Volume 60, Issue 4 - 4

Semantic maps are tools which represents cross-linguistic regularities in the mapping of meaning on form. Although they have become increasingly popular in semantic studies since the late 1990s, they have been associated with a number of methodological problems, including the reliance on the preferences and intuitions of the individual researcher. In this paper, we argue for the systematic use of large databases to improve the validity of semantic maps. We do so by presenting a study of instrumental and comitative markers based on a sample of 200 languages, and comparing the results with previous research in this area.

Natural Syntax is a developing deductive theory, a branch of Naturalness Theory. The naturalness judgements are couched in naturalness scales, which follow from the basic parameters (or “axioms”) listed at the beginning of the paper. The predictions of the theory are calculated in the deductions, whose chief components are a pair of naturalness scales and the rules governing the alignment of corresponding naturalness values. Parallel and chiastic alignments are distinguished, in complementary distribution. Chiastic alignment is mandatory in derivations limited to unnatural environments. The paper deals with the grammatical person of personal pronouns. The basic naturalness scale is >nat (1 st , 2 nd , 3 rd ) / grammatical person. Parallel alignment is used, except when the language data are restricted to the 3 rd person, which demarcates an extremely unnatural environment and thus requires chiastic alignment.

Romani is split up in a great number of dialects and dialect groups, but it is not clear when and under what circumstances linguistic diversification took place. It is controversial whether innovations mainly spread by “diffusion” over a once homogeneous continuum or were transported to other places mainly by the split-up of groups of speakers and subsequent migration. The diffusion model explains diversification in general, but it cannot explain how mere diffusion would bring about the emergence of well-delimited dialect groups or families. Most probably, differentiation began very early accumulating during the European history of the language, effected both by linguistic (innovations and diffusion of innovations) and extralinguistic (split and migration) processes.

Several research traditions have hypothesized that rhythmic differences between mora-, syllable- and stress-timed languages are rooted in the different phonological profiles of the languages in question. In this paper, ten of the proposed prosodic, phonotactic and morphophonological parameters are tested against data from a twenty-language sample. The evidence suggests that rhythmic differences across languages are gradual rather than discrete. Linguistic rhythm should therefore be conceived as a continuum with mora- and stress-based rhythm as focal points. Since evolutionary processes on stress- and mora-related parameters are in principle independent from each other, diachrony casts doubt on holistic typologies of linguistic rhythm.