Table Of ContentSTUDIES IN SYNTACTIC TYPOLOGY
TYPOLOGICAL STUDIES IN LANGUAGE (TSL)
A companion series to the journal "STUDIES IN LANGUAGE"
Honorary Editor: Joseph H. Greenberg
General Editor: T. Givón
Editorial Board:
Alton Becker (Michigan) Paul Hopper (Binghamton)
Wallace Chafe (Santa Barbara) Margaret Langdon (San Diego)
Bernard Comrie (Los Angeles) Charles Li (Santa Barbara)
Scott DeLancey (Oregon) Johanna Nichols (Berkeley)
Gerard Diffloth (Chicago) Andrew Pawley (Auckland)
R. M.W.Dixon (Canberra) Frans Plank (Konstanz)
John Haiman (Winnipeg) Gillian Sankoff (Philadelphia)
Kenneth Hale (Cambridge, Mass.) Dan Slobin (Berkeley)
Bernd Heine (Köln) Sandra Thompson (Santa Barbara)
Volumes in this series will be functionally and typologically oriented, cove
ring specific topics in language by collecting together data from a wide variety
of languages and language typologies. The orientation of the volumes will be
substantive rather than formal, with the aim of investigating universais of
human language via as broadly defined a data base as possible, leaning
toward cross-linguistic, diachronic, developmental and live-discourse data.
The series is, in spirit as well as in fact, a continuation of the tradition initiated
by C. Li (Word Order and Word Order Change, Subject and Topic,
Mechanisms for Syntactic Change) and continued by T. Givón (Discourse and
Syntax) and P. Hopper (Tense-Aspect: Between Semantics and Pragmatics).
Volume 17
Michael Hammond, Edith A. Moravcsik and Jessica R. Wirth (eds)
STUDIES IN SYNTACTIC TYPOLOGY
STUDIES IN
SYNTACTIC TYPOLOGY
edited by
MICHAEL HAMMOND, EDITH MORAVCSIK
and JESSICA WIRTH
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
Amsterdam/Philadelphia
1988
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Studies in syntactic typology / edited by Michael Hammond, Edith Moravcsik, and Jessica
Wirth.
p. cm. ~ (Typological studies in language, ISSN 0167-7373; v. 17)
"Papers ... originally presented at a meeting entitled 'Language universais and language
typology' held March 29-30,1985 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee"--Pref.
Bibliography: p.
1. Typology (Linguistics) -- Congresses. 2. Grammar, Comparative and general -- Syntax
~ Congresses. 3. Universais (Linguistics) -- Congresses. I. Hammond, Michael (Michael
T.) II. Moravcsik, Edith A. III. Wirth, Jessica R. IV. Series.
P204.S78 1988
415 - dcl9 88-18632
ISBN 90-272-2891-4 (hb.)/90-272-2892-2 (pb.) (European; alk. paper) CIP
ISBN 1-55619-020-4 (hb.)/1-55619-021-2 (pb.) (U.S.; alk. paper)
© Copyright 1988 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or
any other means, without written permission from the publisher.
