Balthasar Bickel | University of Zurich, Switzerland (original) (raw)
Published articles by Balthasar Bickel
Physics of Life Reviews, 2024
As one of the most specific, yet most diverse of human behaviors, language is shaped by both geno... more As one of the most specific, yet most diverse of human behaviors, language is shaped by both genomic and extra-genomic evolution. Sharing methods and models between these modes of evolution has significantly advanced our understanding of language and inspired generalized theories of its evolution. Progress is hampered, however, by the fact that the extra-genomic evolution of languages, i.e. linguistic evolution, maps only partially to other forms of evolution. Contrasting it with the biological evolution of eukaryotes and the cultural evolution of technology as the best understood models, we show that linguistic evolution is special by yielding a stationary dynamic rather than stable solutions, and that this dynamic allows the use of language change for social differentiation while maintaining its global adaptiveness. Linguistic evolution furthermore differs from technological evolution by requiring vertical transmission, allowing the reconstruction of phylogenies; and it differs from eukaryotic biological evolution by foregoing a genotype vs phenotype distinction, allowing deliberate and biased change. Recognising these differences will improve our empirical tools and open new avenues for analyzing how linguistic, cultural, and biological evolution interacted with each other when language emerged in the hominin lineage. Importantly, our framework will help to cope with unprecedented scientific and ethical challenges that presently arise from how rapid cultural evolution impacts language, most urgently from interventional clinical tools for language disorders, potential epigenetic effects of technology on language, artificial intelligence and linguistic communicators, and global losses of linguistic diversity and identity. Beyond language, the distinctions made here allow identifying variation in other forms of biological and cultural evolution, developing new perspectives for empirical research.
The language of hunter-gatherers, 2020
It has long seemed plausible that the languages of hunter-gatherer societies might be systematica... more It has long seemed plausible that the languages of hunter-gatherer societies might be systematically different from those of food producers. Compared to food-producing societies, hunter-gatherer societies are usually smaller and less complex, with lower population density. They are often based on kinship as a main organizing factor and usually lack large-scale sociopolitical organization with its concomitant traits such as language standardization.
Language dispersal, diversification, and contact: a global perspective, 2020
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2018
Linguistic diversity is a key aspect of human population diversity and shapes much of our social ... more Linguistic diversity is a key aspect of human population diversity and shapes much of our social and cognitive lives. To a considerable extent, the distribution of this diversity is driven by environmental factors such as climate or coast access. An unresolved question is whether the relevant factors have remained constant over time. Here, we address this question at a global scale. We approximate the difference between pre- versus post-Neolithic populations by the difference between modern hunter–gatherer versus food-producing populations. Using a novel geostatistical approach of estimating language and language family densities, we show that environmental—chiefly climate factors—have driven the language density of food-producing populations considerably more strongly than the language density of hunter–gatherer populations. Current evidence suggests that the population dynamics of modern hunter–gatherers is very similar to that of what can be reconstructed from the Palaeolithic record. Based on this, we cautiously infer that the impact of environmental factors on language densities underwent a substantial change with the transition to agriculture. After this transition, the environmental impact on language diversity in food-producing populations has remained relatively stable since it can also be detected—albeit in slightly weaker form—in models that capture the reduced linguistic diversity during large-scale language spreads in the Mid-Holocene.
