Linguistic typology ≈ Linguistic typology
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Gender and classifiers in concurrent systems: Refining the typology of nominal classification Open
Some languages have both gender and classifiers, contrary to what was once believed possible. We use these interesting languages as a unique window onto nominal classification. They provide the impetus for a new typology, based on the degr…
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Redrawing the margins of language: Lessons from research on ideophones Open
Ideophones (also known as expressives, mimetics or onomatopoeia) have been systematically studied in linguistics since the 1850s, when they were first described as a lexical class of vivid sensory words in West-African languages. This pape…
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Modeling Language Variation and Universals: A Survey on Typological Linguistics for Natural Language Processing Open
Linguistic typology aims to capture structural and semantic variation across the world’s languages. A large-scale typology could provide excellent guidance for multilingual Natural Language Processing (NLP), particularly for languages that…
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Comparability and measurement in typological science: The bright future for linguistics Open
Linguistics, and typology in particular, can have a bright future. We justify this optimism by discussing comparability from two angles. First, we take the opportunity presented by this special issue of Linguistic Typology to pause for a m…
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The expression of modality in Logoori Open
This study presents a theoretically informed description of the expression of modality in Logoori (Luyia; Bantu). We document verbal and non-verbal modal expressions in Logoori, and show how these expressions fit into proposed typologies o…
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(Im)perfectivity and actionality in East Ruvu Bantu Open
Temporal/aspectual morphology often serves as a diagnostic for actional classes. Bantu languages are known for their highly developed tense, aspect (and mood) systems. The East Ruvu Bantu languages of Tanzania are unusual in that they exhi…
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From intensional properties to universal support Open
An optimality-theoretic (OT) system is specified by defining its constraints and the structures they evaluate. These give rise to a set of grammars, the typology of the system, which emerges from the often complex interactions among constr…
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Other-repetition in conversation across languages: Bringing prosody into pragmatic typology Open
In this article, I introduce the aims and scope of a project examining other-repetition in natural conversation. This introduction provides the conceptual and methodological background for the five language-specific studies contained in th…
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A corpus-based study of the role of headshaking in negation in Auslan (Australian Sign Language): Implications for signed language typology Open
Signed languages have been classified typologically as being manual dominant or non-manual dominant for negation. In the former negation is conveyed primarily by manual lexical signs whereas in the latter negation is primarily conveyed by …
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Inverse and symmetrical voice: On languages with two transitive constructions Open
In voice and alignment typology, a categorical distinction is generally made between inverse systems on the one hand and symmetrical voice systems on the other. A major reason for distinguishing between these two types is the assumption th…
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The Typology of Negation Open
This chapter discusses a number of central phenomena in the typology of negation, building on state-of-the-art typological research. The focus lies on standard negation, prohibitive negation, existential negation, and the negation of indef…
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On the Relation between Linguistic Typology and (Limitations of) Multilingual Language Modeling Open
A key challenge in cross-lingual NLP is developing general language-independent architectures that are equally applicable to any language. However, this ambition is largely hampered by the variation in structural and semantic properties, i…
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Understanding Abuse: A Typology of Abusive Language Detection Subtasks Open
As the body of research on abusive language detection and analysis grows, there is a need for critical consideration of the relationships between different subtasks that have been grouped under this label. Based on work on hate speech, cyb…
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Linguistic inferences without words Open
Contemporary semantics has uncovered a sophisticated typology of linguistic inferences, characterized by their conversational status and their behavior in complex sentences. This typology is usually thought to be specific to language and i…
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Holistic spatial semantics and post-Talmian motion event typology: A case study of Thai and Telugu Open
Leonard Talmy’s influential binary motion event typology has encountered four main challenges: (a) additional language types; (b) extensive “type-internal” variation; (c) the role of other relevant form classes than verbs and “satellites;”…
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Positive signs: How sign language typology benefits deaf communities and linguistic theory Open
Sign language typology is the systematic comparative study of linguistic structures across sign languages, and has emerged as a separate linguistic sub-discipline over the past 15 years. It is situated at the crossroads between linguistic …
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Inclusive Plurals and the Theory of Number Open
I argue that an account of both inclusive plurals and the crosslinguistic typology of grammatical number requires postulating a [−atomic] feature (or something very much like it) in the structure of exclusive-plural DPs. When combined with…
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Perspectives on Creole Formation Open
This paper is another argument in favor of a uniformitarian approach to Creole languages, analyzed on a par with non-Creole languages. We take a critical look at competing hypotheses about the formation of Creole languages and any resultin…
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Interpreting meaning in police interviews: Applied Language Typology in a Forensic Linguistics context Open
The main aim of this paper is to raise awareness about the importance of language contrasts in legal interpreting contexts. The semantic typology of motion events put forward by Talmy (1991, 2000) and its implications for discourse and nar…
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Complex sentences in sign languages: Modality – typology – discourse Open
Sign language grammars, just like spoken language grammars, generally provide various means to generate different kinds of complex syntactic structures including subordination of complement clauses, adverbial clauses, or relative clauses. …
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The Role of Functions in Syntax: A unified approach to language theory, description, and typology Open
The main aim of this book is to address a fundamental question in linguistics, namely why languages are similar and why they are different. The study proposes that languages are fundamentally similar when they encode the same meanings in t…
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The Time Depth and Typology of Rural Sign Languages Open
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Corpus-based typology: applications, challenges and some solutions Open
Over the last few years, the number of corpora that can be used for language comparison has dramatically increased. The corpora are so diverse in their structure, size and annotation style, that a novice might not know where to start. The …
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Dependencies In Language Open
Dependencies in language
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Extreme classification Open
Categorization retains its key importance in research on human cognition. It is an intellectual area where all disciplines devoted to human cognition – psychology, philosophy, anthropology, and linguistics – intersect. In language, categor…
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A Probabilistic Generative Model of Linguistic Typology Open
Johannes Bjerva, Yova Kementchedjhieva, Ryan Cotterell, Isabelle Augenstein. Proceedings of the 2019 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies, Volume 1 (Long and…
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Revised Typology of Place-Naming Open
A functional and systematic typology of toponyms is an essential instrument for the toponymist wishing to investigate the naming practices and patterns of a region. To this end, the Australian National Placenames Survey developed a toponym…
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Variable motion event encoding within languages and language types: a usage-based perspective Open
Speakers of the world’s languages differ in the ways they talk about directed motion. Speakers of satellite-framed languages (S-languages; e.g., English) typically conflate Path and Manner in a single clause (e.g., run out ), whereas speak…
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Sahaptin: Between stress and tone Open
The Yakima dialect of Sahaptin has been described as a pitch accent language, but lately the category “pitch accent” has been questioned as a prosodic primitive. In this article we bring to light new data from reduplicated verbs found in t…
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Methodological Tools for Linguistic Description and Typology. Open
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