Binder 1

1) Is categorization only a cognitive process or is it a culturally- dependant phenomenon.
Illustrate this with a view to basic level categorization and category prototypes.

2) The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (linguistic relativity hypothesis).

3) Congruent metaphors.

4) Alternative metaphors (e.g. metaphors for spatial relations).

5) What are the causes of cross-cultural variation in metaphor?

6) At times we find metaphor-variation across different languages in the domain of basic,
image-schematic metaphors of spatial conceptualization. For example, whereas in
English the SKY is conceptualized as a three-dimensional entity (clouds in the sky),
speakers of Hungarian talk about things being on the sky (thus the sky is perceived as
two-dimensional). What do you think are the consequences of such differences in spatial
conceptualization? What methods could you devise to unteach native
conceptualizations that are routinely being transferred to the target language (L2) in
second language acquisition? What other examples like the one mentioned above can you
think of? (Knowledge of a language other than English might help here.)

7) What kind of metonymies can you identify in the following sentences? What are the
vehicles and the targets?

a) The Big Stomach ate all the food in the fridge.
b) The Redshirts fought persistently to capture the blue flag.

8) Is metonymy also a culture-dependant phenomenon?

9) How is the notion of TAXES framed in the following expression: tax relief?

10) In the following two sentences LIFE is the target concept in a metaphoric frame. Each
sentence provides a different source concept for the conceptualisation of LIFE. Can you identify
these concepts? Explain how different metaphoric frames we adopt affect our actions.
You have a choice to dance through your lifeand make the most of what you have and
where you want to be in the future.

If you want to succeed in your life, you have to be a good fighter

11) Absolute universals.

12) Statistical universals.

13) Implicational universals
14) Explanations for universals.

15) What is typology?

16) What is the scope of typological comparison languages in their entirety or specific
phenomena in the languages compared? Provide examples.

17) Verb-framed vs. satellite framed languages, why does this distinction seem to be
important?
Chapter !: Language universals
1
Chapter !

Language universals

!"# Introduction

What do the languages of the world have in common? And how do they differ from
each other?
At first glance, languages in different parts of the world are extremely
different. When Japanese is compared to Arabic
1
and to the West-African language
Fula
2
, the similarities are not immediately strikingas illustrated by sentences (1a-c),
all of which mean The servant gave the horse water:
3

(1) The servant gave the horse water in Japanese, Arabic, and Fula
(1a) Japanese: Shiyooni ga uma ni mizu wo ageta
servant NOM horse DAT water ACC gave

(1b) Arabic: a
c
ta1 l-kh a1dimu l-hisa1na ma1an
gave the-servant-NOM the-horse- ACC water-ACC

(1c) Fula: Suka hokkii puccu ndiyam.
servant gave horse water

The differences between the three languages are many. The pronounciation of each
word differs from one language to another, and especially Arabic has many sounds
that the other two languages lack, such as the velarized consonants t and s. The
word order also differs, with the verb coming last in the Japanese sentence, first in the
Arabic sentence, and between the subject and the objects in the Fula sentence.
Furthermore, while Japanese uses the case particles ga, ni and wo to indicate what is
subject and indirect and direct object, Arabic does something similar with case forms
of the noun, while Fula has neither case particles nor case forms. There are also many
differences that are not immediately clear from the presentation above. For instance,
the various words for 'servant' have different connotations in different languages. And
finally, the Arabic sentence is actually slightly unidiomatic, since Arabic has a
separate word meaning 'to give water': arwa1 or rawwa1.
In spite of all the differences, however, these languages still have a lot in
commonone may even claim that the similarities are more striking than the
differences. Most obviously, all three languages have sentences that consist of words
with a pronunciation and a meaning. In all three languages, the pronunciation may be

1
When nothing else is said, Arabic refers to modern literary Arabic.
2
When nothing else is said, Fula refers to the Adamawa dialect of Cameroon and eastern Nigeria.
3
Each sentence is followed by word-by-word translations. Grammatical elements are rendered with
SMALL CAPS: NOM = nominative, ACC = accusative, DAT = dative.
2
analyzed into vowels and consonants that combine into syllables. Furthermore, there
is agreement about what are the central components of the event: there is an action of
giving with three participants: the servant, the horse, and the water. In all three
languages, the action of giving is referred to with a verb, while the servant, the horse
and the water are referred to with nouns. These four components of the event are
assembled into a sentence with a subject (servant), two objects (horse, water),
and a verb (give). Most or all languages in the world share these and many other
features.
4

In the present chapter, we shall first be concerned with what human languages
have in common, with language universals. Then, in the next chapter, we shall go on
to discuss ways in which languages differ from each other in often surprisingly
systematic ways. More specifically, we shall discuss how languages can be divided
into types based on such differences. In other words, we shall look into the field of
linguistic typology.

!"$ Universals

One important aim of most linguistic theories is to pin down what the languages of
the world have in common. In chapter 2, we looked at some basic notions and tools
used in the analysis of languages, and many of these capture generalizations that are
valid for most or all languages. For instance, the distinction between vowels and
consonants are useful in the description of all languages of the world, and so is the
case with, for instance, the distinction between front and back vowels, as well as the
distinction between obstruent and sonorant consonants. In the realm of grammar, most
or all languages distinguish between nouns and verbs, most or all languages have
pronouns, and the majority of languages make a distinction between subject and
object.
To a large extent, therefore, chapter 2 already gave us much material for the
study of language universals. In the present chapter, we shall go a few steps further in
the study of what languages have in common.

!"$"# Kinds of universals

First, we must make a basic distinction between absolute universals and statistical
universals. Absolute universals refer to properties found in all languages, while
statistical universals reflect important trends that are
found in a predominant part of the languages of the
world, but not necessarily in all. It is often difficult to
ascertain what constitutes absolute universals, since we
do not have access to
reliable information about all languages in the world.
For instance, while it is very likely that all languages of
the world make a distinction between vowels and
consonants, we cannot a priori rule out the possibility
of a language with only vowels or only consonants. On the other hand, we know for
certain that some universals are only statistical. For instance, in the vast majority of
languages, the subject usually precedes the object, but there are also languages where

4
In some languages, though, sentences may not be readily analyzable into syntactic functions like
subject and object.
AN ABSOLUTE UNIVERSAL
All languages have vowels
and consonants.
A STATISTICAL UNIVERSAL
Subjects tend strongly
to precede objects.
3
this is not the case, and even languages where the distinction between subject and
object does not apply.
Language universals may also be generalizations about properties of just a
small selection of languages, so-called implicational universals, which state that if a
language has property A, then it also has property
B, but not necessarily the other way round. For
instance, if a language has voiced fricatives like [v]
and [z] (property A), it also has unvoiced fricatives
like [f] and [s] (property B). The reverse is not true,
since many languages have unvoiced fricatives, but
not voiced fricatives. For an implicational
universal to make sense, there must also exist languages that have neither property A
nor property B. Indeed, some languages lack both voiced and unvoiced fricatives.
To our knowledge, the correlation between unvoiced and voiced fricatives is
an absolute implicational universal. But there are also examples of statistical
implicational universals. For instance, if a language typically places the main verb
between the subject and the object, as in English The cat caught the mouse, its relative
clauses usually follow the noun they modify, as in the cat that caught the mouse, but
Chinese and a few other languages are exceptions, placing relative clauses before the
noun they modify.

!"$"$ Explanations for universals

Why do languages have so many things in common? Why do all languages have
consonants and vowels? Why do subjects tend so strongly to precede objects? And
why does the existence of voiced fricatives in a language presuppose the existence of
unvoiced fricatives, but not the other way around?
One way of trying to account for universals is the monogenesis hypothesis:
the idea that all languages stem from the same proto-language and have inherited the
same universal traits from this proto-language. But this explanation does not take us
very far. It may or may not be true that all languages stem from the same proto-
language somewhere in the distant past. But even if this should turn out to be true, this
cannot explain the existence of many universals. Take, for instance, the fact that
subjects tend to precede objects in most languages of the world. Is this because most
languages have inherited their word order from a distant proto-language? If so, how
come the position of the verb varies so much? As we saw above, Japanese places the
verb at the end of the sentence, Arabic at the beginning, while Fula (like English)
places it in between the subject and the object(s). Furthermore, as we shall see later in
this chapter, many implicational universals depend on the position of the verb. As
mentioned above, languages that typically place the verb between (or, it should be
added, before) the subject and the object tend strongly to place relative clauses after
the noun they modify, as in English, Arabic and Fula. On the other hand, languages
that place the verb at the end of the sentence, tend to place relative clauses before the
noun they modify, as in Japanese:

(2) 'the cat that caught the mouse' in Japanese
nezumi o tsukamaeta neko
mouse ACC caught cat