PLOS Biology, 2018
A key step in understanding the evolution of human language involves unravelling the origins of l... more A key step in understanding the evolution of human language involves unravelling the origins of language's syntactic structure. One approach seeks to reduce the core of syntax in humans to a single principle of recursive combination, MERGE, for which there is no evidence in other species. We argue for an alternative approach. We review evidence that beneath the staggering complexity of human syntax, there is an extensive layer of nonproductive, nonhierarchical syntax that can be fruitfully compared to animal call combinations. This is the essential groundwork that must be explored and integrated before we can elucidate, with sufficient precision, what exactly made it possible for human language to explode its syntactic capacity, transitioning from simple nonproductive combinations to the unrivalled complexity that we now have.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2018
By force of nature, every bit of spoken language is produced at a particular speed. However, this... more By force of nature, every bit of spoken language is produced at a particular speed. However, this speed is not constant-speakers regularly speed up and slow down. Variation in speech rate is influenced by a complex combination of factors, including the frequency and predictability of words, their information status, and their position within an utterance. Here, we use speech rate as an index of word-planning effort and focus on the time window during which speakers prepare the production of words from the two major lexical classes, nouns and verbs. We show that, when naturalistic speech is sampled from languages all over the world, there is a robust cross-linguistic tendency for slower speech before nouns compared with verbs, both in terms of slower articulation and more pauses. We attribute this slowdown effect to the increased amount of planning that nouns require compared with verbs. Unlike verbs, nouns can typically only be used when they represent new or unexpected information; otherwise, they have to be replaced by pronouns or be omitted. These conditions on noun use appear to outweigh potential advantages stemming from differences in internal complexity between nouns and verbs. Our findings suggest that, beneath the staggering diversity of grammatical structures and cultural settings, there are robust universals of language processing that are intimately tied to how speakers manage referential information when they communicate with one another. speech rate | nouns | language universals | word planning | language processing H uman language in its most widespread form (i.e., in spontaneously spoken interactions) is locked in one-dimensional time. This was recognized by the founding father of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure, as one of the two fundamental principles of the linguistic sign, the other one being its arbitrary nature (1, 2). An unresolved question is which aspects of local variation in speech rate are universal (3, 4), which vary across languages and cultures (5), and which vary across individuals (6). For example, marking the end of utterances by slowing down speech is cross-linguistically common, but its implementation is languagespecific (7). Good candidates for truly universal temporal features are the relatively fast pronunciations of frequent, and thus predictable, words (8) and second mentions of words (9). This speedup is argued to result from automated articulation (4) and has been suggested to contribute to efficient communication by spreading information more evenly across the speech signal (10, 11). Frequency effects also explain why function words, such as articles, prepositions, and pronouns, are pronounced faster than the less frequently occurring content words, such as nouns and verbs (12).
Some languages constrain the recursive embedding of NPs to some specific morphosyntactic types, a... more Some languages constrain the recursive embedding of NPs to some specific morphosyntactic types, allowing it for example only with genitives but not with bare juxtaposition. In Indo-European, every type of NP embedding — genitives, adjectivizers, adpositions, head marking, or juxtaposition — is unavailable for syntactic recursion in at least one attested language. In addition, attested pathways of change show that NP types that allow recursion can emerge and disappear in less than 1000 years. The wide-ranging synchronic diversity and its high diachronic dynamics raises the possibility that at many hypothetical times in the history of the family recursive NP embedding could have been lost for all types simultaneously, parallel to what has occasionally been observed elsewhere (Everett 2005, Evans & Levinson 2009). Performing Bayesian phylogenetic analyses on a sample of 55 languages from all branches of Indo-European, we show however that it is extremely unlikely for such a complete loss to ever have occurred. When one or more morphosyntactic types become unavailable for syntactic recursion in an NP, an unconstrained alternative type is very likely to develop in the same language. This suggests that, while diachronic pathways away from NP recursion clearly exist, there is a tendency – perhaps a universal one – to maintain or develop syntactic recursion in NPs. A likely explanation for this evolutionary bias is that recursively embedded phrases are not just an option that languages have (Fitch et al. 2005), but that they are in fact preferred by our processing system.
Polysynthesis presupposes the existence of 'words', a domain or unit of phonology and syntax that... more Polysynthesis presupposes the existence of 'words', a domain or unit of phonology and syntax that is extremely variable within and across languages: what behaves as a 'word' with respect to one phonological or syntactic rule or constraint may not behave as such with respect to other rules or constraints. Here we develop a system of variables that allows cataloguing all verb-based domains in a language in a bottom-up fashion and then determining any potential convergence of domains in an empirical way. We apply the system to case studies of Mapudungung and Chintang. These confirm earlier observations that polysynthetic languages do not operate with unified units of type 'word' in either phonology or syntax.
The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics
Apart from common cases of differential argument marking, referential hierarchies affect argument... more Apart from common cases of differential argument marking, referential hierarchies affect argument marking in two ways: (a) through hierarchical marking, where markers compete for a slot and the competition is resolved by a hierarchy, and (b) through co-argument sensitivity, where the marking of one argument depends on the properties of its co-argument. Here we show that while co-argument sensitivity cannot be analyzed in terms of hierarchical marking, hierarchical marking can be analyzed in terms of co-argument sensitivity. Once hierarchical effects on marking are analyzed in terms of co-argument sensitivity, it becomes possible to examine alignment patterns relative to referential categories in exactly the same way as one can examine alignment patterns relative to referential categories in cases of differential argument marking and indeed any other condition on alignment (such as tense or clause type). As a result, instances of hierarchical marking of any kind turn out not to present a special case in the typology of alignment, and there is no need for positing an additional non-basic alignment type such as ‘hierarchical alignment’. While hierarchies are not needed for descriptive and comparative purposes, we also cast doubt on their relevance in diachrony: examining two families for which hierarchical agreement has been postulated, Algonquian and Kiranti, we find only weak and very limited statistical evidence for agreement paradigms to have been shaped by a principled ranking of person categories.
