Linguistic Diversity in Space and TimeIn this ground-breaking book, Johanna Nichols proposes means of describing, comparing, and interpreting linguistic diversity, both genetic and structural, providing the foundations for a theory of diversity based upon population science. This book will interest linguists, archaeologists, and population specialists. "An awe-inspiring book, unequalled in scope, originality, and the range of language data considered."—Anna Siewierska, Linguistics "Fascinating. . . . A brilliant pioneering study."—Journal of Indo-European Studies "A superbly reasoned book."—John A. C. Greppin, Times Literary Supplement |
Contents
1 | 27 |
Favored and Disfavored Grammatical Patterns | 45 |
Correlations between Types | 97 |
Correlations of Structural Types with Grammatical Categories | 157 |
Genetic and Areal | 167 |
Structural Affinities between Areas | 223 |
Geographical Distribution | 231 |
Conclusions | 261 |
Sample Languages | 283 |
Language by Area and Structural Features | 292 |
Alphabetical List of Languages | 302 |
Notes | 311 |
References | 319 |
Indexes | 343 |
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Common terms and phrases
affinities affixes Africa Afroasiatic agreement alignment types Ancient Near East animacy areal groupings Asia Coast Australia Caucasus classification clause clitics colonized areas complexity constituent continents correlation cross-linguistic dependent marking dependent-marking languages distribution diversity dominant alignment Dyirbal ergative Ethiopia & Kenya Eurasia Europe & Caucasus example favor frequencies gender genetic density genetic groups geographical global clines grammatical gross types guages Guinea head head-marking languages head/dependent marking head/dependent type hierarchy hotbed inalienable possession inclusive/exclusive inclusive/exclusive oppositions Indo-European inflection Klimov lexical linguistic macroareas markers mean Mesoamerica modal type morphology North America Northern Asia Northern Eurasia noun classes NP's number of languages numeral classifiers Oceania Old World Pacific patterns percentages plurality neutralization population PP's pronouns residual zones Sahaptin semantic shown in table shows significant South SOV SOV split spread zones stability steppe stocks structural survey tion Total typological Ungarinjin University Uto-Aztecan verb word order
Popular passages
Page 320 - Andersen, Torben. 1988. Ergativity in Pari, a Nilotic OVS language.