Table of contents
List of abbreviations vii
Preface ix
Language typology and linguistic explanation 1
Michael Hammond, Edith Moravcsik, Jessica Wirth
I. AGREEMENT
Agreement and the distribution of anaphora 25
Karen L. Fisher
Finiteness and opacity: evidence from the Balkans 37
Catherine Rudin
Conditions for verb-coded coordinations 53
Linda Schwartz
II. WORD ORDER
Investigating universais of sentence complexity 77
Yukiko Abe, Kazumi Hatasa, J R. Cowan
Universais of negative position 93
Matthew S. Dryer
Accentuation typology, word order and theme-rheme structure 125
Jeffrey Harlig and Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig
Preverbal focusing and type XXIII languages 147
Alan un-Oak Kim
Vi TABLE OF CONTENTS
III. SYNTACTIC AND PRAGMATIC FUNCTIONS
Datives and allatives 173
Edward L. Blansitt
A typology of subjects 193
Jan Terje Faarlund
Universals of topic-comment structure 209
Jeanette K. Gundel
IV. EXPLAINING UNIVERSALS
The pragmatics of word order: predictability, importance and attention 243
T. Givón
On the function of marked and unmarked terms 285
Jeanette K. Gundel, Kathleen Houlihan, Gerald Sanders
Incorporation, parallelism, and focus 303
John Haiman
On explaining some right-left asymmetries in syntactic and morpholog
ical universais 321
John A. Hawkins
The covariation of culture and grammar 359
Revere D. Perkins
Author index 379
Subject index 385
Language index 389
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ABL ablative DEC declarative
ABS absolutive DEF definite
ACC accusative DEM demonstrative
ACT active, actor DEST destinative
ACTOR actor DF directional focus
ADES adessive DIR directional
ADV adverb DO direct object
AF actor focus DS directional subject
AGR agreement DU dualis
ANTI antipassive DUR durative
AOR aorist
antipassive EMPH emphatic pronoun
APPR apprehensional ERG ergative
ASSOC associative EXCL exclusive
ASP aspect EXCLAM exclamative
AUX auxiliary
FEM feminine
BEN benefactive FIN finite
FOC focus
controller FUT future
CAUS causative
CL clitic GEN genitive
CLAM clamative GERUND gerund
COMP comparative GF goal focus
COMPL complementizer
CON conative IF instrumental focus
CONJ conjunction IMP imperative
CONTR contrastive IMPERF imperfect
COORD coordinative IMPFV imperfective
COP copula INCL inclusive
INCONS inconsequential
DAT dative INDEF indefinitive
Viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
INF infinitive PR possessor
INFL verbal infinitive PRE verbal prefix
INSTR instrumental PRED predicate
INTR intransitive PREP preposition
IO indirect object PRES present
IRR irrealis PROG progressive
PROH prohibitive
LIG ligature PTCL particle
LINK, LN linking particle PTCPL participle
LOC locative PURP purposive
MASC masculine Q interrogative
MED medial QUOT quotative
NEG negative RECIP recipient
NOM nominative RED reduplicative
NOML nominalizer REFL reflexive
NONFUT nonfuture REL relative
NONPAST nonpast REP repetitive
NP noun phrase
SG singular
OBJ object SS same subject
OBL oblique STAT stative
OF object focus SUB subordinate
SUBJ subject
PART partitive, participle
PASS passive TNS tense
PAST past TOP topic
PERF perfect TRANS transitive
PFV perfective
PL plural UNM unmarked
POSS possessive
PP past participle voc vocative
Preface
The introduction and the fifteen papers to follow were originally pre
sented at a meeting entitled "Language universais and language typology"
held March 29-30, 1985 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. They
constitute about half of the total program of the conference. Almost all of
the papers that appear here are in revised form.
Most of the papers focus on the syntactic and pragmatic functions that
determine various aspects of sentence structure in human languages and on
two of the crosslinguistically recurrent ways in which such functions may be
coded: verb agreement and constituent order. The three papers discussing
Verb agreement — those by Fisher, Rudin, and Schwartz — make up the
first part of the book. Constituent order is central to the next four studies,
by Abe/Hatasa/Cowan, Dryer, Harlig/Bardovi-Harlig, and Kim: these con
stitute the second section of the book. The three papers concerned with
Syntactic and pragmatic functions per se, by Blansitt, Faarlund, and Gun-
del, appear in the third section. While concern with explaining crosslinguis
tically consistent patterns surfaces in all of the papers, five of them address
this question in a particularly explicit way. These studies — by Givón, Gun-
del/Houlihan/Sanders, Haiman, Hawkins, and Perkins — make up the last
section.
Within the broad domain of grammatical agreement in general, the
three studies by Fisher, Rudin, and Schwartz all deal with the particular
phenomenon of verb agreement. Fisher's and Rudin's papers are even
more closely connected in that both are concerned with the role of verb
agreement in defining domains within which anaphors require antecedents.
Both Fisher and Rudin deal with the distribution of anaphoric elements
such as reflexive pronouns under the approach of Government and Binding
theory. Based primarily on evidence from Khmer and some other Asian
languages, Fisher argues that in some languages anaphors can occur in sub
ject position in embedded clauses — a structure ruled out in English — and
she argues that this is because, whereas English has instances of the con-