Language's intentional nature has been highlighted as a crucial feature distinguishing it from ot... more Language's intentional nature has been highlighted as a crucial feature distinguishing it from other communication systems. Specifically, language is often thought to depend on highly structured intentional action and mutual mindreading by a communicator and recipient. Whilst similar abilities in animals can shed light on the evolution of intentionality, they remain challenging to detect unambiguously. We revisit animal intentional communication and suggest that progress in identifying analogous capacities has been complicated by (i) the assumption that intentional (that is, voluntary) production of communicative acts requires mental-state attribution, and (ii) variation in approaches investigating communication across sensory modalities. To move forward, we argue that a framework fusing research across modalities and species is required. We structure intentional communication into a series of requirements, each of which can be operationalised, investigated empirically, and must be met for purposive, intentionally communicative acts to be demonstrated. Our unified approach helps elucidate the distribution of animal intentional communication and subsequently serves to clarify what is meant by attributions of intentional communication in animals and humans.
Do principles of language processing in the brain affect the way grammar evolves over time or is ... more Do principles of language processing in the brain affect the way grammar evolves over time or is language change just a matter of socio-historical contingency? While the balance of evidence has been ambiguous and controversial, we identify here a neurophysiological constraint on the processing of language that has a systematic effect on the evolution of how noun phrases are marked by case (i.e. by such contrasts as between the English base form she and the object form her). In neurophysiological experiments across diverse languages we found that during processing, participants initially interpret the first base-form noun phrase they hear (e.g. she. . .) as an agent (which would fit a continuation like . . . greeted him), even when the sentence later requires the interpretation of a patient role (as in . . . was greeted). We show that this processing principle is also operative in Hindi, a language where initial base-form noun phrases most commonly denote patients because many agents receive a special case marker ("ergative") and are often left out in discourse. This finding suggests that the principle is species-wide and independent of the structural affordances of specific languages. As such, the principle favors the development and maintenance of case-marking systems that equate base-form cases with agents rather than with patients. We confirm this evolutionary bias by statistical analyses of phylogenetic signals in over 600 languages worldwide, controlling for confounding effects from language contact. Our findings suggest that at least one core property of grammar systematically adapts in its evolution to the neurophysiological conditions of the brain, independently of socio-historical factors. This opens up new avenues for understanding how specific properties of grammar have developed in tight interaction with the biological evolution of our species.
The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis, 2nd edition
Over the past two decades, linguistic typology has been moving increasingly away from its origina... more Over the past two decades, linguistic typology has been moving increasingly away from its original goal of classifying languages into ideal types that would be constrained by categorical universals. What has been emerging as a new paradigm instead starts from the distribution of structures in the world, asking "what's where why?" I present here a concrete approach to this question, called 'Distributional Typology'. The approach starts from causal theories on the forces that affect language change, from processing preferences to the historical contingencies of language contact. The predictions of these theories can then be tested against fine-grained matrices of cross-linguistic diversity, using statistical methods for estimating diachronic trends from synchronic distributions.
Valency classes: a comparative handbook
Agreement from a diachronic perspective
Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics
The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology
Sprache(n) Verstehen: eine interdisziplinäre Vorlesungsreihe. Zürich, 101-126, 2014
Physics of Life Reviews, 2024
As one of the most specific, yet most diverse of human behaviors, language is shaped by both geno... more As one of the most specific, yet most diverse of human behaviors, language is shaped by both genomic and extra-genomic evolution. Sharing methods and models between these modes of evolution has significantly advanced our understanding of language and inspired generalized theories of its evolution. Progress is hampered, however, by the fact that the extra-genomic evolution of languages, i.e. linguistic evolution, maps only partially to other forms of evolution. Contrasting it with the biological evolution of eukaryotes and the cultural evolution of technology as the best understood models, we show that linguistic evolution is special by yielding a stationary dynamic rather than stable solutions, and that this dynamic allows the use of language change for social differentiation while maintaining its global adaptiveness. Linguistic evolution furthermore differs from technological evolution by requiring vertical transmission, allowing the reconstruction of phylogenies; and it differs from eukaryotic biological evolution by foregoing a genotype vs phenotype distinction, allowing deliberate and biased change. Recognising these differences will improve our empirical tools and open new avenues for analyzing how linguistic, cultural, and biological evolution interacted with each other when language emerged in the hominin lineage. Importantly, our framework will help to cope with unprecedented scientific and ethical challenges that presently arise from how rapid cultural evolution impacts language, most urgently from interventional clinical tools for language disorders, potential epigenetic effects of technology on language, artificial intelligence and linguistic communicators, and global losses of linguistic diversity and identity. Beyond language, the distinctions made here allow identifying variation in other forms of biological and cultural evolution, developing new perspectives for empirical research.