AN IMPLICATIONAL UNIVERSAL
If a language has voiced
fricatives, it also has unvoiced
fricatives, but not necessarily the
other way round.
4
Sometimes languages change from one type to another, so that a language that used to
place the verb at the end changes into, for instance, a language that places the verb
between subject and object. When this happens, the placement of the relative clause
also usually changes. This kind of universal cannot be explained as inheritance from a
single proto-language.
Another possible explanation for universals is the language contact
hypothesis, according to which languages have many things in common because they
are constantly influenced by each other. This fits well with the fact that exceptional
features are often found in peripheral languages that have developed in relative
isolation. For instance, the few languages in which the object usually precedes the
subject are mostly located in the geographical periphery and have traditionally had
little contact with other languages. This includes the Austronesian island languages
Fijian and Malagasy (verb-object-subject) and a number of very small languages
along the tributaries of the Amazon River in Brazil (Xavante, Apurina1, Jamamadi,
Kayabi and Nadb all have object-subject-verb, while Hixkaryna and the Mexican
language Huarijo have object-verb-subject). Languages learn from each other, and
the strong tendency for subjects to precede objects may at least partly be a result of
language contact (as may the clustering of all the exceptions in just a few
geographical areas). However, while language contact may sometimes explain how
near-universal features spread across the world, it can hardly explain why certain
features are allowed to spread this way, while others are not. Why, for instance, do
subjects tend to precede objects and not the other way around?
One common explanation for language universals is the innateness hypothesis,
the idea that our ability to use language is a part of our genetic endowment, and that
genetics also determines many details in the form and structure of languages. Under
this hypothesis, we may be genetically predisposed to distinguish between vowels and
consonants, and to let subjects precede objects. Implicational universals may also be
accounted for this way; we may, for instance, be genetically predisposed to let the
position of a relative clause depend on the position of the verb. This hypothesis seems
to fit well with the fact that children learn to speak their first language in various steps
according to their general genetic development. As with many genetically determined
skills, there is a critical age for language learning. Children tend to learn languages
easily and naturally simply by interacting with others who speak the language, while
teenagers and adults must learn languages the hard way, and usually with less success.
In its strongest version, the innateness hypothesis explains our ability to learn
and use language as an effect of an innate grammar, a genetic programme
specifically designed to determine the development of our language ability. A weaker
version of the innateness hypothesis focuses instead on more general anatomic and
cognitive features that are helpful in language learning, but that also have other
language-independent functions. For instance, our so-called speech organs are shaped
in a unique way that enable us to speak the way we do (as opposed to apes, who
would not be able to pronounce the sounds of human language even if they wanted to),
but the shape of our mouth, teeth, tongue, nasal cavity and throat is also important for
other purposes, like eating and drinking human food and drink, as well as breathing
the way we do. Similar things can be said about our cognitive abilities. The human
brain differs significantly from the brain of other mammals. We have a larger frontal
lobe, more complex insula on each side of the cerebral cortex, more numerous spool
cells etc. Some of these characteristics are undoubtedly important in the development
and use of language, but they are also important for other purposes, such as our
general capacity for abstract thinking, creative imagination and emotional complexity.
5
Language universals may be partly explained by our genetic endowment, but this does
not necessarily (at least not always) presuppose a language-specific innate grammar,
but may just as well be linked with more general anatomic and cognitive features.
This leads us to the large variety of functional explanations for language
universals. Some language features are universal because they make linguistic
utterances easier both to produce and to interpretfor cognitive, anatomic or other
reasons. The fact that all languages have both consonants and vowels is an obvious
example. A language with only consonants would be more difficult to hear, since
consonants are generally less sonorant than vowels. A language with only vowels, on
the other hand, would be unsatisfactory because we are only able to distinguish a very
limited number of vowel qualities. As for the tendency for the subject to precede the
object, several functional explanations have been proposed. Many of them imply that
linguistic structure to some extent reflects our way of thinking. For instance, the
prototypical subject is the agent, who initiates the action and therefore comes early in
the sentence, while the prototypical object is the patient, who (or which) is directly
affected by the action and therefore comes later in the sentence (cf. chapter 2). In the
sentence Tom hit John, the hitting starts with Tom and ends up having consequences
for John, and this is reflected in the fact that Tom occurs earlier in the sentence than
John. Other functional explanations for the order of subject and object are given later
in this chapter.

!"! Lexical universals

Learning another language often implies learning new concepts. As noted in chapter 2,
an English speaker learning Chinese will have to learn eight new concepts for cousin,
while a Chinese speaker learning English will have to learn the general concept
represented by the English word cousin. Chinese has lexicalized the distinction
between eight different types of cousin, but not the
general concept that covers all these types. English,
on the other hand, has only lexicalized the general
concept, which is unmarked (or neutral) with respect
to the distinctions involved in the Chinese terms.
But languages may be widely different and
still lexicalize many of the same concepts. At the
beginning of the present chapter, we saw how the English sentence The servant gave
the horse water involves roughly the same concepts when translated into Japanese,
Arabic and Fula. It makes sense to ask, therefore, which concepts are lexicalized by
all languages across the world, which is what we shall do in the present section.
Most lexical universals are approximate rather than precise. For instance, it
has often been said that all languages have the concepts of 'black' and 'white', but this
is only true in an approximate sense. In languages with few colour terms, such as the
Indonesian language Lani, which only has two, the word for 'black' also covers dark
and cool colours like green and blue, while the word for 'white' also covers light and
warm colours like red and yellow. Thus, English black and Lani mili are only
approximate equivalents, and the same is true of English white and Lani laambu.
Furthermore, most lexical universals are statistical rather than absolute. The
concept of 'water', for instance, is probably found in most languages, but not in all.
The closest equivalent in Japanese is mizu, which, however, is only used about cold
water; another word o-yu is used for hot water. The Yimas language of New Guinea
has no word for 'water' at all and instead uses the word arm 'liquid', which may also
LEXICALIZATION
A language has lexicalized a
concept when it uses a word
(or some other lexical item) to
represent this concept.

6
refer to other liquids like petrol and kerosene. Thus, 'water' is at best a statistical
universal.
The question is, therefore, to what extent there exist absolute and precise
lexical universals. Let us begin with two of the most obvious candidates, the concepts
of 'I' and 'you', which seem to be lexicalized in all languages. Even in such seemingly
clear cases, questions remain. The English word you, for instance, covers both
singular and plural and thereby corresponds to two different concepts in other
languages. Are English you and, say, French tu or German du different concepts? Not
necessarily. The distinction between the reflexive forms yourself and yourselves
shows that even English makes a conceptual distinction between 'you (singular)' and
'you (plural)', and that the word you is polysemous, representing two separate (though
related) concepts. As far as we can tell, all living languages have the concept 'you
(singular)'.
5

Another example is the concept of '(biological) mother', which seems to be
found in all living languages around the world. This does not mean that the word for
mother covers exactly the same range of meaning in all languages; it simply means
that all languages have a word with '(biological) mother' as one of its core meanings.
The English word mother is highly polysemous and has many meaning variants that
are not necessarily found in other languages, such as 'a disc with grooves that is made
from the plating of an electrotyped master matrix and is used to make a stamper for
gramophone records, compact discs, etc.' (Oxford English Dictionary). In the
Australian language Yankunyatatjara, the word ngunytju 'mother' is also polysemous
and may be used to refer to one's mother's sister or her female cousin, but again these
are extended meanings, and the expression ngunytju mula 'true mother' refers
exclusively to one's biological mother. Both English and Yankunyatatjara, therefore,
share the concept '(biological) mother', as do the rest of the languages of the world.
Since we do not have reliable information about all languages of the world, we
can never be certain of the existence of absolute and precise lexical universals. There
are many possible candidates, but some of them may turn out to be statistical rather
than absolute (like 'water'), while others may turn out to be approximate rather than
precise (like 'black' and 'white').
The question of whether or not a concept is lexicalized in a given language is
not always an either-or question. As noted in chapter 2, it has been proposed that all
languages lexicalize the concepts of 'man' and 'woman'. In most languages this is done
by means of simple words like English man and woman. The corresponding Chinese
words, however, are complex terms consisting of the word nn 'masculine' or n#
'feminine' plus the word rn 'person':

na2n-re2n 'man'
n#-re2n 'woman'

Japanese goes one step further and adds the grammatical particle no (marking
subordination) between otoko 'masculine' or onna 'feminine' and hito 'person',
marking them clearly as separate words:

otoko no hito 'man'
onna no hito 'woman'

5
Classical Chinese, which does not really count as a living language today, may not have made the
distinction between 'you (sg.)' and 'you (pl.)'.
7

Even in the Japanese case, however, one may still argue that otoko no hito and onna
no hito are fixed expressions, and that the concepts of 'man' and 'woman' are
lexicalized, although they are represented by fixed, idiomatic phrases rather than
single words. The degree of lexicalization, however, is much weaker than in English.

!"% Basic colour terms

What is the colour of the carrots to the left? The
Norwegian word for carrot is gulrot, which translates as
'yellow root', while one of the Chinese terms is ho2ng luo2bo,
which translates as 'red turnip'.
6
Are carrots red or yellow?
You would probably insist that they are somewhere in
between and that a more proper colour term would be
orange.
At first sight, the colour terms of different
languages vary enormously. Some languages make do with
only two basic colour terms, while other languages have at
least eleven. The same shade of colour may be classified
differently in different languages, as in the case of the
colour of the carrot. For a long time, it was believed that
different languages classify colours in a more or less
random way.
It turns out, however, that although speakers of
different languages may disagree on whether carrots are
yellow or red, they seldom disagree on what constitutes the most typical examples of
yellow and red. When they are given chips with different shades of yellow, they tend
to agree on which of the chips is the most typical example of yellow, and the same
holds for red and many other colours. It is clear, therefore, that although more
peripheral examples of a given colour may be classified differently in different
languages, the focal colours are basically the same across languages. Focal colours
are, it seems, determined not by language, but by the physiology of colour perception.
Across the world, people tend to see colour in much the same way.
When comparing focal colours across languages, it turns out that although the
variety in colour terms is huge, the variation follows a systematic pattern. A language
with only two colour terms has a word for 'black' and a word for 'white', a language
with three colour terms has, in addition, a word for 'red', a language with four colour
terms has, in addition, either 'green' or 'yellow', while a language with five colour
terms has both 'green' and 'yellow', and so on:

Number
of terms
2 terms 3 terms 4 terms 5 terms 6 terms 7 terms 10 terms
Colour
term
white
black
red green
or
yellow
green
and
yellow
blue brown purple
pink
orange

The facts of this table may be formulated as a series of universals. The first of these is
non-implicational:

6
Another Chinese term is hu2 luo2bo 'barbarian turnip'.
8

All languages have terms for white and black.

