Typology and Universals Second Edition

published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Croft, William. Typology and universals / William Croft. – 2nd edn. p. cm. – (Cambridge textbooks in linguistics) Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents List of figures page xii List of tables xiii Preface to the second edition xv Preface to the first edition xvii List of abbreviations xix List of symbols xxiv 1 Introduction 1 1.1 What is typology? 1 1.2 Typology, universals and generative grammar 4 1.3 Cross-linguistic comparison 6 1.4 The problem of cross-linguistic comparability 13 1.5 Language sampling for cross-linguistic research 19 1.6 Data sources 28 2 Typological classification 31 2.1 A cross-linguistically valid description of morphosyntactic structures 31 2.1.1 Simple strategies 32 2.1.2 Relational strategies 33 2.1.3 Indexical strategies 34 2.1.4 Classifiers: indexical or relational? 37 2.1.5 More grammaticalized strategies 38 2.1.6 Summary 40 2.2 What is being classified? 42 2.3 Morphological typology 45 3 Implicational universals and competing motivations 49 3.1 Restrictions on possible language types 49 3.2 Unrestricted and implicational universals 52 3.3 Competing motivations 59 3.4 Deeper explanations for word order and affix order universals 69 3.5 Typology, universals and generative grammar revisited 80 3.6 Conclusion 86 ix x List of contents 4 Grammatical categories: typological markedness, economy and iconicity 87 4.1 Typological markedness 87 4.1.1 Structural coding 91 4.1.2 Behavioral potential 95 4.1.3 Neutral value: not a criterion for typological markedness 100 4.2 Economy and iconicity 101 4.2.1 Structural coding, economy and syntagmatic isomorphism 102 4.2.2 Economy, paradigmatic isomorphism and polysemy 104 4.3 Frequency and deeper explanations for economy and iconicity 110 4.4 Typological asymmetries in word order and phonology 117 4.5 Conclusion 120 5 Grammatical hierarchies and the semantic map model 122 5.1 Grammatical hierarchies and implicational universals 122 5.2 The animacy and definiteness hierarchies 128 5.3 A deeper explanation for hierarchies and categories: the semantic map model 133 5.4 Conceptual spaces, structural coding and behavioral potential 140 5.5 The grammatical relations hierarchies 142 5.5.1 The external definition of grammatical relations 142 5.5.2 Subject and object, ergative and absolutive 144 5.5.3 Objects: direct and indirect, primary and …