The language of hunter-gatherers, 2020
It has long seemed plausible that the languages of hunter-gatherer societies might be systematica... more It has long seemed plausible that the languages of hunter-gatherer societies might be systematically different from those of food producers. Compared to food-producing societies, hunter-gatherer societies are usually smaller and less complex, with lower population density. They are often based on kinship as a main organizing factor and usually lack large-scale sociopolitical organization with its concomitant traits such as language standardization.
Language dispersal, diversification, and contact: a global perspective, 2020
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2018
Linguistic diversity is a key aspect of human population diversity and shapes much of our social ... more Linguistic diversity is a key aspect of human population diversity and shapes much of our social and cognitive lives. To a considerable extent, the distribution of this diversity is driven by environmental factors such as climate or coast access. An unresolved question is whether the relevant factors have remained constant over time. Here, we address this question at a global scale. We approximate the difference between pre- versus post-Neolithic populations by the difference between modern hunter–gatherer versus food-producing populations. Using a novel geostatistical approach of estimating language and language family densities, we show that environmental—chiefly climate factors—have driven the language density of food-producing populations considerably more strongly than the language density of hunter–gatherer populations. Current evidence suggests that the population dynamics of modern hunter–gatherers is very similar to that of what can be reconstructed from the Palaeolithic record. Based on this, we cautiously infer that the impact of environmental factors on language densities underwent a substantial change with the transition to agriculture. After this transition, the environmental impact on language diversity in food-producing populations has remained relatively stable since it can also be detected—albeit in slightly weaker form—in models that capture the reduced linguistic diversity during large-scale language spreads in the Mid-Holocene.
PLOS Biology, 2018
A key step in understanding the evolution of human language involves unravelling the origins of l... more A key step in understanding the evolution of human language involves unravelling the origins of language's syntactic structure. One approach seeks to reduce the core of syntax in humans to a single principle of recursive combination, MERGE, for which there is no evidence in other species. We argue for an alternative approach. We review evidence that beneath the staggering complexity of human syntax, there is an extensive layer of nonproductive, nonhierarchical syntax that can be fruitfully compared to animal call combinations. This is the essential groundwork that must be explored and integrated before we can elucidate, with sufficient precision, what exactly made it possible for human language to explode its syntactic capacity, transitioning from simple nonproductive combinations to the unrivalled complexity that we now have.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2018
By force of nature, every bit of spoken language is produced at a particular speed. However, this... more By force of nature, every bit of spoken language is produced at a particular speed. However, this speed is not constant-speakers regularly speed up and slow down. Variation in speech rate is influenced by a complex combination of factors, including the frequency and predictability of words, their information status, and their position within an utterance. Here, we use speech rate as an index of word-planning effort and focus on the time window during which speakers prepare the production of words from the two major lexical classes, nouns and verbs. We show that, when naturalistic speech is sampled from languages all over the world, there is a robust cross-linguistic tendency for slower speech before nouns compared with verbs, both in terms of slower articulation and more pauses. We attribute this slowdown effect to the increased amount of planning that nouns require compared with verbs. Unlike verbs, nouns can typically only be used when they represent new or unexpected information; otherwise, they have to be replaced by pronouns or be omitted. These conditions on noun use appear to outweigh potential advantages stemming from differences in internal complexity between nouns and verbs. Our findings suggest that, beneath the staggering diversity of grammatical structures and cultural settings, there are robust universals of language processing that are intimately tied to how speakers manage referential information when they communicate with one another. speech rate | nouns | language universals | word planning | language processing H uman language in its most widespread form (i.e., in spontaneously spoken interactions) is locked in one-dimensional time. This was recognized by the founding father of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure, as one of the two fundamental principles of the linguistic sign, the other one being its arbitrary nature (1, 2). An unresolved question is which aspects of local variation in speech rate are universal (3, 4), which vary across languages and cultures (5), and which vary across individuals (6). For example, marking the end of utterances by slowing down speech is cross-linguistically common, but its implementation is languagespecific (7). Good candidates for truly universal temporal features are the relatively fast pronunciations of frequent, and thus predictable, words (8) and second mentions of words (9). This speedup is argued to result from automated articulation (4) and has been suggested to contribute to efficient communication by spreading information more evenly across the speech signal (10, 11). Frequency effects also explain why function words, such as articles, prepositions, and pronouns, are pronounced faster than the less frequently occurring content words, such as nouns and verbs (12).