The remaining universals are all implicational:

A language with colour terms for purple, pink or orange also has terms for brown,
blue, green, yellow and red.

A language with a colour term for brown also has terms for blue, green, yellow, and
red.

A language with a colour term for blue also has terms for green, yellow, and red.

A language with colour terms for green or yellow also has a term for red.

Note that all the terms above are so-called basic colour terms: simple terms
that speakers easily recall and make use of and that do not cover colours that are
within the range of other colour terms, unlike, for instance, carmine (a red with
purplish or blueish tones in it) and turquoise (a blue with greenish tones in it). In
addition to the terms in the table above, the term for 'grey' may occur as an additional
term at any stage. Altogether, therefore, a language may have from two to eleven
basic colour terms.
The table above is based on focal colours and tell us little about the actual
range of each colour term in a given language. But we have already seen above that
the terms for 'white' and 'black' include a wider range of colours in languages with
few colour terms than in languages with many. Typically, in languages with two
colour terms, such as the Indonesian language Lani, the word for 'white' covers all
light and warm colours, including red and yellow, while the word for 'black' covers all
dark and cool colours, including green and blue. What happens when a language
acquires a third colour term is that 'warm' (i.e. 'red/yellow') is singled out as a separate
meaning instead of being included in 'white':

With a fourth colour term, one of two things may happen: either 'warm' is further
divided into 'red' and 'yellow', or 'cool' (i.e. 'green/blue') is singled out as a separate
meaning instead of being included in 'black':
light/warm
dark/cool dark/cool
warm
white
9

EITHER:

OR:

With a fifth colour term, both these things happen. And with a sixth colour term, 'cool'
is further divided into 'green' and 'blue'.

Thus, the number of colour terms in a given language influences the range of colours
referred to by each term.

!"& Universal word classes

We have seen above how concepts may be
expressed by means of words and other lexical
units; they are lexicalized. But concepts may
also be expressed by means of grammatical
constructions; they are given grammatical
warm
dark/cool dark/cool
yellow
red
white white
dark/cool
cool
black
warm warm
white white
cool
blue
green
GRAMMATICAL EXPPRESSION
A language has given grammatical
expression to a concept when it uses
syntactic or morphological constructions
to represent this concept.

10
expression (or grammaticalized, though that term is more often used in another
meaning). Different languages given grammatical expression to different concepts,
but there are also many similarities across the languages of the world. As an example,
let us look at how different languages make distinctions between different word
classes.
It may be surprising, but the word class which is most unequivocally universal
is that of interjections. All languages appear to have a separate class of words
resembling English words like wow, psst, mhm and wham. It may also be a universal
aspect of interjections that they often do not abide by the same phonotactical rules as
other words. In other word classes, the phonological make-up of English words like
psst and mhm would have been impossible. Interjections may be divided into four
basic subclasses: expressive (ouch, oh, wow, aha), directive (hush, psst, hey), phatic
(mhm, yes, no, huh) and descriptive ideophones (wham, thud, bang).
All (or at least nearly all) languages of the world also make a distinction
between nouns and verbs. As we saw in chapter 2, the prototypical noun refers to an
entity (a substance or an object), while the prototypical verb refers to an (dynamic or
stative) process. But word classes are flexible. The mass noun love is not a concrete
substance, the count noun year is not a concrete object, and the verb to be does not in
itself refer to process. Different languages assign different words to different classes.
In Chinese, for instance, the class of verbs also includes words resembling English
prepositions, so that cut with a knife is rendered as using a knife [to] cut. In Samoan,
the class of verbs also includes words resembling English numerals, so that two men
is rendered as man being-two.
The distinction between nouns and verbs has both syntactic and morphological
consequences. Syntactically, an event is typically expressed by a verb, while
participants of the event (and syntactic functions like subject and object) are typically
expressed by nouns (or noun phrases). Morphologically, nouns and verbs are often
inflected for different categories. In English, nouns are inflected for number, while
verbs enter into a complex system of inflections and the use of auxiliary forms to
express a number of categories such as tense, aspect, mood, person and number. In
Japanese, nouns are uninflected, while the verb system is at least as complex as the
English system, although Japanese verbs are not inflected for person and number. In
Chinese, both nouns and verbs are uninflected, but they are still distinguished by the
syntactic environments in which they occur.
The distinction between noun and verb is not always clearcut. In English, for
instance, participles like giving are verbs with nounlike features, while derived
nominals like belief are nouns with verblike features. Languages with much inflection
tend to make a more clearcut distinction between noun and verb than languages with
little or no inflection.
A few languages have been reported to lack the distinction between noun and
verb. It has been claimed, for instance, that some American Indian languages have no
nouns meaning 'x', only verbs meaning 'to be x', which are sometimes used as
headless relative clauses meaning 'the one who is x', which is after all not so different
from 'x'. Such reports have often been shown to be based on an incomplete
understanding of the language in question. Even if such cases exist, they are clearly
exceptional. Nouns and verbs are basic building blocks in the vast majority of
languages around the world.
In contrast to nouns and verbs, adjectives are far from universal. For instance,
Chinese and most languages of Southeast Asia make no formal distinction between
adjectives and verbs. This contrasts sharply with most Indo-European languages, in
11
which adjectives constitute a separate word class that has more in common with
nouns than with verbs. In Japanese, there are two types of adjectives, one with
nounlike features, another with verblike features.
The fact that adjectives sometimes resemble nouns and sometimes verbs
reflects two basic functions of adjectives: to denote properties and to denote states.
Indo-European languages emphasize the property aspect, which brings adjectives
close to the nouns they modify. Chinese and Southeast Asian languages emphasize
the state aspect, and since states are a type of event (stative events), it is only natural
that they belong to the same class as verbs. This difference is also reflected in the fact
that many Indo-European languages require the copular to be between a subject and a
descriptive adjective (The man is tall), while this is never the case in Chinese and
Southeast Asian languages.

!"' Universals of speech sounds

The number of speech sounds or segmental phonemes varies from language to
language. The language Rotokas, spoken by 4000 inhabitants of Papua New Guinea,
has only 11 phonemes, while the language !kung, with 5000 speakers in Namibia and
Angola, has 141 phonemes. Most languages have between 20 and 35 phonemes.
Some segmental phonemes are universal, while others are found in some
languages and not in others. More importantly, some distinctive features are
universal, while others are only utilized by some languages and not by others. The
following is an absolute universal:

All languages distinguish between vowels and consonants.

We can add the following statistical universal:

The vast majority of languages has fewer vowel phonemes than consonant phonemes.

The only known exception is the Brazilian language Xavante, which has 13 vowel
phonemes and 13 consonant phonemes.

!"'"# Vowels

No language is known for sure to have less than three vowel phonemes. In languages
with only three vowel phonemes, like Moroccan Arabic, these are always one close
front vowel, one close back vowel and one one vowel:

Table 1: Three-vowel system
Front Back
Close /i/ /u/
Open /a/

Acoustically, these three vowel phonemes are maximally far removed from each other.
Thus, even if they are not clearly pronounced, the hearer will still usually be able to
distinguish them. A hypothetical three-vowel system consisting of /i/, /y/ and /e/
would be uneconomical and place a much heavier burden both on the speaker and the
hearer.
12
At the other end, no language is known for sure to have more than 46 vowel
phonemes.
The distinctive features involved in the three-vowel system are universal:

All languages make a distinction between close and open vowels.

All languages make a distinction between front and back vowels.

Some other universal tendencies are worth noting:

The number of distinctions tends to be higher in the more close vowels than in the
more open vowels.

Thus, the three-vowel system above distinguishes between front and back only in the
close vowels. The most common five-vowel system (found in languages like Swahili,
Spanish and Japanese) distinguishes front and back in the close and mid vowels, but
again not in the open:

Table 2: Five-vowel system
Front Back
Close /i/ /u/
7

Mid /e/ /o/
Open /a/

A similar tendency is observable in the roundedness distinction. Chinese only makes
this distinction in close vowels, not in mid and open vowels. Norwegian distinguishes
three degrees of roundedness in close vowels, two degrees in mid vowels and makes
no distinction in open vowels.
The explanation for this strong tendency is physiological. The more open the
mouth is, the more difficult it is to make distinctions along the front-back and
rounded-unrounded dimensions.
One exception to this tendency is Turkish, which has the same number of
close and open vowel phonemes:

Table 3: Turkish vowel system
Front Back
Unrounded Rounded Unrounded Rounded
Close /i/ /y/ // /u/
Open /e/ // /A/ /o/

Note that in this system, /e/ and /o/ are open rather than mid. This does not necessarily
mean that they are pronounced differently from /e/ and /o/ in languages where they
count as mid vowels, only that they fill different slots in the system.

Front vowels tend to be unrounded, while back vowels tend to be rounded, except
open back vowels, which tend to be unrounded.

7
In Japanese, this slot is filled by an unrounded // rather than a rounded /u/, but since the
roundedness distinction is not distinctive in any of these languages, their vowel systems are the same,
even if the actual pronunciation of one of the vowels is diffferent.
13

Thus, when the vowel system does not utilize the roundedness distinction, front
vowels are mostly realized as unrounded and back vowels as rounded, as in the three-
vowel system and the five-vowel system above. Japanese is an exception, in that its
only close back vowel is an unrounded //.

