Rethinking Universals How Rarities Affect Linguistic Theory
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Jan Wohlgemuth, Michael Cysouw
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Rethinking Universals How Rarities Affect Linguistic Theory
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De Gruyter Mouton
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9783110220933
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Empirical Approaches to Language Typology [EALT]ISSN
:
1
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CHF 159.80
:
:
Allgemeine und Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft
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English
:
298
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Wasserzeichen
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PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
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PDF
< >Rarissima and rara, features and properties found only in one or very few languages, tell us as much about the capacities and limits of human language(s) as do universals. Explaining the existence of such rare phenomena on the one hand, and the fact of their rareness or uniqueness on the other, proves a reasonable and interesting challenge to any theory of how human language works.
< >
Jan Wohlgemuth
and
Michael Cysouw
, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
Preface
5
Contents
7
The other end of universals: theory and typology of rara
11
Rarities in numeral systems
21
Additional rarities in the typology of numerals
71
Explaining typologically unusual structures: the role of probability
101
Right at the left edge: initial consonant mutations in the languages of the world
115
“Quirky” case: rare phenomena in case-marking and their implications for a theory of typological distributions
149
Negatives without negators
179
Accounting for rare typological features in formal syntax: three strategies and some general remarks
205
Rara and grammatical theory
233
Pairwise comparisons of typological profiles
251
Language endangerment, community size and typological rarity
265
Index
289