Some languages constrain the recursive embedding of NPs to some specific morphosyntactic types, a... more Some languages constrain the recursive embedding of NPs to some specific morphosyntactic types, allowing it for example only with genitives but not with bare juxtaposition. In Indo-European, every type of NP embedding — genitives, adjectivizers, adpositions, head marking, or juxtaposition — is unavailable for syntactic recursion in at least one attested language. In addition, attested pathways of change show that NP types that allow recursion can emerge and disappear in less than 1000 years. The wide-ranging synchronic diversity and its high diachronic dynamics raises the possibility that at many hypothetical times in the history of the family recursive NP embedding could have been lost for all types simultaneously, parallel to what has occasionally been observed elsewhere (Everett 2005, Evans & Levinson 2009). Performing Bayesian phylogenetic analyses on a sample of 55 languages from all branches of Indo-European, we show however that it is extremely unlikely for such a complete loss to ever have occurred. When one or more morphosyntactic types become unavailable for syntactic recursion in an NP, an unconstrained alternative type is very likely to develop in the same language. This suggests that, while diachronic pathways away from NP recursion clearly exist, there is a tendency – perhaps a universal one – to maintain or develop syntactic recursion in NPs. A likely explanation for this evolutionary bias is that recursively embedded phrases are not just an option that languages have (Fitch et al. 2005), but that they are in fact preferred by our processing system.
Polysynthesis presupposes the existence of 'words', a domain or unit of phonology and syntax that... more Polysynthesis presupposes the existence of 'words', a domain or unit of phonology and syntax that is extremely variable within and across languages: what behaves as a 'word' with respect to one phonological or syntactic rule or constraint may not behave as such with respect to other rules or constraints. Here we develop a system of variables that allows cataloguing all verb-based domains in a language in a bottom-up fashion and then determining any potential convergence of domains in an empirical way. We apply the system to case studies of Mapudungung and Chintang. These confirm earlier observations that polysynthetic languages do not operate with unified units of type 'word' in either phonology or syntax.
The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics
Apart from common cases of differential argument marking, referential hierarchies affect argument... more Apart from common cases of differential argument marking, referential hierarchies affect argument marking in two ways: (a) through hierarchical marking, where markers compete for a slot and the competition is resolved by a hierarchy, and (b) through co-argument sensitivity, where the marking of one argument depends on the properties of its co-argument. Here we show that while co-argument sensitivity cannot be analyzed in terms of hierarchical marking, hierarchical marking can be analyzed in terms of co-argument sensitivity. Once hierarchical effects on marking are analyzed in terms of co-argument sensitivity, it becomes possible to examine alignment patterns relative to referential categories in exactly the same way as one can examine alignment patterns relative to referential categories in cases of differential argument marking and indeed any other condition on alignment (such as tense or clause type). As a result, instances of hierarchical marking of any kind turn out not to present a special case in the typology of alignment, and there is no need for positing an additional non-basic alignment type such as ‘hierarchical alignment’. While hierarchies are not needed for descriptive and comparative purposes, we also cast doubt on their relevance in diachrony: examining two families for which hierarchical agreement has been postulated, Algonquian and Kiranti, we find only weak and very limited statistical evidence for agreement paradigms to have been shaped by a principled ranking of person categories.
Language's intentional nature has been highlighted as a crucial feature distinguishing it from ot... more Language's intentional nature has been highlighted as a crucial feature distinguishing it from other communication systems. Specifically, language is often thought to depend on highly structured intentional action and mutual mindreading by a communicator and recipient. Whilst similar abilities in animals can shed light on the evolution of intentionality, they remain challenging to detect unambiguously. We revisit animal intentional communication and suggest that progress in identifying analogous capacities has been complicated by (i) the assumption that intentional (that is, voluntary) production of communicative acts requires mental-state attribution, and (ii) variation in approaches investigating communication across sensory modalities. To move forward, we argue that a framework fusing research across modalities and species is required. We structure intentional communication into a series of requirements, each of which can be operationalised, investigated empirically, and must be met for purposive, intentionally communicative acts to be demonstrated. Our unified approach helps elucidate the distribution of animal intentional communication and subsequently serves to clarify what is meant by attributions of intentional communication in animals and humans.