!"'"$ Consonants

The number of consonant phonemes in a language varies from 6 to 95, the average
number being 23.
As we have seen in chapter 2, consonants are characterized by combining
place and manner of articulation, sometimes combined with special features relating
to the airstream initiation, phonation and nasality.
With regard to place of articulation, all languages make a distinction between
labial (lip) and lingual (tongue) articulation, and all but a very few divide lingual
articulation further into coronal (front part of the tongue) and dorsal (tongue ridge)
articulation:

labial
consonants coronal (including apical and laminal)
lingual
dorsal

Beyond this, there are various possibilities for further divisions, and they are utilized
differently by different languages.
Some universals are worth noting:

While the lower lip may be combined with the upper lip (bilabial) or with the teeth
(labiodental), the distinction between bilabial and labiodental is never utilized as a
distinctive feature; it is never the only feature distinguishing two phonemes.

Since the corona is the largest and most flexible of the active (lower) articulators, it
provides more room for variation than dorsum and labium.

Many languages distinguish between laminal (tongue blade) and apical (tongue tip)
articulations. Some languages divide each of these further into up to three different
places of articulation, based on the upper articulator: dental, alveolar and postalveolar.
With regard to manner of articulation, one basic distinction among consonants,
found in all languages, is that between obstruents and sonorants. In some languages,
the group of obstruents is not further divided. In most languages, however, it is
divided in two (stops and fricatives) or three (adding affricates):

stop

obstruent fricative

(affricate)

Most or all languages divide sonorants into three: nasals, liquids and approximants:

14
nasal

sonorant liquid

approximant

In addition, it is common (though not universal) to divide obstruents into two groups,
usually voiced and voiceless (based on phonation), but sometimes unaspirated and
aspirated, or a combination of the two. The voiced-voiceless distinction also occurs in
sonorants, but much less commonly. The universal tendency is for obstruents to be
voiceless and sonorants to be voiced.

!"'"! Phonotactic universals

Consider the following two universals:

All languages have syllables ending in a vowel (open syllables), but not necessarily
syllables ending in a consonant (closed syllables).

All languages have syllables with an initial consonant, but not necessarily syllables
without an initial consonant.

Using the abbreviations C for consonant(s) and V for vowel(s), we can set up the
following implicational universal:

All languages that allow VC, also allow CVC and V, as well as the universal CV.

The single monosyllabic Turkish word ev 'house' thus shows us that Turkish has all
four basic syllable types: CV, V, CVC and VC.
Even languages that do allow closed syllables sometimes place severe
restrictions on the type of consonant that may occur in syllable-final position.
Japanese, for instance, only allows /n/, while Chinese allows /n/, /N/ and //, and Thai
allows /m/, /n/, /N/, /p/, /t/ and /k/.
In both syllable-initial and syllable-final position, consonant clusters, the
juxtaposition of two or more consonants within the same syllable, are quite
uncommon. Neither Swahili, Fula, Turkish, Japanese, Chinese nor Korean allow them.
Some languages, like Thai, allow the juxtaposition of two consonants. The
juxtaposition of three consonants, as in English sprint, is quite exceptional. The
juxtaposition of five consonants in syllable-final position, as in Norwegian skjelmskt
'roguish, waggish' (neutral/adverbial form) and German Herbsts 'autumn' (genitive
case) is close to unique.
Languages also vary in the extent to which they allow the clustering of vowels
into diphthongs and thriphthongs. But there seems to be no connection between the
restrictions against consonant clusters and the restrictions against diphthongs and
thriphthongs. Chinese allows no consonant clusters, but allows a wide variety of
diphthongs and thriphthongs: /ai/, /i/, /au/, /u/ (pronounced [ow]), /ia/, /i/, /ua/, /u/
(pronounced [wo]), /uai/, /ui/, /iai/, /iau/, /iu/ (pronounced [iou]).

15
?
!"'"% Non(arbitrariness of phonological form

We have mentioned several times that the relation between the meaning and the form
of a lexical item is arbitrary. There is no good reason why a tree is called tree in
English, except that most speakers of English agree that this is the case. It is a matter
of convention, and other languages follow other conventions.
There are, however, exceptions, and the exceptions have universal features.
Most of them fall into one out of four different groups.
First, interjections are often at least partly biologically motivated. The word
sometimes written tut in English, but pronounced with a single alveolar click (see
chapter 2 for an explanation of phonetic terms), is
often used in widely different languages to express
disapproval, but also, especially when repeated
several times, to express a sense of wonder and
positive amazement. Depending on the intonation
pattern, the word hm may be used to express an
afterthought, a question, a sense of disapproval (like
hmph) etc., and a similar syllable (for instance, hng)
is used in many other languages. While the word
hey is English, similar words are used in other
languages, such as Chinese ei and wei. Interjections
like these are halfway between body language and
spoken language. They often contain sounds or
sound combinations that do not belong to the ordinary repertory of the language in
which they are used. Unlike most words, their form is not arbitrary. Still, even the
form of interjections is at least partly conventional, and despite the cross-linguistic
similarities, different languages have different interjections.
Second, the form of onomatopoeia (sound-imitating words) is at least partly
motivated by the actual sounds they imitate. Some onomatopoeia refer to sounds
directly, as in bang or swish, while others refer to the thing or the activity producing
the sound, as in cuckoo, ping-pong or murmur. Unlike interjections, onomatopoeia
usually adhere to the sound pattern of the language in which they are used (though
there are exceptions,
cf. bzzzz referring
to the sound of a
flying bee). Like
interjections,
however, their form
is not arbitrary, though
even more strongly
conventional. The importance
of convention becomes clear if
one compares how different
languages uses widely different onomatopoeia to refer to the sounds produced by
animals. A pig, for instance, is conceived of as saying oink in English, nff in Swedish,
soch in Welsh, kkool-kkool in Korean, ut-it in Vietnamese and khryu-khryu in Russian.
Third, parental terms (words for mother and father) are surprisingly similar
across the world. The following tendencies seem to be universal:

16
1. Parental terms contain consonants with full oral closure (like the stops [p] and [d]
or the nasals [m] and [n]) much more often than consonants that allow air to flow
out of the oral cavity (like the fricatives [f] and [s]).
2. They contain consonants articulated in the front part of the oral cavity (like the
labials [p] and [m] or the dentals [d] and [t]) much more often than consonants
articulated further back in the oral cavity (like the velars [g] and [k]).
3. They almost always consist of syllables with a single consonant followed by a
single vowel, such as [ma] and [pa], excluding both consonant clusters, diphthongs
and sequences of vowel plus consonant.
4. They contain open vowels (like [a]) more often than narrow vowels (like [i]).
5. They are often reduplicated, as in [mama] and [papa].

The explanation is that parental terms are built upon nursery forms (intimate terms
between parent and child) like mummy and daddy (or mama and papa), which in turn
are built on some of the early sounds produced by a child before it is able to speak.
One related fact is more difficult to explain. Nasals (like [m n N]) occur in well over
half the terms for 'mother' (55 percent, according to one estimate) and only in 15
percent (according to the same estimate) of the terms for 'father'. One possible
explanation is that terms for mother originate in the child's nasal murmur while
breast-feeding.
Fourth, sound symbolism is the habitual association between certain sounds
and certain elements of meaning. In some cases, sound symbolism is language-
specific. In English, for instance, gl- is often associated with light and vision, such as
glimmer, glisten, glitter, gleam, glow, glint etc. In other cases, sound symbolism is
universal. In languages across the world, the narrow front vowel [i] (as opposed to
open vowels like [a] and []) tends to be associated with small size (as in English little,
mini and teeny-weeny as opposed to large, grand and vast; the words small and big
being untypical) and proximity to the speaker (this as opposed to that). One possible
explanation is the small opening of the mouth when [i] is pronounced, as opposed to
the bigger opening of the mouth when [a] or [] is pronounced. Another possible
explanation is the fact that the sounds emitted from small objects (for instance, when
they fall down) are somehow conceived of as being more i-like than the "deeper"
sounds emitted from larger objects.
The psychologist Wolfgang Khler produced two non-sense words takete and
maluma and the following two figures:

17
When he asked people which word suited which figure, nobody seemed to be in doubt
that maluma was the more suitable name for the figure to the left, while takete was
more suitable for the figure to the right. This and similar experiments have been
repeated in a wide variety of cultural contexts, such as with Swahili-speaking children
in what is now Tanzania, and the result is the same.
8

In other experiments, monolingual speakers of different languages (such as
English and Japanese) were presented orally with a number of word pairs in their own
language and the language they did not know and then asked to match the words. For
instance, speakers of English might be asked to decide which of the two Japanese
words mikata and teki meant 'enemy' and which meant 'friend'. (The answer is that
mikata means friend, while teki means enemy.) In these and a number of similar
experiments, the correctness of the answers by far exceeds what could be produced by
mere chance. The sound of a word, therefore, often seems to give a hint of its
meaning.
While it remains true that the relation between the meaning and the form of a
linguistic sign is basically arbitrary, there clearly exist tendencies for certain sounds
and sound combinations to be associated with certain elements of meaning. As the
German poet Morgenstern once said: "All seagulls look as though their name were
Emma."

8
There are cases, however, where the assignment of the names takete and maluma to figures similar to
the ones used by Khler have not produced the expected result, for instance, with speakers of the Songe
language of Papua New Guinea.
Chapter !: Linguistic Typology
1
Chapter !

