Volume 29, Issue 1

This paper discusses a phenomenon that has so far received little attention in previous literature: the presence, in several languages from different branches of the Austronesian family, of polyfunctional markers, which combine an aspectual meaning of change of state with information and discourse structuring functions. In this study, based on a comparative analysis of fifty-two Austronesian languages, I show that polyfunctional change of state markers are distributed throughout the entire family, crosscutting the major typological and geographical divide between Western and Eastern Austronesian. I argue that the development of information and discourse structuring functions of change of state markers derives from applying the notions of current relevance and transition to new situation not to eventualities, but to elements of propositions, and I also suggest that this process may be universally valid and could explain the similar development of change of state markers into information and discourse structuring devices attested in non-Austronesian languages.

This paper investigates cross-linguistic variation in the expression of adnominal person ( pers n ; cf. English “we linguists”) based on a survey of 114 languages, focusing on word order. Two subtypes are distinguished according to whether pers n is expressed by an independent pronoun as in English or by a morphologically dependent marker. Prenominal adnominal pronouns are the most common type of pers n marking overall, while the morphologically dependent markers are predominantly postnominal (or phrase-final). The order of pers n marking relative to its accompanying noun is shown to interact with head-directionality (VO/OV-order, position of dependent genitives, adpositions) and with the position of demonstrative modifiers (prenominal/postnominal) using generalised linear mixed-effects models. Theoretical implications and possible explanations for deviations are discussed concerning variation in the encoding of pers n as head or phrasal modifier and its (lack of) co-categoriality with demonstratives.

In this paper, we present a comparative concept for singular-plural verb stem alternation (Sg-Pl alternation) and a systematic global survey of its presence as well as its syntactic and semantic attributes, with a denser sample in the Americas. We show that Sg-Pl alternation is fairly common, occurring in about one in three languages, although its geographic distribution is highly uneven. Fine-grained data collected on the verbs targeted by the phenomenon reveal distinct global and local drivers. General semantic and syntactic properties are fairly consistent at the global level and reveal the relevance of the spatial configuration of the Figure (Motion Event), while at the local level highly specific semantics are shared across neighboring languages. This work will be of interest to both fieldworkers and typologists interested in distinguishing between the various causal factors for the development of typological properties.

Differential object marking (DOM) is known from a great variety of language families. We present data suggesting that, contrary to what is suggested in recent typological surveys, DOM is also a widespread phenomenon in Austronesian symmetrical voice languages. To do this, we show why the identification of DOM constructions in these languages is difficult, propose a definition for DOM that takes note of the peculiarities of symmetrical voice systems, and briefly review three types of DOM systems attested in the area. Our findings have implications for claims regarding the universality of DOM, and quality control in compiling large-scale typological databases.

One of the questions linguists try to answer is to what extent conceptual content is expressed similarly across languages. The null hypothesis is that languages express the same sorts of things but may differ in the particular morphological and syntactic constructions they use. This paper describes one semantic domain, quantification over objects in Oneida (Northern Iroquoian), where there is both variation in expression and variation in expressibility. Through a detailed and comprehensive description of quantificational expressions, we show that in Oneida quantification is pervasively and almost exclusively expressed by productive verb forms that are not number words; moreover, these verb forms head clauses (count clauses) adjoined to main clauses. We argue that to this morphosyntactic difference between Oneida and most languages corresponds a semantic difference, namely that in Oneida quantificational expressions denote properties of sets, whereas in most other languages they denote relations between sets (or between entities and sets), and this difference accounts for the systematic absence of proportional and partitive quantifiers in Oneida.