Do principles of language processing in the brain affect the way grammar evolves over time or is ... more Do principles of language processing in the brain affect the way grammar evolves over time or is language change just a matter of socio-historical contingency? While the balance of evidence has been ambiguous and controversial, we identify here a neurophysiological constraint on the processing of language that has a systematic effect on the evolution of how noun phrases are marked by case (i.e. by such contrasts as between the English base form she and the object form her). In neurophysiological experiments across diverse languages we found that during processing, participants initially interpret the first base-form noun phrase they hear (e.g. she. . .) as an agent (which would fit a continuation like . . . greeted him), even when the sentence later requires the interpretation of a patient role (as in . . . was greeted). We show that this processing principle is also operative in Hindi, a language where initial base-form noun phrases most commonly denote patients because many agents receive a special case marker ("ergative") and are often left out in discourse. This finding suggests that the principle is species-wide and independent of the structural affordances of specific languages. As such, the principle favors the development and maintenance of case-marking systems that equate base-form cases with agents rather than with patients. We confirm this evolutionary bias by statistical analyses of phylogenetic signals in over 600 languages worldwide, controlling for confounding effects from language contact. Our findings suggest that at least one core property of grammar systematically adapts in its evolution to the neurophysiological conditions of the brain, independently of socio-historical factors. This opens up new avenues for understanding how specific properties of grammar have developed in tight interaction with the biological evolution of our species.
The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis, 2nd edition
Over the past two decades, linguistic typology has been moving increasingly away from its origina... more Over the past two decades, linguistic typology has been moving increasingly away from its original goal of classifying languages into ideal types that would be constrained by categorical universals. What has been emerging as a new paradigm instead starts from the distribution of structures in the world, asking "what's where why?" I present here a concrete approach to this question, called 'Distributional Typology'. The approach starts from causal theories on the forces that affect language change, from processing preferences to the historical contingencies of language contact. The predictions of these theories can then be tested against fine-grained matrices of cross-linguistic diversity, using statistical methods for estimating diachronic trends from synchronic distributions.
Valency classes: a comparative handbook
Agreement from a diachronic perspective
Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics
The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology
Sprache(n) Verstehen: eine interdisziplinäre Vorlesungsreihe. Zürich, 101-126, 2014
ISBN 978-90-272-0685-5, 2013
ISBN 978-9937-2-2899-2, 2011
The present volume results from an initiative to foster cooperation between scholars of Himalayan... more The present volume results from an initiative to foster cooperation between scholars of Himalayan languages in Europe. The initiative was launched five years ago and has brought about a series of annual workshop meetings and individual cooperative projects (cf. http://www.isw.unibe.ch/EuroHimal). The 1998 workshop, held in Heidelberg, was devoted to the role that notions of speech
Journal of Asian Studies, 1999
ISBN 3952101079, 9783952101070, Jan 1, 1996
Scales, 397–436, 2008
Previous empirical results have revealed an interesting correspondence between online language co... more Previous empirical results have revealed an interesting correspondence between online language comprehension strategies and typological distributions, namely a preference for accusative {S,A} alignment over ergative {S,O} alignment. In the processing domain, this preference is reflected in the preferred analysis of an initial ambiguous argument. In the typological domain, it can be seen in the higher tendency for language change to proceed from an {S,O} to an {S,A} alignment rather than vice versa. A correlation between these two observations would clearly be of interest for theoretical models of alignment patterns. However, before the assumption of such a correspondence is warranted, two problems need to be solved: (a) the time sensitivity of online processing data vs. the time insensitivity of typological distributions; and (b) the domain of application of the {S,A} preference in processing (identification of roles) and typology (roles being treated in the same way by some syntactic phenomenon). The present study, in which we examined the {S,A} preference in the processing of control constructions in Hindi, provides initial evidence that both of these problems can be overcome. On the basis of these empirical findings, we formulate a hypothesis about the correspondence between processing and typology and outline how it can be tested in future research. *
Manuscript: University of …, Jan 1, 2006
In Prosodic Phonology, domains for the application of phonological patterns are modeled as a Pros... more In Prosodic Phonology, domains for the application of phonological patterns are modeled as a Prosodic Hierarchy whose architecture is characterized by adherence to the Strict Layer Hypothesis. The theory predicts, among other things, that i) prosodic domains cluster on a single universal set of domains ('Clustering'), and ii) no level of prosodic structure is skipped in the building of prosodic structure ('Strict Succession'). In this paper, we report some of the results from a large-scale typological survey on the empirical evidence of word domains which challenge this theory. First, in languages where a prosodic word domain cannot be motivated, Clustering and Strict Succession are violated. We substantiate this claim by an indepth study of word structure in Vietnamese. Second, languages in which multiple domains between the foot and the phonological phrase can be motivated constitute another deviation from Clustering. This point is illustrated by a detailed examination of the multiple word domains in Limbu. We conclude that the theory does not correspond well to the crosslinguistic evidence and advocate an alternative approach in which prosodic domains are conceived of as intrinsic and highly specific properties of individual rules or constraints.