Linguistic typology

!"# Introduction

Simply speaking, the study of universals is concerned with what human languages
have in common, while the study of typology deals with ways in which languages
differ from each other. This contrast, however, is not sharp. When languages differ
from each other, the variation is not random, but subject to limitations. Linguistic
typology is not only concerned with variation, but also with the limitations on the
degree of variation found in the languages of the world. It is due to these limitations
that languages may be meaningfully divided into various types.
For instance, typologists often divide languages into types according to so-
called basic word order, often understood as the order of subject (S), object (O) and
verb (V) in a typical declarative sentence. The vast majority of the languages of the
world fall into one of three groups:

SOV (Japanese, Tamil, Turkish etc.)
SVO (Fula, Chinese, English etc.)
VSO (Arabic, Tongan, Welsh etc.)

Logically speaking, there should be nothing wrong with the three other possibilities:
VOS, OVS and OSV. As mentioned above, however, they are exceedingly rare and
typically occur in areas that have been relatively isolated. The three main groups
have one thing in common, that the subject precedes the object. It is a small step,
therefore, from basic word order typology to the formulation of the statistical
universal we became acquainted with in the previous chapter:

Subjects tend strongly to precede objects.

The study of typology and the study of universals, therefore, go hand in hand.
In this chapter, we will have a look at morphological typology, word order
typology, the typology of motion verbs, and the typological distinction between tone
languages and stress languages. These are only a few examples of the large amount of
phenomena that may be studied from a typological viewpoint.
First, however, we shall discuss a little further what typology is, and what it is
not.

2
!"#"# Partial vs" holistic typology

The scope of typological comparison is not languages in their entirety, but specific
phenomena in the languages compared. When we say that Turkish is an SOV
language and English an SVO language, this represents no more than a comparison of
a very small part of the grammars of Turkish and English, the part that dictates the
ordering of subject, object and verb. In other words, typological comparison is partial
rather than holistic.
In the 19th century, it was widely believed that one could reach the goal of a
holistic typology. Languages were likened to biological organisms, and just as one
sought to reconstruct the entire skeleton of an animal on the basis of a fossil jaw, so
one sought to derive insight into an entire language based on the knowledge of a small
part of it. Since it was widely believed that language was an expression of the "spirit"
of a nation or a culture, many thought that typological knowledge could provide
insight into this "spirit".
In non-scholarly circles, it is still quite common to believe that there is a
connection between language and "spirit". For instance, the relatively strict and
complex rules of German grammar are often seen as an expression of German
discipline and rule of law, while the comparative lack of strict grammatical rules in
Chinese is seen as an expression of Chinese flexibility and pragmatism. This kind of
"folk typology" enjoys little support among scholars.

!"#"$ Power of generalization

When told that Turkish is an SOV language, we might yawn and ask: "So what?" If
typological comparison is partial rather than holistic, what makes the fact that Turkish
is an SOV language any more interesting than, say, the fact that the Turkish word for
'house' is ev?
The answer is threefold:
First, basic word order has to do with structure, not just individual lexical
items. Therefore, once you know that Turkish is an SOV language, you know
something that will help you understand (and possibly produce) a large proportion of
all Turkish sentences. The knowledge of ev, on the other hand, only helps you
understand (or produce) the very small minority of sentences that contains the word
for 'house'.
Second, a typology based on basic word order divides the vast majority of the
world's languages into only three types. In contrast, a typology based on the word for
'house' would be meaningless, since all languages would probably have different
words for 'house', unless they are related or have influenced each other or are similar
by pure coincidence.
Third, it has been shown that languages with an SOV structure also tend to
share a number of other properties. For instance, they tend to have postpositions
(similar to English ward in home-ward) rather than prepositions (like English toward
in toward home). Thus, by saying that Turkish is an SOV language, we have also said
that it probably has postpositions rather than prepositions, and that it shares many
other characteristics typical of SOV languages, such as auxiliary verbs that follow the
main verb, and adjectives, genitives and relative clauses that precede the noun. In
3
contrast, saying that the Turkish word for 'house' is ev has no implications for any
other part of the language.
1

We may possibly add a fourth point. As we saw in the previous chapter, the
ordering of elements in a sentence reflects strong universal tendencies regarding the
ordering of information in the speech flow. For instance, since the prototypical subject
is an agent, the fact that the subject precedes the object in almost all languages reflects
the tendency for agents to precede patients. We know less about what motivates the
ordering of verb and object. Does placing the object before the verb (as in SOV
languages) reflect a fundamentally different way of ordering information in the
speech flow than placing the verb before the object (as in SVO and VSO languages)?
In other words, do differences in basic word order reflect - and stimulate - different
ways of thinking? We do not know, but it is at least more likely that the Turkish SOV
word order is linked to fundamental ways of thinking or processing information than
the fact that the Turkish word for 'house' is ev.
These three or possibly four points show us that the fact of Turkish being an
SOV language is a piece of information with a much higher power of generalization
than the fact of Turkish using the form ev to denote 'house'. In linguistic typology, we
are primarily looking for linguistic variation with a high power of generalization. The
fact that Turkish uses the form ev where English uses the form house does not make
Turkish into a language of the ev type and English a language of the house type. It is
quite common, however, to refer to Turkish as a language of the SOV type, and
English as a language of the SVO type. The SOV status of Turkish is not an isolated
fact, but is closely connected with a number of other characteristics of Turkish
grammar.
Although typological comparison is not holistic in the sense of 19
th
-century
linguists, therefore, it still makes sense to say that it moves from the more partial
towards the more holistic.

!"#"% Anthropological vs" typological significance

We have all heard about the incredible number of words for 'snow' in the language of
the Eskimos. Some say 20, others 100, still others more than 200. It would have been
a nice way to illustrate how fine distinctions within a certain semantic domain reflects
the interests and the environment of those who speak a languageif it were only true!
Unfortunately, it is just a rumour, though the rumour was widely believed even
among linguists until Geoffrey Pullum called the bluff in an article called "The Great
Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax". In fact, Pullum tentatively concludes, Eskimo seems to
have only two distinct word roots for 'snow'. Even if it were true that Eskimo had so
many words for snow, this would hardly matter much to students of linguistic
typology. Let us use a real example to explain why.
The Fula language of West Africa has an incredible number of words for cattle.
One small dictionary lists no less than 82 words, including guddiri 'bull without a tail',
wudde 'cow without a tail', jaabuye 'cow with a large
navel', lelwaaye 'cattle with eyes like a gazelle',
gerlaaye 'cattle that is like a bush-fowl', happuye 'cow
in milk after her calf has died', mbutuye 'cow whose
calf has been killed so that she may be fattened', and
other useful terms. A number of different types of

1
Though see 3.?.? for some implications concerning phonotactical structure.
4
cattle are distinguished by their horns: elliinge 'cattle with upright horns', gajje 'cattle
with horns twisted back' (also called mooro), hippe 'cattle with horns drooping
forward', hogole 'cattle with horns almost meeting', lettooye 'cattle with one horn up
and the other drooping', wijaaye 'cattle with horns drooping towards the ears', tolle
'cow with one horn', and wumale 'cow without horns'.
The high number of words for 'cattle' in Fula is of great anthropological
significance, since it reflects the central position of herdsmanship as a way of living
in many Fula societies. Fula herdsmen possess a highly specialized knowledge for
which they need a highly specialized terminology similar to the technical terms
found in any profession.
However, the typological significance of the many fine distinctions between
different kinds of cattle is very limited, since they scarcely affect the underlying
structure of the language. A Fula person who lives in the city without any contact with
traditional herdsmanship may grow up speaking the language perfectly, but with very
scant knowledge of its vast vocabulary for cattle. The situation is similar to that of
technical terminology in any society.
Another type of specialized vocabulary that is of high anthropological interest,
but of limited typological interest is the field of kinship terms. They reflect the social
organization of the family and the clan. For instance, the English word cousin
corresponds to eight different words in Chinese:

ta2ngge1 'elder male paternal cousin'
ta2ngd 'younger male paternal cousin'
ta2ngjie3 'elder female paternal cousin'
ta2ngme4i 'younger female paternal cousin'
bia3oge1 'elder male maternal cousin'
bia3od 'younger male maternal cousin'
bia3ojie3 'elder female maternal cousin'
bia3ome4i 'younger female maternal cousin'

Thus, Chinese divides the semantic domain represented by the single English word
cousin into eight based on gender (male vs. female), relative age (elder vs. younger),
and whether or not there is at least one female link between the cousins (paternal vs.
maternal). The distinctions are important. In some Chinese societies, for instance,
maternal cousins can marry (because they have different family names), while any
sexual relation between paternal cousins would be condemned as incestuous (because
they have the same family name). Just as English has no word for the eight concepts
involved in the Chinese terminology, Chinese has no word for the general concept
'cousin'.
Again, however, this is of little typological interest, since the presence or
absence of certain kinship terms has little to do with the underlying structure of the
language. Like technical vocabulary, kinship terms may come and go without
affecting the language as a whole. A young and modern Chinese city dweller will be
much less likely than an old and traditional country woman to know such specialized
vocabulary as, for instance, cho2ngsu1nx 'great-granddaughter-in-law'.
In general, therefore, the existence of specialized vocabulary, whether
technical terminology or, for instance, kinship terms, has great anthropological
significance, but little typological significance.

