that WALS also provides, on the maps.

The article's primary concern is to address the usage of The world atlas of language structures through comparing it with another typological database of similar scope, Jazyki mira . Such a comparison is carried out based on a set of criteria. First, the scope of the databases is compared, as well as their differences and similarities in structure, in the number of errors, and in the existing user interfaces. Then calculations of typological similarity and temporal stability of language features based on the data provided by both databases are compared. Finally, conclusions are drawn as to the relative efficiency and usefulness of these databases for different aims of research or educational goals.

The ASJP project aims at establishing relationships between languages on the basis of the Swadesh word list. For this purpose, lists have been collected and phonologically transcribed for almost 3,500 languages. Using a method based on the algorithm proposed by Levenshtein (Cybernetics and Control Theory 10: 707–710, 1966), a custom-made computer program calculates the distances between all pairs of languages in the database. Standard software is used to express the relationships between languages graphically. The current article compares the results of our lexicon-based approach with the results of a similar exercise that takes the typological variables contained in the WALS database as a point of departure. We establish that the latter approach leads to even better results than the lexicon-based one. The best result in terms of correspondence with some well-established genetic and areal classifications, however, is attained when the lexical and typological methods are combined, especially if we select both the most stable Swadesh items and the most stable WALS variables.

The world atlas of language structures ( WALS ) originally appealed to the linguistics community as a resource for research. However, the relevance of the feature chapters to teaching environments and the user-friendly nature of the Interactive Reference Tool also make it suitable for university classrooms. Based on our experiences using WALS in two typology courses at the University of Manchester and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), we provide a review of WALS as a teaching and learning tool, including both its successes and frustrations. We note some methodological and technical issues with using WALS in the university classroom, including problems of over- and under-sampling, and a lack of coverage on typological rarities. However, we have also found that WALS has much to offer instructors and students in terms of its breadth of topic coverage, the linkage of the feature chapters with course reading assignments, the wealth of genealogical, geographical, and bibliographic information on individual languages, and the hands-on experience that the Interactive Reference Tool offers students.