European Bulletin of Himalayan Research 28, 95–103, 2005
Expanded version of chapter published in Shopen, T. (2007) Language typology and syntactic description, vol. 3, 169–240
Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology 124–134, 2013
planned date of publication of the collective volume is early 2015. Grammatical relations such as... more planned date of publication of the collective volume is early 2015. Grammatical relations such as subjects or direct objects are among the most basic concepts of many models of grammar and are oen regarded, either explicitly or implicitly, as universal. ey also belong to the fundamental concepts in descriptions of most languages, but how do we find out about them when approaching a language for the first time, e.g. in fieldwork? Traditionally, surface morphological criteria, such as case marking, agreement, and constituent order played the key role in identifying individual grammatical relations (e.g. the argument in the nominative case was identified as the subject, whereas the argument in the accusative case as the direct object). However, since it became clear (in the 1970s) that in many languages, morphological criteria do not identify grammatical relations in the same way as what is known from European languages, the inventory of grammatical relation tests was extended beyond morphological marking and constituent order. It became common also to consider a variety of syntactic criteria based on phenomena like Equi-NP deletion, raising, conjunction reduction, passivization, the behavior of the reflexives, etc. (cf. Li 1976 and Plank 1979).
Working Paper No. 287, 1998
Future time reference in European languages (= Eurotyp Working Paper Series VI – Tense and Aspect 2), 73–84, 1992
1 Volker Gast, Balthasar Bickel A multifactorial typology of clause linkage Typological databases... more 1 Volker Gast, Balthasar Bickel A multifactorial typology of clause linkage Typological databases Clause linkage corpus-based A typology of connectives A case study Two examples 2 Volker Gast, Balthasar Bickel A multifactorial typology of clause linkage Typological databases Clause linkage corpus-based A typology of connectives A case study Two examples The LTRC initiative LTRC-programme (Language Typology Resource Centre), sponsered by the EU (6th Framework) and coordinated by M. Everaert (Utrecht) Establishment of a network of typological databases (cf. the more recent Typological Database System/TDS, Objective: Make data gathered in a typological research project available to the public 3 Volker Gast, Balthasar Bickel A multifactorial typology of clause linkage Typological databases Clause linkage corpus-based A typology of connectives A case study Two examples 4 Volker Gast, Balthasar Bickel A multifactorial typology of clause linkage Typological databases Clause linkage corpus-based A typology of connectives A case study Two examples 5 Volker Gast, Balthasar Bickel A multifactorial typology of clause linkage Typological databases Clause linkage corpus-based A typology of connectives A case study Two examples The extensible linguistic database system (XLD) XLD: Extensible Linguistic Database system, developed by A. Dimitriadis and F. van Vugt (Utrecht) Emerged from a joint research project on reciprocity carried out at the universities of Utrecht and Berlin (E. König, M. Everaert, A. Dimitriadis, V. Gast) Flexible/dynamic/extensible typological database system that can be adapted during data input (cf. the AUTOTYP method of Bickel, Nichols) 6 Volker Gast, Balthasar Bickel A multifactorial typology of clause linkage Typological databases Clause linkage corpus-based A typology of connectives A case study Two examples 11 Volker Gast, Balthasar Bickel A multifactorial typology of clause linkage Typological databases Clause linkage corpus-based A typology of connectives A case study Two examples Dimensions of typologizing Holistic vs. parametric Aprioristic vs. emergent Theory-driven vs. data-driven Categorical vs. probabilistic 12 Volker Gast, Balthasar Bickel A multifactorial typology of clause linkage Typological databases Clause linkage corpus-based A typology of connectives A case study Two examples 21 Volker Gast, Balthasar Bickel A multifactorial typology of clause linkage Typological databases Clause linkage corpus-based A typology of connectives A case study Two examples Clause linkage corpus-based A typology of connectives A case study Two examples 24 Volker Gast, Balthasar Bickel A multifactorial typology of clause linkage Typological databases Clause linkage corpus-based A typology of connectives A case study Two examples