5
!"$ Morphological typology

Grammatical expression of meaning may happen in a number of different ways, as
exemplified by the various methods of expressing the distinction between singular
and plural in the nouns of different languages:
2

1. No expression: Japanese hito 'person', pl. hito
2. Function word: Tagalog bato 'stone', pl. mga bato
3. Affixation: Turkish ev 'house', pl. ev-ler; Swahili m-toto 'child', pl. wa-toto
4. Sound change: English man, pl. men; Arabic rajulun 'man', pl. rija1lun
5. Reduplication: Malay anak 'child', pl. anak-anak

The most important typological distinction is between the types 1-2, where each word
consists of only one morpheme, and types 3-5, where a word often consists of more
than one morpheme.

!"$"# Analytic vs" synthetic languages

Languages in which a word tends to consist of only one morpheme are called analytic
(or isolating). Highly analytic languages are primarily found in East and Southeast
Asia (e.g. Chinese, Vietnamese), as well as West Africa (e.g. Yoruba) and South
Africa (e.g. !Kung [also known as Kung-ekoka or !Xu)]). These languages have no
inflection, and the most extreme ones make limited use of processes of word-
formation.
Languages in which a word tends to consist of more than one morpheme are
called synthetic. English is a mildly synthetic language, while older Indo-European
languages, like Latin, Greek and Sanskrit, are highly synthetic. All of them have
plenty of inflection, derivation and compounding.
Extremely synthetic languages, where words are very complex and sometimes
constitute entire clauses, with extensive use of inflection, derivation and compounding,
are called polysynthetic. Polysynthetic languages are primarily found among Eskimo
and American Indian languages, as well as a few languages in Sibir, Northern
Caucasus and Australia.
Theoretically speaking, languages may locate themselves at any point on the
scale from analytic to polysynthetic:

analytic synthetic polysynthetic
(word = morpheme) (word > morpheme) (word = clause)

In fact, however, no language is purely analytic or purely polysynthetic. Furthermore,
different parts of the grammar may behave in different ways. Japanese, for instance, is
analytic in having no noun inflection, but highly synthetic in having a complex system
of verb inflection.
Consider the contrast between the following two translations of the English
sentence 'If you wait for me, I will go with you':

2
In addition, the Number distinction in the noun may be expressed in the form of nearby verbs or
adjectives, cf. English the man goes vs. the men go.
6

(?) If you wait for me, I will go with you' in Chinese and Inuktitut
(?a) Chinese: n de3ng wo3, wo3 jiu4 ge1n n qu4.
2SG wait 1SG 1SG then with 2SG go

(?b) Eskimo:
3
Utaqqi-gu-vi- nga, aulla-qati- gi- niaq- pa- git
wait if 2SG 1SG go partner have future assertion 1SG/2SG

The Chinese sentence consists of eight words, each word corresponding to one
morpheme. In Eskimo (more properly called Inuktitut), however, the same sentence
consists of only two words, utaqqiguvinga and aullaqatiginiaqpagit, each
corresponding to a full clause with 4-5 morphemes. These example sentences are
more extreme than what is common. In Chinese, there are in fact many compound
words, as well as words containing derivational affixes. And in Eskimo, a clause often
consists of more than one word. The clearest contrast is between the lack of inflection
in analytic languages like Chinese vs. the widespread use of inflection in Eskimo.

!"$"$ Agglutinative vs" flective languages

Synthetic and polysynthetic languages may be further divided into agglutinative and
flective languages. In the ideal case, an agglutinative language is a synthetic or a
polysynthetic language where there is a one-to-one correspondence between meaning
and form. Consider, for instance, the ablative plural of the Turkish word ev 'house':

ev- ler-den
house PL ABL

The root ev means 'house', the suffix -ler marks the plural and the suffix -den marks
the ablative case.
In an almost ideal case like Turkish, agglutinative languages exhibit all of the
following three properties (while flective languages exhibit the opposite properties):

1. Each morpheme expresses only one meaning element. This is the opposite
of cumulation, where each morpheme expresses more than one meaning
element, such as in modern Greek rfete 'was being written', where the suffix
-ete expresses five different meaning elements: 3
rd
person, singular, passive
voice, durative and past tense.

2. There is a clear-cut boundary between each morpheme. The opposite is
known as fusion, as in East Norwegian past participle [sva:] 'answered',
where the verb root [sva:r] is combined with the suffix [t], but where [r] + [t]
becomes [] by phonological rule, fusing the two morphemes together.

3. Grammatical processes are expressed through prefixes or suffixes and do
not affect the form of the individual morphemes. This is the opposite of
introflection, as in the English plural men of man, or the Arabic plural rija1lun
of rajulun 'man'.

3
See http://web.hku.hk/~althea/inuktitut.html.
7

In principle, these properties are independent of each other, and many languages
exhibit only one or two of them. Languages with cumulation, however, also usually
have both fusion and introflection and thus constitute the most typical cases of
flective languages.
In many ways, agglutinative languages constitute an in-between case between
flective and analytic languages. They resemble flective languages in often having
more than one morpheme per word, i.e. in being synthetic:

However, they share the one-to-one correspondence between meaning and form with
analytic languages:

Note also that the affixes of agglutinative languages tend to be more independent than
the affixes of flective languages. For instance, the Turkish plural suffix -lar (or -ler)
sometimes applies not only to single words, but to whole phrases:

bayan ve bay-lar
lady and gentleman-PL
'ladies and gentlemen'

The distinction between such affixes and separate function words is not always easy
to draw.
Historically, flective morphology is usually derived from agglutinative
morphology, which in turn is derived from the analytic use of function words:

This does not mean, however, that analytic languages are more "primitive" than
flective languages. In fact, many Indo-European languages, including English, have
long been in the process of becoming more analytic, discarding most of the complex
flective morphology of earlier historical stages.

flective one-to-one correspondence
between meaning and form
analytic agglutinative
analytic
synthetic
flective agglutinative
analytic agglutinative flective
8
!"$"% Typical features of analytic languages

As mentioned above, analytic languages are found in three separate parts of the world:
East and Southeast Asia, West Africa, and South Africa. Although comparisons of the
languages of these three areas have hardly ever been conducted, it seems that they
tend to share a number of linguistic features:

1. Predominantly monosyllabic morphemes (and sometimes words)
2. Extensive use of tonemes
3. Extensive use of function words
4. Relatively fixed word order
5. Less rigid grammatical rules

Although each of these features may occur in synthetic languages as well, the fact that
analytic languages tend to share all five features may be explained functionally:

1. When one word represents only one meaning element, complex meanings
require a larger number of words, so polysyllabic words or morphemes would
reduce efficiency dramatically. This may explain why morphemes, and
sometimes words, are predominantly monosyllabic.

2. When words or morphemes are monosyllabic, they are less easily
distinguished by means of segmental phonemes alone. This may explain why
tonemes are used.

3 and 4. In a language without inflection, function words and fixed word order
carry some of the information that is taken care of by inflection in synthetic
languages.

5. The rigidity of inflectional paradigms in synthetic languages (especially
those of the flective type) creates a much more tightly woven grammatical
structure than the (often optional) use of function words in analytic languages.

Point 2 tells us that the functional load carried by word length in many synthetic
languages tends to be carried by tonemes in analytic languages. Points 3 and 4 tell us
that the functional load carried by inflection in synthetic languages tends to be carried
by function words and fixed word order in analytic languages.
As an example of a language with less rigid grammatical rules, consider the
following facts about Chinese:

1. It has no inflection.
2. Subject and object are often optional.
3. Function words are often optional.
4. Word boundaries and sentence boundaries are fuzzy.
5. Apart from the noun-verb distinction, word class distinctions are fuzzy.

Together this makes for a comparatively fluid and flexible system. Rigid rules have
their place in Chinese grammar as well, but are much less dominant. This kind of
flexibility is found in other East and Southeast Asian languages as well. Whether it is
also found in the analytic languages of West Africa and South Africa is uncertain.
9
As an example of the kind of flexibility present in Chinese grammar, consider
the following sentence:

N bu4 la2i, wo3 bu2 qu4.
you not come I not go

This sentence may have at least four different meanings:

1. 'If you don't come, I won't go.'
2. 'When you don't come, I won't go.'
3. 'Since you don't come, I won't go.'
4. 'You won't come, and I won't go.'

It is fully possible to include function words that make these distinctions clear, but if
the meaning can be inferred from the context, or if the distinctions are deemed
unimportant, such function words may just as well be left out.
A linguist from Taiwan gave his Chinese-speaking students one unpunctuated
text in English and one in Chinese and asked them to add punctuation marks in both
texts. It turned out that the students agreed almost completely about the punctuation of
the English text, but had widely different proposals concerning the punctuation of the
Chinese text. Paradoxically, they seemed more certain about sentence boundaries in
English than in their own mother tongue.
Thus, even a mildly synthetic language like English is much more rigid than
Chinese. As already noted, a speaker of English is constantly forced to decide whether
he wants to talk about objects in the singular or the plural, and whether he wants to
talk about events in the present or the past.
The same type of rigidity lies behind the obligatory presence in many modern
European languages of a subject. Even in sentences with no logical subject, a formal
subject is required, such as in the English sentence It rains. The only function of the
pronoun it is to fill the obligatory subject slot. In other European languages, such as
Spanish, the subject is not obligatory. Not only is there no formal subject
corresponding to English it in the sentence Llueve 'It rains', but it is also very common
to drop the subject in cases where it does have a concrete reference, such as in the
sentence Fuma 'He smokes'. In Spanish, however, the categories of person and
number are more unambiguously expressed in the inflectional form of the verb, such
as fumo I smoke vs fumas you smoke vs. fuma he/she smokes. Even if the subject
itself is left out, therefore, important information about the subject is obligatorily
present in the verb form. This is different from Chinese, which has neither obligatory
subject nor verb inflection.

