Volume 18, Issue 1

This article provides a critical examination of the widespread idea that A and O (and Agents and Patients) are each other's mirror image in terms of case marking and semantic features. We examine patterns of differential case marking for nouns in a sample of 185 languages, showing that the behaviour of A cannot be captured in terms of markedness reversal based on models for O marking. We highlight pecularities of A marking that are not found with O marking, like sensitivity to the feature of motivity, and syntactic restrictions on use as A, and use these to develop an independent account of A marking.

A generally accepted universal property of anaphors in reflexive and reciprocal constructions is that they cannot occur in the subject position of a main clause with a non-subject binder in the same clause. In this article a number of languages are examined that have reflexive elements resembling subjects. But it is argued that some of them can be shown not to be anaphoric pronouns or never to occur in the subject position of active main clauses. Even those languages such as Sanzhi Dargwa (Nakh-Daghestanian) in which anaphoric pronouns can fulfill more prominent semantic functions than their binders are claimed not to have subject anaphors simply because they do not have subjects. The article also offers a semantic explanation for why anaphors can and sometimes even must occur as agents and experiencers in reflexive (and reciprocal) constructions in Sanzhi Dargwa and in other related languages.

Miao-Yao is one of the major language families of mainland Southeast Asia, with perhaps over one hundred member languages. Despite this, very little information on word order in Miao-Yao has been made available in English or other European languages. Relying primarily on recently published Chinese descriptions, this article presents data on fourteen word order features for eleven Miao-Yao languages for use in large-scale typological studies. It also discusses two typologically unusual word order feature values which have been claimed to be largely or entirely restricted to Sinitic, but which are in fact widespread in Miao-Yao: XVO order and co-occurring VO/RelN order.