A corpus-based typology of clause linkage Introduction Cross-clausal dependencies Long-distance w... more A corpus-based typology of clause linkage Introduction Cross-clausal dependencies Long-distance wh-extraction A corpus study The facticity constraint Summary Three major types of cross-clausal dependencies Argument-related dependencies (e.g. argument sharing, argument trespassing) Predicate-related dependencies (e.g. TAM)
Is there such a thing as hierchical alignment? • Haude & Keller; Guildea: YES, defined as {ARG [h... more Is there such a thing as hierchical alignment? • Haude & Keller; Guildea: YES, defined as {ARG [highest] } or {ARG [lowest] } (cf. Bickel 2010:408 [Handbook of Typology])
Some definitions, clarifications, and assumptions • A scale is an ordered factor in a predictive ... more Some definitions, clarifications, and assumptions • A scale is an ordered factor in a predictive model.
Studies in Language, 2020
Morphological complexity is expected to decrease under mass admixture from adult second language ... more Morphological complexity is expected to decrease under mass admixture from adult second language speakers. While this has been chiefly shown for morphological richness, an unresolved question is whether the effect extends to aspects of morphological boundedness. Here we report a case study of Sino-Tibetan verbs, contrasting verbal expressions of two languages with very large (Chinese, Burmese) and of two languages with very small (Bunan, Chintang) numbers of second language speakers. We find that while the amount of second language speakers accounts for differences in the range and number of inflectional categories (degrees of synthesis), it does not affect the way in which morphological constituents are bound together, reflecting fortification through a mix of diachronically stable and universally preferred patterns. This calls for theoretical models that narrow down the range of changes that are driven by second language speaker admixture, and for extensive empirical testing on a global scale.
Language's intentional nature has been highlighted as a crucial feature distinguishing it from ot... more Language's intentional nature has been highlighted as a crucial feature distinguishing it from other communication systems. Specifically, language is often thought to depend on highly structured intentional action and mutual mindreading by a communicator and recipient. Whilst similar abilities in animals can shed light on the evolution of intentionality, they remain challenging to detect unambiguously. We revisit animal intentional communication and suggest that progress in identifying analogous capacities has been complicated by (i) the assumption that intentional (that is, voluntary) production of communicative acts requires mental-state attribution, and (ii) variation in approaches investigating communication across sensory modalities. To move forward, we argue that a framework fusing research across modalities and species is required. We structure intentional communication into a series of requirements, each of which can be operationalised, investigated empirically, and must be met for purposive, intentionally communicative acts to be demonstrated. Our unified approach helps elucidate the distribution of animal intentional communication and subsequently serves to clarify what is meant by attributions of intentional communication in animals and humans.
An Anthropological and Historical Approach to the People's War, 2013
Lingua, 2000
Verb agreement in Hindi has recently been shown to be sensitive to both argument structure and mo... more Verb agreement in Hindi has recently been shown to be sensitive to both argument structure and morphological case features (Mohanan, 1994): the verb agrees with the ‘highest nominative’ argument, i.e., with a nominative S- or A-argument, or if there is no nominative A, with a nominative O-argument (where S = ‘single argument of intransitives’, A = ‘transitive actor’, O = ‘transitive object’). In this article we propose that such a combination of morphological and syntactico-semantic notions is a general characteristic of the over-all syntax of many if not all Indo-Aryan languages. On the basis of constructions which are demonstrably sensitive to grammatical relations, viz. verb agreement, gapping in nonfinite clauses, control constructions and matrix-coding (‘raising’), we argue that these relations are defined as ‘nominative or ergative S/A’ in Maithili and Nepali. Hindi shows a split between some constructions being sensitive to the same grammatical relation and others to a notion of ‘non-genitive S/A’ (gapping in converb clauses) and to ‘highest nominative’ (agreement). Other constructions, viz. conjunction reduction, converbial reference control, and reflexivization, prove not to be sensitive to grammatical relations, in contradiction to frequent assumptions made in the literature on Indo-Aryan syntax.