!"% Word order typology

As mentioned above, typologists often divide languages into types according to so-
called basic word order, understood as the order of elements in a typical declarative
sentence with a transitive verb. This is one of the most commonly discussed
typological distinctions in modernlinguistics.

10
!"%"# SOV vs" SVO vs" VSO

We have already mentioned that the vast majority of languages can be divided into
three types according to the dominant order of subject (S), object (O) and verb (V):

SOV (Japanese)
Watashitachi wa Nihongo o hanasu.
we TOP Japanese OBJ speak
'We speak Japanese.'

SVO (English)
He ate the pudding.

VSO (Arabic)
Qatala l- malik-u l- malikat-a
kill DEF king NOM+DEF DEF queen ACC
'The king killed the queen.'

Less than five percent of the world's languages belong to one of the three remaining
possible types: VOS, OVS and OSV. In other words, the subject precedes the object
in more than 95 percent of all languages. In fact, the subject tends very strongly to
precede both verb and object, and according to one study, SOV and SVO together are
found in more than 85 percent of all languages, while VSO is only found in around
nine percent. Other studies give different figures, but the tendency is the same.
The following are three possible reasons why the subject tends to occur early
in the sentence:

1. The thematic role of agent tends to precede the thematic role of patient, and
the prototypical subject is an agent. In other words, the closer a participant is
to the energy source, the earlier it tends to appear (cf. chapter 2).

2. The element which is more animate tends to precede elements which are
less animate; very often the subject is human, and humans are conceived of as
being highest in the animacy hierarchy.

3. Information that is more thematic tends to precede information that is less
thematic, and very often the subject is also a theme during discourse. (Indeed,
if other elements are more thematic than the subject, they are often lifted out
of their original position and placed before the subject, as in Chinese Zhe4 be3n
shu1 wo3 bu4 xhua1n 'This book I don't like'.)

The order of object and verb seems to be more random, though all studies show that
there are more SOV languages than SVO languages in the world.
The interesting thing about the distinction between SOV, SVO and VSO is
that it tends to correlate with a number of other word order properties. Few of these
correlations are absolute, but the tendency is clear. For instance, SOV languages tend
to have the following word order properties:

noun+postposition
genitive+noun
11
verb+auxiliary
relative clause+noun
standard of comparison+adjective

VSO languages, on the other hand, tend to have exactly the opposite word order
properties:

preposition+noun
noun+genitive
auxiliary+verb
noun+relative clause
adjective+standard of comparison

It has sometimes been claimed that SVO languages like English constitute an
intermediate type, so that they sometimes go with SOV languages and sometimes
with VSO. In fact, however, English has the following properties:

preposition+noun (in the house)
genitive+noun (Tom's house) or noun+genitive (the house of Tom)
auxiliary+verb (will come)
noun+relative clause (the cat that ate the rat)
adjective+standard of comparison (better than Tom)

Thus, it is only in the ordering of genitive and noun that English behaves as an
intermediate type, vacillating between genitive+noun and noun+genitive. In all other
respects, it behaves like VSO languages. And this has been shown to be typical not
only of English, but of SVO languages in general. Basically, SVO languages behave
in the same way as VSO languages with regard to word order properties. Only in a
few specific cases, such as the ordering of genitive and noun, do SVO languages
constitute an intermediate type between SOV and VSO.
Note that the terminology used in typological comparison is often less precise
than in other branches of linguistics. For instance, the term genitive usually denotes
a specific form of the noun in languages with case inflection, similar to English Toms.
When discussing typology, however, of Tom is also called a genitive, because it is
more or less functionally equivalent to Toms. Many languages do not, strictly
speaking, have pre- or postpositions (they use verbs or nouns instead), adjectives
(they use verbs instead), relative clauses or even subjects and objects. In typology,
however, these terms are still used for whatever functional equivalent is found.

!"%"$ OV vs" VO

If SVO languages and VSO languages behave more or less the same way, there is in
most cases no need to distinguish between them. The important property shared by
both is that the verb precedes the object, in contrast to SOV languages. Where the
subject is placed is of less importance:

SVO
VO
VSO

12
SOV OV

In the few cases where the position of the subject does seem to matter, such as in the
ordering of genitive and noun, the OV vs. VO distinction may be supplemented by an
additional distinction between SV and VS languages:

SVO
SV
SOV

VSO VS

As we have seen, SV languages are much more common than VS languages.

!"%"% Modifier&head vs" head&modifier

What is the explanation for the correlations between OV vs. VO order and other word
order features? One of the more daring suggestions has been that all elements that
occupy the same relative position as the verb are heads, while all elements that
occupy the same relative position as the object are modifiers.
4
Thus, in OV languages,
the modifier tends to precede the head, while in VO languages, the head tends to
precede the modifier. The elements discussed so far, therefore, can be classified as
heads and modifiers according to the following list:

Modifier Head
object verb
noun adposition (post- or preposition)
genitive noun
verb auxiliary
relative clause noun
standard of comparison adjective

Other pairs of alleged modifier-head elements are:

Modifier Head
adverbial verb
adjective noun
numeral noun
determiner noun
adjective comparison marker

This looks neat and nicebut is it true? One study looked at the correlation between
verb and object, adposition and noun, noun and genitive, and noun and adjective. In
theory, only two types should exist:

Type 1 Type 2
verb+object object+verb

4
In theoriginal proposal, by Theo Vennemann, the terms operand and operator are used instead of head
and modifier.
13
preposition+noun noun+postposition
noun+genitive genitive+noun
noun+adjective adjective+noun

In fact, however, only 68 of the 142 languages examined belong to either type 1 or
type 2. More than half of the languages, therefore, deviate from the pattern. On the
other hand, 50 of these deviate in only one of the four criteria, and 24 deviate in two
of the four criteria. To judge from these results, though more than half of the world's
languages do not consistently adhere to either the modifier+head or the head+modifier
order, the vast majority of them (118 of 142) do so in the majority of cases.

!"%"! Left'branching vs" right'branching

Some of the exceptions to the general principle of uniform ordering of modifiers and
heads are systematic. For instance, it turns out that the ordering of adjectives and
nouns do not follow this principle at all. In theory, VO languages should let the
adjective follow the noun, since the adjective is a modifier and the noun a head, while
OV languages should let the adjective precede the noun, for the same reason. In fact,
however, the adjective turns out to precede the noun somewhat more often in VO
languages than in OV languages, though in both types, it is more common to let the
adjective follow the noun. One possible explanation is that modifiers need to be full-
fledged phrases that may be expanded at will in order for the principle to apply. Note
the difference between the following two English expressions:

an old man
a man as old as the mountains

In the first case, where the adjective precedes the noun (although English modifiers
usually follow their heads), the possibilities for expansion of the adjective phrase are
very limited. One might add an intensifying adverb like very, but not much more. In
the second case, however, where the adjective follows the noun, the adjective phrase
may be expanded at will:

a man as old as the mountains I knew when I was a child in the country that I
later left behind in order to search for the holy grale

The same fact may explain why intensifying adverbs do not conform to the principle
of uniform ordering of modifiers and heads. In English, for instance, intensifiers
precede the adverb:

very good

Again, this violates the usual English word order of head+modifier. The adverb,
however, is not a freely expandable full-fledged phrase, and this explains the
deviation.
While the modifier must be a freely expandable full-fledged phrase, the head
is never expandable in this way. This means that in modifier+head languages,
extensive expansion always occurs to the left of the non-expandable element, while in
head+modifier languages, extensive expansion always occurs to the right of the non-
expandable element. Based on the drawing of syntactic "trees" with "branches", such
14
extension is called "branching", and languages tend to have consistent branching
direction:

Branching direction in head+modifier (VO) languages (English)

verb+object kissed the girl he met at a party a few days before he left
preposition+noun in the city where the great composer was born
noun+genitive friends of the man whose father had left behind a treasure
auxiliary+verb will come home to the valley he had left in his childhood
noun+relative clause children that have been spoiled by parents who love them
adj.+stand. of comp. prettier than the women he had seen on TV
noun+adjective men so strong they could kill tigers if they wanted to

Branching direction in modifier+head (OV) languages (Japanese)

object+verb tegami o kaku
letter ACC write
'to write a letter'
noun+postposition ie kara
home from
'from home'
genitive+noun gakusei no hon
student SUB book
'the student's book'
verb+auxiliary tabe-te iru
eat- GER PROG
'eating'
relative clause+noun gakusei ga yon-da hon
student NOM read- PAST book
'the book that the student read'
stand. of comp.+adj. watashi yori kirei
1SG from pretty
'prettier than me'
adjective+noun ii kuni
good country
'a good country'

Modifier+head languages are left-branching, while head+modifier languages are
right-branching.
Behind the fact that languages tend to consistently branch to one side lies the
need for simplicity in producing and perceiving the structure of sentences. A language
with less branching consistency would be less easy to master both for the speaker and
15
the hearer. This may explain many of the puzzling facts pertaining to word order
typology.

!"! Typology of motion verbs

While word order typology is strictly syntactic, the typology of motion verbs is a
much more complex phenomenon, involving syntax, semantics and the lexicalisation
of meaning. It also has a bearing on the question discussed in chapter 1 concerning the
influence of language on thought.
Motion is expressed differently in different languages, and the differences turn
out to be highly significant. There are two large types, verb-framed and satellite-
framed languages.
One of the differences between the two regards what kind of information is
typically lexicalized by a verb of motion. One piece of information is, of course, the
fact that something is moving, the motion itself. In addition to that, however, most
languages tend to follow one of two strategies.
In satellite-framed languages like English, the motion verb typically also
expresses manner or cause:

The bottle floated out of the cave. (Manner)
The napkin blew off the table. (Cause)

The languages that follow this strategy include Indo-European languages (except
Romance), Finno-Ugric languages, Chinese, and others. In the following Chinese
example, the main motion verb pia1o 'float' also expresses manner:

Pngzi co2ng sha1ndo4ng pia1o chu1 la2i.
bottle from cave float exit come

Although chu1 'to exit' and la2i 'to come' are also motion verbs, their function is
secondary, chu1 corresponding in function to the English adverb out, while li marks
movement in the direction of the speaker.
In verb-framed languages like Spanish, the motion verb typically does not
convey information about manner or cause, but expresses instead the path of motion:
direction, arrival, departure, traversing and many others:

La botella sali de la cueva. (Departure)
'The bottle moved out from the cave.'

La botella cruz el canal. (Traversing)
'The bottle moved across the canal.'

The languages that follow this strategy include Romance languages, Semitic
languages, Polynesian languages, Japanese, Korean, and others. In the following
Japanese example, the motion verb deta 'moved out' also expresses path:

Bin -ga dookutsu-kara de -ta
bottle-NOM cave -from exit-PAST

The verb deta is not only the main verb, but the only verb in the sentence.
16
English has a number of verbs that include information about path rather than
manner/cause, but most of them are borrowed from French or other Romance
languages: enter, exit, ascend, descend, cross, pass, circle, advance, proceed,
approach, arrive, depart, return, join, separate, part. Only a few are indigenous
words of Germanic origin: rise, leave, near, follow.
Verb-framed languages also have a number of verbs that include information
about manner, such as words for 'run', 'walk', 'fly' and so on. Even when they have
such manner verbs, however, they tend to prefer path verbs.
Satellite-framed languages usually also express path, only it is not expressed
in the verb, but in what is called the satellite to the verb, in English usually an adverb
like out, in Chinese usually a non-main verb like chu1:

The bottle floated out.

Pngzi co2ng sha1ndo4ng pia1o chu1 la2i.
bottle from cave float exit come

Thus, both verb-framed and satellite-framed languages usually give expression to the
path of motion, but while verb-framed languages do so in the main verb, satellite-
framed languages do so in the satellite.
Verb-framed languages are also fully able to express manner and cause, only
they are not expressed in the verb, but in a more peripheral element like the Spanish
gerund flotando 'floating' or the Japanese gerund nagarete 'floating':

La botella sali de la cueva flotando.
'The bottle floated out of the cave.'

Bin -ga dookutsu-kara nagara-te de -ta
bottle-NOM cave -from float -GER exit-PAST

In this case, however, it is much more common to leave the peripheral element out
and rely on the context to make clear that the motion is one of floating, especially in
Spanish.
If both verb-framed and satellite-framed languages are able to express both
manner/cause and path, the question arises: What is the significance of this
distinction?
Part of the answer has to do with the notions of foregrounding and
backgrounding. If verb-framed languages include information about manner/cause
(such as in the sentences with Spanish flotando and Japanese nagarate above), this
information is strongly highlightedit is foregrounded. When satellite-framed
languages include information about path, however, this information can still remain
backgrounded. Since the inclusion of foregrounded elements in a sentence is more
energy-demanding than the inclusion of backgrounded elements, the speaker is less
prone to do so. And in fact, while verb-framed languages like Spanish and Japanese
seldom include information about manner/cause, satellite-framed languages like
English and Chinese very often include information about both manner/cause and
path.
When speakers of different languages are given a series of pictures indicating
that an owl exits from its hole in a tree, speakers of verb-framed languages almost
17
always use the single path verb meaning 'exit', while speakers of satellite-framed
languages often use a manner verb combined with a path satellite:

Verb-framed languages:
Spanish: Sale un buho 'Exits an owl'
Turkish: Oradan bir baykus kyor 'From there an owl exits'
Hebrew: Yaca mitox haxor yans3uf 'Exits from-inside the-hole owl'

Satellite-framed languages:
English: An owl popped out
German: ... weil da eine Eule pltzlich raus-flattert 'because there an owl suddenly
out-flaps'
Chinese: Fe1i chu1 yi zh ma1oto2uyng 'Fly out one piece owl'

There now exists a huge amount of material confirming this difference in actual
language use.
Some satellite-framed languages, including English, allow information about
path to appear in up to two satellites and one prepositional phrase. This makes it
possible to produce sentences where both manner/cause and three types of path are
expressed at the same time:

The man ran back down into the cellar.

The verb ran includes information about manner, while the adverbs back and down
and the prepositional phrase into the cellar all provide different information about
path. This sentence is not directly translatable into a verb-framed language like
Spanish, which usually requires path to be expressed in the verb, and which does not
have satellites. The following three sentences are all half-good near-translations:

El hombre volvi al stano corriendo. (leaving out the 'down' and 'into' meanings)
'The man returned to the cellar running.'

El hombre baj al stano corriendo. (leaving out the 'back' and 'into' meanings)
'The man descended to the cellar running.'

El hombre entr al stano corriendo. (leaving out the 'down' and 'back' meanings)
'The man entered the cellar running.'

While it is possible to explain in Spanish what the English sentence means, this
requires a wordiness that would make it highly unlikely that a Spanish speaker would
ever think of uttering the resulting sentence(s).
It turns out, therefore, that satellite-framed languages allow for more detailed
description of paths and tend towards greater specification of manner than verb-
framed languages. On the other hand, for reasons that are not entirely clear, verb-
framed languages tend to describe more elaborately locations of people or objects and
endstates of motion. Thus, the importance of the typological distinction between verb-
framed and satellite-framed languages extends far beyond the confines of language
structure. At the very least, it seems to have consequences for our ways of describing
(or narrating) actual situations and most probably also influences our ways of
perceiving these situations.
18

!"( Tone languages vs" stress languages

Phonological typology often does not have the same power of generalisation as the
examples of typology discussed above. For instance, while knowing that a language
has SOV as its basic word order also tells us that this language probably has
postpositions and preposed relative clauses, knowing that a language has click
consonants basically tells us nothing more than simply that.
In the following, we shall confine ourselves to a brief look at the typological
distinction between tone languages (languages with tonemes) and stress languages
(languages where stress and/or accent play a vital role). Languages with an extensive
tonal system tend to make less use of stress and accent and vice versa. This is in itself
important and may have to do with the fact that whatever functional load is carried by
tonemes in one language may be carried by stress/accent in another.
However, the functions of tonemes and stress/accent are by no means entirely
the same. Tonemes give paradigmatic prominence to a syllable, while stress/accent
mainly gives syntagmatic prominence. The main function of tonemes is to
distinguish each syllable from any other possible syllable with the same segmental
phonemes. In Chinese, for instance, the syllable ma represents different words if
pronounced with a high even tone, a rising tone, a low falling-rising tone, or a falling
tone:

ma1 mother
ma2 hemp
ma3 horse
ma4 to scold

The comparison is between an abstract set of words or syllables. In comparison, the
main function of stress/accent is to give prominence to one or more syllables in a
word over other unstressed or unaccentuated syllables in the same word. For instance,
the English word lackadaisical has its main stress on the third syllable, not on the first,
second or fourth:

lack-a-dai-si-cal

In other words, tonemes imply comparisons between different words that do not
belong within the same stretch of speech, while stress/accent implies comparisons
within the same word or stretch of speech. This being said, it should also be noted,
however, that the placement of stress may have paradigmatic functions as well, as
when the noun permit has its main stress on the first syllable and the verb permit on
the second.
The distinction between tone languages and stress languages is not absolute.
Norwegian is a stress language with tonemes, and Chinese is a tone language with
stress/accent. In both cases, however, there is no doubt which type each language
belongs to. Tonemes play only a marginal role in Norwegian, and stress/accent plays
only a marginal role in Chinese.
Tone languages may be further divided into those with contour tones and
those with level tones. Contour tones are mainly distinguished by shape: rising,
19
falling, rising-falling etc. Level tones are basically distinguished by pitch level: high,
mid, low etc. Contour tones seem to be most widespread in Asia, while level tones
seem to be more widespread in Africa. But the distinction is much more complex. In
tone-rich languages like Cantonese, tones will often be distinguished by both contour
and level: high rising vs. low rising, high falling vs. low falling etc. In many African
languages, sequences of different level tones have often combined to produce new
contour tones.
Stress languages may be further divided into those with so-called free (or
unpredictable) stress and those with fixed (or predictable) stress. Like other
Germanic languages, English has free stress, as the contrast between the noun permit
and the verb permit shows. In such languages, stress may serve to distinguish one
word for another.
In languages with fixed stress, stress does not serve to distinguish one word
from another. The following subtypes are common:

1. The main stress falls on the last syllable (French, Turkish)
2. The main stress falls on the first syllable (Czech, Hungarian, Latvian)
3. The main stress falls on the penultimate (second-last) syllable (Swahili)

In addition come languages in which the heaviness of a syllable (for instance, whether
or not it contains a long vowel) plays a role for stress placement, such as the Finno-
Ugric languages Selkup and Meadow-Mari, in which the main stress falls on the
rightmost heavy syllable if there is one, otherwise on the first syllable.

Binder 1

Transféré par

Informations du document

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Binder 1

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

1) Is categorization only a cognitive process or is it a culturally- dependant phenomenon.

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi