Standard Average European

i ;.1,i jr!
jri:j...li''
ljl
Language Typology and
Language Universals
Sprachtypologie und
sprachliche universalien
La typologie des langues et
les universaux linguistiques
An International Handbook /
Ein internationales Handbuch / Manuel international
Edited by I Herausgegeben von / Edite par
Martin Haspelmath
'
Ekkehard Konig
Wulf Oesterreicher
'
Wolfgang Raible
Volume 2,1 2. Halbband / Tome 2
Walter de Gruvter
'
Berlin
'
New York
2001
i * . '
1492 XIV. Typological characterization of language families and linguistic areas
107. The European linguistic area: Standard Average European
l i r l l t t '
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ri l i
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t ; ' , r ,
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L lntroduction
2. The major SAE features
3. Some further likely SAE features
4. Degrees of membership in SAE
5. How did SAE come into being?
6. Abbreviations of language names
7. References
1. Introducti on
This article summarizes some of the main
pieces of evidence for a linguistic area (or
Sprachbund) in Europe that comprises the
Romance, Germanic and Balto-Slavic lan-
guages, the Balkan languages. and more mar-
ginally also the westernmost Finno-Ugrian
languages
lthese
will be called core European
languages in this article). This linguistic area
is sometimes called Standard Average Euro-
pean (abbreviated SAE), following Whorf
(1941)
[956:
138]. The exi stence of thi s l i n-
guistic area is a relatively new insight (cf.
Bechert et al . 1990, Berni ni & Ramat 1996,
Haspelmath 1998, van der Auwera 1998, Ko-
ni g & Haspel math 1999).
While the close syntactic parallels among
the Balkan languages have struck linguists
since the l9th century and the existence of
a Balkan Sprachbund has been universally
accepted, the European linguistic area has
long been overlooked. This may at first ap-
pear surprising, because the members of the
Sprachbund are among the best studied lan-
guages of the world. However, it is easy to
understand why linguists have been slow to
appreciate the significance of the similarities
among the core European languages: Since
most comparative linguists know these lan-
guages particularly well, they have tended to
see non-European languages as special and
unusual, and the similarities arnong the
European languages have not seemed sur-
pri si ng. Thus, i t was onl y toward the end of
the 20th century, as more and more had be-
come known about the grammatical proper-
ties of the languages of the rest of the world,
that linguists realized how peculiar the core
European languages are in some ways when
seen in the world-wide context. From this
perspective. Standard Average European may
even appear as an
"exoti c
l anguage" (Dahl
1990) .
A linguistic area can be recognized when
a number of geographi cal l y conti guous l an-
guages share structural features which cannot
be due to retention from a common proto-
language and which give these languages a
profile that makes them stand out among the
surrounding languages. There is thus no min-
imum number of languages that a linguistic
area comprises
Qtace
Stolz 2001a). In prin-
ciple, there could be a linguistic area con-
sisting of
just
two languages (though this
would be rather uninteresting), and there
are also very large (continent-sized) linguistic
areas (Dryer 1989a). Likewise, there is no
minimum number of structural features that
the languages must share in order to qualify
as a Sprachbund. For instance, Jakobson
(1931) establ i shes hi s
"Eurasi an
l i ngui sti c
area" on the basis of
just
two phonological
features, but of course an area that shares
more features is more interesting. As will be
shown below, Standard Average European
languages share over a dozen highly charac-
teristic features, so we are dealing with a very
interesting Sprachbund.
A linguistic area is particularly striking
when it comprises languages from genealog-
ically unrelated languages (like the South
Asian linguistic area (* fut. 109), or the
Mesoamerican linguistic area (+ Art. ll0)),
but this is not a necessary feature of a
Sprachbund. The Balkan languages are all
Indo-European, but they are from different
families within Indo-European (Romance,
Slavic. Greek. Albanian). and not all lan-
guages of these families belong to the Baikan
linguistic area, so nobody questions the va-
lidity of the Balkan Sprachbund (- tut. 108).
In the case of SAE, three entire branches
of Indo-European (Romance, Germanic and
Balto-Slavic) belong to the linguistic area.
However, here too it is clear that we are
not dealing with a genealogical grouping,
because nobody ever proposed a branch of
Indo-European that consists of precisely
these three families. On the contrary, Indo-
Europeanists typically assume a particularly
close genealogical relationship between Itaiic
and Celtic (and sometimes even an Italo-
Celtic protolanguage), but Romance (the sole
descendant of ltalic) is inside SAE, while the
Celtic languages do not belong to SAE. And
since so much is known about the grammat-
ical properties that Proto-lndo-European
must have possessed, it is fairly easy to test
whether an SAE feature is an Indo-Euro-
peanism or not. As was shown in Haspelmath
(1998), most of the characteristic SAE fea-
tures (also called Europeanisms here) are not
Indo-Europeanisms but later common inno_
vations.
Thus, what needs to be shown in order to
..
demonstrate that a structural feature is a \
Europeanism is
(D that the great majority of core European
languages possesses it;
(ii) that the geographically
adjacent lan_
guages lack it (i. e. Celtic in the west,
Turkic, eastern Uralic, Abkhaz-Adygh-
ean and Nakh-Daghestanian
in the eist,
and perhaps
Afro-Asiatic in the south):
(iii) that the eastern Indo-European
lan-
guages lack it (Armenian,
Iranian. In_
di c); and
(iv) that this feature is not found in the ma-
jority
of the world's languages.
Par ilarly the last point is not easy to de-
monstrate for many features because there
are still far too few representative world-wide
studies of grammatical
structures, so to the
extent that our knowledge about the world's
Ianguages is incomplete and biased. we can-
not be sure about the European linguistic
area. In this article, I will cite whatevlr in_
formation is available, and sometimes I will
have to resort to impressionistic
observa-
tions.
The designation
"core
European lan_
guage" for members of,SAE is diliberatelv
vague, because the European linguistic area
does not have sharp boundariei. It seems
possible
to identify a nucleus consistins of
continental West Germanic languages (i.g.
Dutch, G_erman) and Gallo-Romance (e. g.
French, Occitan, northern Italo-Romancej.
For this set of languages, van der Auwera
(1998a:-824) proposes
the name Charlemagne
Spr )und. Of the other languages, th6se
which are geographically
furtier from this
center also seem to share significantly fewer
SAE features, i. e. Ibero-Romance.
insular
Scandinavian (Icelandic
and Faroese), East
Slavic (Russian,
Ukrainian, Belorussian) and
Baltic. Even English, a West Germanic lan_
guage, is clearly not within the nucleus. Of
the non-IndolEuropean
languages of Europe,
the-western Uralic languages (i. e. Hungarian
and Balto-Finnic) are at least marginal-mem_
bers ofStandard Average Europea-n; they are
ln many ways strikingly different from east_
ern Uralic. Maltese also exhibits a number of
Europeanisms
not shared by other Arabic
varieties, but Basque seems to show very few
of them. Somewhat further to the east. Geor-
gi an i n the southern Caucasus (and perhaps
the other Kartvelian languages) shares a
surprising number of features with the core
European languages. These impressionistic
statements should eventually be quantified.
but since it is not clear how much weisht
shoul d be attached to each feature. thi s i s i ot
straightforward.
All ofthe features discussed below are svn-
tactic. or concern the existence of certiin
morphosyntactic categories. I am not aware
of any phonological properties characteristic
of the core European languages (cf.
Jakob-
son l 93l : 182;
"do
si x por ne udal os' naj ti ni
odnogo obsdeevropej skogo
... pol oZi tel ' nogo
fonologideskogo priznaka
[so
far not a sin[le
Europe-wide positive phonological
feature lias
been foundl"). Perhaps phonologists
have
not looked hard enough, but at least one ma-
jor
recent study of word prosody in Euro-
pean languages has not found any phonolog-
ical evidence for Standard Average-Europein
(van
der Hulst et al. 1999, especially Maps
I
-4)
(but
cf. Pisani 1969). A few eeneralizi-
tions are discussed by Ternes (199-3),
but he
finds that in most respects European lan-
guages are unremarkable from a world-wide
perspective.
Perhaps the only features wortlr
mentioning are the relatively large vowel in-
ventories (no
3-vowel or 4-vowel inventories)
and the rel ati vel y commou consonant cl us-
ters (no
restriction to CV syllables). In these
respects, European languages are not average.
Dut they are by no means extreme either.
2. The major Standard Average
European features
In this section I will discuss a dozen sram-
matical features that are characteristic 6f the
core European languages and that together
define the SAE Sprachbund. ln each case I
will briefly dehne the feature and sive a few
examples from SAE languages. Thin a name
map, which indicates the approximate loca-
tion of languages by the arrangement of (ab-
breviated) language names, shows the distri-
bution of the various feature values within
Europe. In each case it can be observed that
the nuclear SAE languages are within the
SAE isogloss, and that the marsinal lan-
guages tend to be outside the isoiloss to a
greater
or lesser extent. (part
of thE material
presented
here was already included in Has-
pel math 1998.)
1493
t494
XlV. Typological characterization of language families and linguistic areas
ll l
t r
f;
rtttt'
r l .
t - ' i ' :
1. l i
l r
f : r '
t
: i i
! i t ' i r,
ri ri l i l
2.1. Definite and indefinite articles
Both a definite and an indefinite article
(e' g'
English the bookla book;
'tut'
62) exist in
all
-Romance
and almost all Germanic lan-
guages plus some of the Balkan languages
iUoaern
Greek, perhaps Albanian and Bul-
garian), but not outside Standard Average
Enropean. To be sure, their forms and syn-
tactii behavior show considerable diversity
(see Nocentini 1996 for an overview)' but
their very existence is characteristic enough'
The distribution of articles in European lan-
guages i s shown i n Map 107.1.
(Abbrevi -
itions of language names are given in the Ap'
pendix.)
2.2. Relative clauses with relative
pronouns
The type of relative clause found in languages
such as German, French or Russian seems to
be unique to Standard Average European
languagis. It is characterized
by the follow-
ine four features: The relative clause is post-
no-minal, there is an inflecting relative pro-
noun, this pronoun introduces the relative
clause, and ihe relative
pronoun functions as
a resumptive, i. e. it signals the head's role
within tlie relative clause
(cf. Lehmann 1984:
103-109, Comri e 1998)' In Engl i sh, a rel a-
tive construction
like the suspicious woman
whom I described also displays all these fea-
tures. Furtherrnore, in most SAE languages
the relative pronoun is based on an interrog-
ative pronoun (this is true of all Romance, all
Slavii and some Germanic languages, Mod-
ern Greek, as well as Hungarian and Geor-
gian). (Languages like German, whose rela-
Iiu. p.onoun is based on a demonstrative,
or
Finnish, which has a special relative
pro-
noun, are not common.) The geographical
distribution of the relative pronoun strategy
i s shown i n MaP 107' 2.
Tal
tz\
CB
Trk Am
-
definite and indefinite article present
- - - -
only dehnite article present
\
Map 107.1: Definite and indefinite article
In large parts of eastern Europe there are
no articlel at all
(East Slavic, West Slavic,
Finno-Ugrian other than Hungarian, Turki-c'
Nakh-Daghestanian,
Ikrtvelian). Some neigh-
boring non-SAE languages do have definite
articles
(e. g. Celtic, Semitic, Abkhaz' Mord-
vin). and Turkish has an indefinite article,
but no neighboring non-SAE language has
both definite and indefinite articles. The only
exception among Germanic languages, Ice-
landic
(which only has definite articles like
nearby Celtic), is also the most peripheral
Germanic language geographically. We can
also be certain that the existence of definite
and indefinite articles is not an Indo-Euro-
peanism: The Iranian and Indic languages
i,au. g.n.tully lacked articles throughout
their history.
Worl d-wi de, arti cl es are not nearl y as
common as in Europe: According to Dryer's
(1989b: 85) frndi ngs,
"i t
appears that about a
itti.d of the languages of the world employ
arti cl es"
(125 out of a sampl e of about 400
languages). Only 3l languages of those in
Drler'J sample
(i. e' less than 8%) have both
definite and indehnite articles.
- - - -
only particle relative clause
Map 107.2: Two relative clause types in Europe
The only other type that is widespread
in
Europe is the postnominal relative clause
introduced by a relative particle (Lehmann
1984: 85-87), which often occurs in the same
language beside the resumptive relative
pro-
no,in tlp"
just described
(an English elam.nle
would'be
-the
radio that I bought)' Particle
relatives of this type exist in most Slavic and
Romance languages, as well as in Scandina-
vian languag.s unA Modern Greek, but also
in Welstian-d Irish (Lehmann 1984: 88-90)'
The relative
particle is sometimes
diffrcult.to
distinguish from a degenerate
resumptlve
pronoun, and in many European languages
EU Dut
Fr
Sftl
Eng Ddt Pol RG
Gm Cz
Fr HnE Uk
Sln
It SCr
-
relative clause with introducing relative pro-
107. The Eul ol xan l i rrgui sti c atei r: Statrdarcl Avct' :tgc Li ttrtl pcatt
it developed from a relative pronoun thlouglr
the graclual loss of iuflectional distinctions.
However. this also rneans tlrat the relativc
clause loscs its specifically European tlavor.
bectruse particle relatives are also ilttested
widely elsewhere in the world (e . g. in l'cr'-
sian, Moderu l-leblew. Nahuatl. Inclonesian.
Yorubar, and Thai , cf. Lehnrann 1984: 85-
97).
l'Iowever. 1he relativc prolloun stfategy
clear'ly is typically liulopcau. It is not founcl
in the easterrr Inclo-Europcan languages, irncl
as Comri e (1998: 6l ) notes.
"rel ati ve
cl auscs
fonned usi l rg the rel ati ve pronoul t stl atcgy
ate quite exceptioual outside Europc. cxccpt
as a recent tcsult'of the influcnce of Euro-
peal l l anguages...
' Ihe
rel ati ve pronoun
strategy thus seems to be a lcmarkable areal
typological fcatulc of Er:r<lpcan lauguag,cs.
especially the staudard written languages".
2.3.
'I-{ave'-perfect
Anothcr wcl l -known l ' cal ul c typi cal ol ' SAI:
languages is the (transitivc) perfect ftlnnccl by
'have'
plus a passive participle (e. g. llnglish
I have v'riuen, Swedishyhg iar.s/rriuir. Slran-
ish he escrito:
-'
Art. 59). A pcr'fuct of this
kind exists in all Romancc and Gennanic lan-
guages plus some of the llalkan languages
(Albanian,
Modcrn Greek, Macedonian). :rnd
also iu Cz.ech (Garvin 1949: 84).
'l'trcsc
pcr-
fects do not all rnean the sanrc thing, becansc
they :rle at different stages itr the glanrmati-
calizirtiou proccss: in French and German.
thc pcll'cct can be uscd as n uorrnal pcrfcctivc
past) including the function of a uarrative
tensc, whilc iu Spanish, English and Sweclish
the pelfect has a clistinct preseut-autelior
meaning. Wrat is important here is that they
all rnust have had basically the sanrc neauing
when tlrey welc first cleateri. The geographi-
cal distributiou of
'lrave'-pcrf'ccts
in Europc
i s shorvn i n Map 107,3.
l r k
t?g
cei
r 495
l n contl ast to the l anguages
i ust
metrti oned.
i u Sl avi c. l :i nno-Ugl i au and Arrneui an thc
perl cct i s usual l y basecl on a parti ci pi al
constrr"rcti ou wi th l n acti vc parti ci pl c and a
coprrl a (c. g. Fi nni sl t ol e-n see-nu!
[be-
l sc
l ccei vc-nrcr]
' l
havc rccei ved' ). l l ungari an
seems to l ack a pcrfcct compl etcl y. Irt sotuc
Nukh-Daghestani an l anguages (e. g. I-ez-gi an
and Goclobeli;. tlre pcrfcct is folrnecl on the
basi s of the past convcl b pl us thc col rul a.
Geol gi an corues cl oscst to tl rc SAl r prototypc
i n that i ts transi ti ve pcrl ' cct i s bascd on a pas-
si vc pal ti ci pl e. but thi s i s conrbi necl wi th thc
copul u rathcr than the transi ti ve vcrb
' have' .
so
(hat
t.l rc pcrl cct has a qul si -pi rssi vc st l uc-
[ul c, wi th thc agcnt i n tl rc dati ve case (' The
l cttcr i s-wri ttcu to-mc' . r' atl rcr tban
' l
havc-
wl i tten thc l etter' ). In Wel sh. tl re
;rel l ' ect
i s
fornrcd rvi th thc prcposi ti on rl erl i ' aftcr' (' SIrc
i s aftcl scl l i ng thc housc' for'
' She
has sol cl
tl tc housc' ).
-l -hc
casl .cru Indo-Eul opean l arr-
guagcs ul so l ack a
' l ravc' -l tcrfcct
{ l bl i n-
stancc. botl r Pcrsi an and I-l i ndi /tj rdu havc a
perl cct ba.r^cd on a parti ci pl c pl us thc copul a,
sornervhat l i kc Sl avi c antl Armeni trn).
Dahl t 1995. 199( r : 3( r 5) . t aki ng a gl obal
pcrspccti vc. uotcs that thc' have' -pcr-fect i s :rl -
most excl usi vel y l bund i n l i uropc. Nou' one
rni ght ob.j ect that thi s i s not a pri mi ti ve fea-
ture of Eul opean Innguage.s. Many l anguages
do not usc a transi ti vc
' havc' -vcrb
l i l r i ntl i -
cl ti ng prccl i ci rti vc possc' ssi on at al l . and i t hi rs
i n l act bccn suggcstccl that the vel y exi steuce
of a transi ti vc vcrb of precl i cati vc possessi on
i s a l i ut' opcani sm (c.g. I-i rzarcl 1990: l 4(r-.47;
Il cnvcni stc 1960
[966:
l 9-51:
"1.,' cxprcssi on
l a
pl us courante cl u rapport i ndi quc cl ans nos
langucs par nrurr s'inoncc il f invclse par [trc
ri ... Tel l c es1 l a si tuati on dans l a nra.j ol i tc dcs
l angues.")
' fhe
restri cti on of a
' havc' -perfcct
Lo Europc woul cl then bc.j urst a col l sequcnce
of thi s (cf.
Dahl 1990: 7). l -l owever. so far no
publ i .shccl l cscatcl r l ras cl ocul l rcntecl an arci rl
l cstl i cti on l i rr'
' havc'
vcrbs. Fr<l ur l .l ci nc' s
( 1997: 47- 50. 240- 44) sur vcy o[ pr edi cat i ve
posscssi vc constLucti ons, not nrucl t support
can bc dl awn for such u cl ai m. Sti l l , tl ri s i s
an inl.clesting idea 1o l>c aclclresscd by {'r"rlthcr'
l escarch. Il ' ' hervc' -vcl bs turn out to be typi -
cal of Eul ope. tl rat woul cl fi t wi th tl re ten-
clcncy of lJulopcan languages to have norni-
nati ve expel i encers i n expcl i enti al verbs (sec
thc rrext sccti on).
2.4. Nomi nati vc cxperi encers
' l ' hcrc
arc tw() wi tys ol ' cxpl cssi ng cxpcri cuccr
illguntct'lts of verbs of sensation. cl'uotiotl.
cogni ti on and pcrcepti on: The exl reri cncer
Map 107.3:
' 11nys' -perfects
in Eulope
I
1ll!l
: l i l l
"' :
t496
may be assi uri l ated to agents and coded as
i t nouri nati vc subi cct (e. g. / /i Ac i t), or i t ntrv
be assi uri l ated to a pati cnt or goal , so that
the sti mul us argument i s codcd as thc nomi -
native subject (e. g. 1/ pleuses lrc,). In Bos-
song' s (1998) typol ogy, the fi rst typc i s cal l ed
general i ;i ng, and the second typc i s cal l ed
i rtverti ng. Bossong studi es the expressi on of
ten common expcri cnti al predi cates i n 40
European l auguages. l l c cornputcs thc rcl a-
tion between inverting predicates and gener-
al i zi ng predi cates, arri vi ng at l i gurcs bctween
0.0 fbr Engl i sh (where al l predi cates are
general i zi ng) and 5.0 for Lezgi an (wherc al l
predi cates are i nverti ngl . By arbi trari l y di vi d-
i ng the l anguages i nto those showi ng pre-
dorni nant general i zati on (rati os betwecn 0.0
and 0.8) and those shorvi ng prcdouri nant
i nversi on (rati os betrveen 0.8 and 5.0). we
arri ve at the geographi cal pattcrn shown i u
Map 107. 4.
N( r ( ) l : ) Swdo I
t)ut (o fl)
Cnn(t ; rt
Thus, Bossong' s study basi cal l y confi rms
earl i er cl ai ms (Lazard 1990: 246-47, Dahl
1990: 7) that the gencral i zi ug typc i s charac-
teri sti c of SAE. al though some of the fi g-
ures are perhaps a bi t surpri si ng (e. g. the tact
that Hungari an turns out to be more SAE
than German or Dutch, and the i ncl usi on of
Turki sh, but not Romani an or Al bani an.
wi th respect to ti ri s feature). It i s not possi bl e
to expl ai n everythi ng here, but rve evi dentl y
have before us a fai rl y typi cal SAE pattem
with French and English at tl're center, Celtic
(pl us
Icel andi c thi s ti rne) at the rvestern mar-
gi n, Bal to-Sl avi c, Fi uno-Ugri an and Cauca-
si atr at the eastern margi n, and l ai rl y gradual
transi ti ons wi thi n the macro-areas. No sys-
tcmati c worl d-wi de studi es havc been made.
but at l east the behavi or of eastern Indo-
XI V.
' f ypol ogi cal
charact eri zat i ou of l anguage f ami l i es and l i ngui st i c arcas
European i s fai rl y cl ear: l ndi c l anguages are
rvcl l -kno*' n tor thci r
"dati ve
subi ects" of
experi cncer vcrbs, so agai u the l ' caturc i s
not geneti c (see al so Masi ca 1976, especi al l y
Map 6. for the areal di stri buti on of dati ve
subj ects i n Eurasi a and northern Afri ca).
(See Haspel math 2001 for rnore di scussi on
of experiential predicates in European lan-
guages.)
2.5. Parti ci pi al passi ve
Standard Average Europcan l anguages typi -
cal l y have a canoni cal passi ve constructi on
(*
Art.67) formed rvi th a passi ve parti ci pl e
pl us an i ntransi ti ve copul a-l i ke verb (' be' ,
' becorne' ,
or tl .re l i ke). In thi s passi ve the
original direct object becomes thc subject and
the ori gi nal subj cct may be orni tted, but i t
may al so be expressed as an adverbi al agent
phrase. Such constructi ons occur i n al l Ro-
nl auce and Germani c l anguages, but al so i n
l : i rno87) S. rm(i l . 8l )
L\ l ru. 83)
I -t v(t s)
f l
t
. i i
t;,ili
tliiii,,
I f{iiiti,
Ul i l l l r
Lil(o ri:r)
I'ol(0.881 I JB()0)
l l rt (01{) Cz(o 76)
I l ngon) Fr ( o u)
&i l (0.10)
sl ' nor:t
I ' r t ( o l Jl Bl g()s)
Crktr:zlt Trkru
Map 107. . 1: Prcdont i nant gcrrcrrl i zat i on (cel )t er) vs. i nversi on (pcri phcry)
al l Sl avi c (i ncl udi ng East Sl avi c) and Bal kan
languages, as rvell as in lrish. The geographi-
cal di stri buti on of such parti ci pi al passi ves i s
shown i u Map 107. 5.
I t (r{8)
SCr {}ri
I l onr(2. b)
Ir Lt!
ht
Fog Dut Pol RE
Brt Cnn Cz
ljr I lng Lkt
5ln
It SCt
Spn Srd llun
l'rt Alb Bl8
Nl l t Crk
Map 107. 5: I ' art i ci pi al passi ves i n Europc
V.E
t491
l0?. The European linguistic area: Standard Average European
No passives exist in Nakh-Daghestanian
and
in }iungarian, and passives of different for-
mal types are found in Turkic, Georgian, and
Armenian
(stem suffrx), in Basque, and in
Celtic
(cf. the Welsh
'get'-passive: 'Terry
got
his hitting by a snowball' for'Terry
got hit
by a snowball'). Finnish and Irish have pas-
sives ofa different syntactic type: In this con-
struction, only the subject is backgrounded,
while the direct object remains in its place.
Participial
passives are very rare in lan-
suases other than Standard Average Euro-
i"ui.
ln Haspelmath
(1990) I surveyed a
world-wide sample of eighty languages and
found that a passive exists only in the mi-
nority of the languages
(thirty-one)' Of these
thirty-one languages, only four have.a pas-
sive iormed from a participle plus an intran-
sitive auxiliary and two of them are Euro-
pean languages
(Latin and Danish). The
most common formal type of passive is the
stem sufftx
(found in twenty-ftve languages)'
Syntactically, the possibility of an adverbial
agent phrase is also by no means universal,
but it is characteristic of SAE languages
(La-
zard 1990:246).
It must be admitted that the SAE status of
this feature is less evident than that of the
frrst two features because the eastern lndo-
European languages also tend to have pas-
sives of this type. In fact, in my 1990 study'
the two non-European languages with parti-
ciple-auxiliary
passives were Baluchi (an lra-
nian language) and Maithili
(an Indic lan-
guage). Thus', one might say that this feature
is an Indo-European
genealogical feature'
However, at least the Celtic languages and
Armenian, two non-SAE branches of Indo-
European, do not have such passives, and
Maltese is a non-Indo-European
language
with such a passive (calqued from Italian)'
2.6. Anticausative
Prominence
There are three ways in which languages can
express inchoative+ausative
alternations such
as
'get
losVlose',
'break
(intr.)/break (tr')',
'rise/raise'.
One is by means of a causative
derivation
(- Art.66), i.e' a derived verb
based on the inchoative member of the al-
ternation, e. g. Mongolian xail-uul''melt
(tr)',
.
from xajl-
'melt
(intr.)'. The second is by
means oi an anticausative derivation, i. e. a
derived verb based on the causative member,
e. g. Russian izmenit''sja
'change
(intr')', from
izimi{
tchange
(tr.)'. (The third type, in
which neither member is derived from the
other, i. e. non'directed alternations, will not
be considered further here.) In Haspelmath
(1993), I exami ned 3l verb pai rs i n 2l -J1n-
guages and found that languages differ
greatly in the way inchoative-causatlve
palrs
are expressed: Some languages ate anticau-
sative-protninent,
preferring anticausatives
to
causatives, while others are causalive-promi-
nent. lt turns out that anticausative-promi-
nence is a characteristic feature of SAE' In
my sample, German, French, Romanian,
Russian, Modern Greek and Lithuanian
show the highest percentages of anticausative
verb pairs (between 100% and 74'h of all
pairs that do not belong to the third,-non-
directed, type). The percentage in the Euro-
pean languages of my sample are shown in
Map 107. 6.
Fin
47"k
lzg
40'/"
65'/"
-
70- 100% anticausatives
- - - -
50-70% anticausatives
Map 107.6: Percentage of anticausative pairs
By contrast, Asian languages show much
lower percentages of anticausatives,
prefer-
ring causatives instead
(e. g. Indonesian: 0'%.
Mongol i an: 1l %, Turki sh: 34%, Hi ndi /Urdu
35u/o, Lezgian: 40'%). An intermediate posi-
tion is occupied by the Finno-Ugrian lan-
guages of eastern Europe
(Finnish 47'%'
Udmurt 46oh, Hungarian Muk) as well as
Georgian
(68%) and Armenian (65'lu). In a
study involving more languages from Asia,
Africa and Europe but less language-partic-
ular detail. Masica
(1976) found a clear dis-
tinctive pattern for Europe: few causatives,
heavy reliance on anticausatives
(see espe-
cially his Maps 2 and 3). ln a recent world-
wide study of 18 verbs from 80 languages,
Nichols et al. (to appear) report that in in-
choative-causative
pairs involving inanimate
participants (i. e. the most typical subtype)'
ihe causative is generally favored worldwide
and is strongly disfavored only in Europe.
Lit
Jng
44%
Rom
96%
r498
XIV. Typological characterization
of language families and linguistic areas
, 1l l ! l
ti ti
, ' i
l ; , i
_
Anti causati ve-promi nence
i s not an Indo_
turopeani sm:
Ol der l ndo_European
had a
productive
causative
formation,
which losi
its productivity
in the European
b;.;;;;
but continued
to be produciive
in .urt.in
Indo-European
(cf.
the low ngrr. of:jy"-un_
ti causati ves
i n Hi ndi /Urdu).
2.7. Dative external possessors
In Kdni g & Haspel math (199g)
and Hasoel _
math (1999),
we studi ed the cl i stri buti on
of
external possessors
in thirty European lan_
guages (-
Art. 73). We found three main lan_
guage
types in Europe: (i)
those with dative
ex.ternal possessors.
e. g. Gernran Die Mutter
t'uscttt
dent Kind die Huure
.The
mother is
washi ng the chi l d' s hai r., (i i )
those wi th l oca_
tiv_e external possessors,
e. g. Swedish Nrigon
briit armen pd honont
,soireone
brokJK
arm (l i t.
on hi m)' , and (i i i )
those that l aci
external possessors
and must express porrar_
sors NP-internally,
e. g. Englislr.
me SAf
teature. external possessors
i n the dati ve, i s
l ound l n Ronrance.
Conti nental
West Ger_
mani c, Bal to-Sl avi c,
Hungari an
anO Sal kan
languages (Greek,
Albanian).
North Ger-
manic and Balto-Finnic
languages
nave toca-
tive external possessors,
i. e-. th--ey ura ,or"_
what. peripheral
SAE languages
*itt, ..rp".t
to thi s feature. The geographi cal
di stri bui i on
l s sl r own i n Map 107. 7.
hyena ate the hare's fish'). This type is not
found in Europe at all. Conve.srty,'Outiue
fx-
ternal possessors
seem to be very rare outside
Europe (the
only case I am awire of is E;..
cf. Ameka 1996), so this is a u".y .oburr"î
ample of an SAE feature.
2.8. Negative pronouns
and lack of
verbal negation
The areal distribution
of negation in Eurooe
has been studied in detaif by Bernini
'&
Ramat (1996) (see
also Ramat & Sernini
1990). Here I. rvill single out just
on. urp..i
ol negatl on.
the cooccurrence
ofverbal ni sa_
tion with negative indefinite pronounr.
i dlr-
tinguish rwo main types: (i) V + Nt (verb I
negative indefinite),
e. g. German Niernand
kontmt
'nobody
comes', and (ii) NV + NI
(negated
verb + negative indefinitet.
e. e.
Modern Greek Kandnas dhen irxete
,noboiv
(l i t.
not) comes' . A thi rd, *l ^.a tvp. rni ntl
be distinguished
in which verbai n.nuiion
cooccu.rs with negative indefinites
onl/when
the indefinite
follows the verb but noi when
it precedes
it. e. g. Italian Nessuno yiene
,no_
body comes'. but Non ho visto nesszro
.Not
I
have.seen.nobody'.
For our purposes
we can
crassrl y thl s type as a subtype of (i ), V + NI.
The Standard Average European typ. L
V + NI (cf.
Bernini & Ramat f SgO: f S+, Has_
pelmath
1997:202).It
is found in French (if
we disregard the particle
.,le), Occitan and all
\rennantc tanguages.
as well as (in the mixed
vanety) in Ibero- and ltalo_Romance
and Al_
banian (but
not in Romanian
or other Bal_
kan languages).
The geographical
distribu_
tl on of the types i s shown on Man 107.g.
t ;
t : , i i
f
i .i i ;,
[ i i i l i .
Fin
fft
Lfu
Lir
Pol
H"g
Map 107.7: Dati ve extemal possessor
In the far west (Wel sh.
Breron. Engl i sh) and
l n tne southeast
l Turki sh. Lezgi an) ol -Europe
there are l anguages
whi ch do*not fruu. .î Jr_
nal possessors
at al l . The eastern l ndo_Euro_
pean languages
Kurdish,
persian
and Hindi/
Urdu al so bel ong to thi s type. Outsi de Europe
a fourth rype enj oys consi derabl e popul ari fy:
the
"rel ati on-usurpi ng"
type. where' he pos_
sessor
"usurps"
the syntacti c rel ati on
of the
possessum (e. g. Chi chewa,
a Bantu l anguage,
has
'The
hyena are the hare the fish' i"i
.firJ
Rom I zo
Brs
aG)-"
_ . \ \ - - l
I r k M
Map 107. 8: . Lu1ey"_g. r
l acki ng verbal negat i on
wl t h a negat i ve i ndef i ni t e
Al l t he east ern European
l anguages (Bal t o_
Jl avrc. Frnno-Ugri an.
Turki c, Nakh-Daghes-
l l ni ol ).wi rh
the excepri on
of Georgi ani and
the Celtic languages
in the west ihow the
NV + NI type. Thi s type i s al so that of the
D\]t pol
Ru
Cm Cz
F.
Hng Ukr
Bq
stn
It scr
spn srd
Ronr
Pd
Alb BtB
Nl l t
Grk
t499
eastern Indo-European
languages
(lranian
and lndic), as well as that of the clear major-
ity of the world's languages: Kahrel
(1996)
his studied negation in a representative world-
wide sample of 40 languages and found only
five languages with V + NI negative
pat-
terns, one of which is the SAE language
Dutch
(the
other four are Mangarayi
(Aus-
tralia), Evenki, Chukchi
(Siberia)' and Nama
(southern Africa)), as against 4l NV + Nl
patterns, and seven others. I found a very sim-
ilar pattern in my (non-representative) sample
of 40 languages
(Haspelmath 1997: 202).
2.9. Particles in comparative constructions
Comparative constructions were investigated
by Stassen
(1985) in a world-wide study of l9
languages
(- fut.75). Stassen distinguishes
six main ways in which the standard of com-
parison may be expressed: Three kinds of loc-
itive comparatives
('bigger from X',
'bigger
to X',
'bigger
at X'), the exceed comparative
('Y is big exceeding X'), the conjoined com-
parative ('Y is big, X is little'), and the par-
ticle comparative
('bigger than X')' The par-
ticle in this latter type is often related to a
relative pronoun (cf. English thanl that' Latin
quamlqui), and the case marking of the stan-
dard is not influenced by the particle (so that
it is possible to distinguish
'I
love you m-ore
than she' from'I love you more than her').
fu Heine
(1994) notes, the six types are not
evenly distributed among the languages. of
the world. Of the l8 particle comparatives
in Stassen's\ample, l3 are in Europe, and of
the l7 European languages in the sample, l3
have a particle comparative. The distribution
within Europe again conforms to our expec-
tations: Particle comparatives are found in
Germanic, Romance, Balto-Slavic, the Bal-
kans, Hungarian, Finnish and Basque, so this
is the SABtype. The distribution is shown in
Map 107.9.
The locative comparatives are all at the west-
ern fringe
(Breton) or the eastern tiinge of
Europe l f
i nni sh, Russi an, Nenets. Ubykh'
Turki sh. Laz). The other two types do tl ot
exist at all in Europe
-
the exceed compara-
tive is founcl particularly in Africa. and the
conjoined comparative occurs only in the
Americas and Oceania.
2. 10. Rel at i ve- based equat i ve const r uct i ons
Compari son of equal i ty
(equati ve construc-
tions) is discussed less often than compartson
of i nequal i ty, and nobody has undertaken- a
study of equati ves on a worl d-wi de scal e'
Sti l l , there are good reasons to thi nk that
equati ve constructi ons
provi de evi dence.for
Sfandard Average European
(Haspelmath &
Buchhol z 1998). l n Europe. tnany l anguages
have an equati ve constructi on that i s based
on an adverbi al rel ati ve-cl ause constructl on'
For exampl e, Catal an has /or Z corn X' as Z
as X'
(where Z is the adjective and X is the
standard). Catal an cont i s an adverbi al rel a-
tive pronoun , and tan is a correlative demon-
stratlve. A very similar construction is found
elsewhere in Romance
(Portugrtese lrio Z
conto X, Occitan tan Z corna l'), in Germantc
(German
so Z tt'ie,f . in Slavic
(Czech tak Z
jako X, Russian tak(oi) le Z kak .l,), in Ro-
mani
(katle Z sar l). in Hungarian
(olvan Z
mint X), in Finnish
(niin Z kuin X), and in
Georgian
(isetive Z rogorc -l'). ln the English
constiuction, the relative-clause origin of cs
is not fully transparent synchronically. but
diachronically as derives from a demonstra-
tive
(eull slld > a// so) that was also used
as a rel ati ve pronoun. In some Bal kan l an-
guages. the correlative demonstrative is not
used
(e. g. Bul gari an xubaw koto l ebe
' as
pretty as you' ), but the standard marker i s
cl earl y of rel ati ve-pronoun ori gi n.
(There i s
probably some connection between the rela-
i i ue-p.onoun ori gi n of equati ve markers and
the relative-pronoun origin of comparatlve
standard markers that we saw i n
$
2.9.).
Non-SAE languages have quite dift'erent
equati ve constructi ons. Many SOV l anguages
in eastern Europe have a special equative
standard marker
(Lezgian -ti:, Kalmyk iitrg:
also Basque be:ain and Maltese daqs), and
the Celtic languages have a special
(non-
demonstrative) marker on the adjective
(e. g.
lrish chornh Z le X'EQUATIvE Z with X'). ln
the Scandinavian languages, the word
'equ-
ally' is used on the adjective
(e. g. Swedish
l i ka Z som X' equal l y Z as X' ). The di stri -
bution of the relative-based equative con-
, ' uby
" t",
'.
Ttk
-
particle comparative
- - - -
locative comparatlve
Map 107.9: Comparative types in Europe
107. The European linguistic area: Standard Average Europeurr
r 50l
, in the eastern Caucasus, and indee.d in manv
other parts of the world, but they *uy nru.",
.have
had subject person
agreement mirking.)
2.12. Intensifier-reflexive
differentiation
Intensifiers are words like English self, Ger-
man sclbsl, French nftnrc and Russiin ,ralr
that characterize
a noun phrase
rel.erent as
central as opposed to an implicit
or explicit
periplrery (e. g. The
pope
hir)self gow i, i,i
audience, i. e. not just
the ior*ainols f-
Art.57: Kci ni g & Si emund 1999). In manv
Ianguages,
the intensifie,
.^pr.rrion
i, ;i;6
used. as a reflexive pronoun,
for inrtan." in
Persran (xod-ai
'himself':
Huiang xocl_oi
'Hushang
himself',
and Huiang xoias_ru2
did
[Hu-shang self-ecc saw]
,Hushing
saw hini
self). However, a feature that is" typicai of
SAE languages
is the differentiation
oi..ff.^_
lve pronouns
and intensifiers (Konig
& Has_
peln'-'h
1999). For instance,
German'nas
srclr
(refir
".ve) vs. selbst (intensifier),
Russian tras
sebja vs. sall, Italian has si vs. rre$o, Greck
ltas eaft6 vs. idtrjos. Map I 07. I 2 ,f,o*, if,.l"n_
guages in Europe with special rcflexive pro-
nouns that are not identifical
to intensifiers.
stri ki ng, but whi ch nevcrthel css
secnr good
candi date-s for Europeani sms.
No maps-rvi l l
be given for these t'eatures, ancl the .ui.l.n..
wi l l be summari zed
onl y bri efl y.
3.1. Verb fronti ng i n pol ar i nterrogati vcs
l n t hc l l l gc r nl . i or i t v ol ' l uugui r ue. s.
f ol ur
i r r -
tcl l ogati vcs
art urar.ked by i nterrogati ve
i n_
tonati on or i l l l i nterrogati vc parti cl i
or both
(- Art. 77). ht hi s sanrpl e of' 79 l anguages.
Ultan (1978)
tbund only ,.u.n tu,rtu,ft"i
showi ng
the al tcrnati ve
srrategy oi uJ,.U
fronti ng (oftcn
cal l ed,' subj ect_i ,erb
i n.",er_
!l on").
Of these. si x are European (Engl i sh.
!pn9h,
Rornani an.
Russi an.
Hungo-i i ,,,r,
Fi nni sh; the sevenrh l anguage i s l ufafi yj . i "
that the SAl r status of verb fronti ng i eenrs
beyond doubt. In lirct, the large rn,ri-o.ity oi
Germanic, Romance
and Slir-vic ta,rguog.,
(pl us.
Mo.dcrn
Greek) appear to hauJ vi rb
t r ont l r ' t g r n pol ur qucst i ons
i r r one f or . nr or
another. The three Europeau l anguages l or
whi ch
Ul tan expl i ci tl y reports thi t ri o verb
rrontl ng_occurs
are pcr.i pl rcral :
Basque. Gi rc_
I r c and Li t hul ni an.
l : ur t l r cr r r r or c.
Sn E l u, . r _
guages
are characteri zed
by tl re absence of an
i nterrogati ve
parti cl e.
In UItan.s Ootn, ti r.
ni ne
. Eur opean
l anguagcs
exhi bi t i ng
u' p, i r _
t r cl c i n pol ar qucst i ons
ar c al l pcr i phcr i i l
t o
a greater
or l esscr extcnt: Il asque, Iri sh, Scot_
ti sh Gaei i c, Al bani an,
Hungari an,
Li tl rua
ni an. Russi an, Fi nni sh, Turk]sh (and
I can
add Nakh-Daghestani an).
Vcrb fronti ng i i r
pol ar questi ons
was suggestecl
as a Ei i ro_
peani sm
al ready by l l eCkman ( 1934) (c.f.
Dahl 1990) .
3.2. Conrparati ve
marki ng
of adj ecti ves
Most European
l anguagcs
have speci al forrns
l or ac| cctl ves
occurri ng i n cornparati ve
col .l _
structl ons.
For i nstancc.
En-cl i sh uscs thc
sul l l x
-crî n
.thi s
way (The
dog-i s bi gg_er tl tr-,,t
Il te cat). Such an i nl l ccti onal
markei of adi ec_
trves i s not cotl rntou i n the worl d' s Iancuaces
outs.i de^ of_ Europc. Somc l an guagcs
rri roi rl .
l {l nd
ot adverbi al parti cl e
nrodi l yi ng
the ad_
Jecrl ve 1' rnore' ). but perhaps
the most cont_
mon type i s represented
by Japanese. rvhcre
the comparati ve
scmanti cs
i s i ar.i ea Uy tl re
starrdard rnarker al one (e. g. i tru_gu ,,rki ,.u,l i
ookl i
[dog-sunr cat from bi g]
.rhJ
dog i s Ui g_
ger than the cat' ).
^
Speci al comparati ve
forms are found i n al l
Germani c.
Bal to-sl avi c
and Bal kan l au_
qy3Sel
(wi rh
the excepti on
of Ronrani au
and
Al banr an) ,
and r nost Ror nl ncc
l anguages
preserve
at l east four suppl eti ve
fonni (el c.
Brt
u6g
sPn
Rm
Alb Blg
Lzg,
c.8
Trk Am
Map 107. l2: Intensifier-reflexive
differentiation
Intensil'rer-reflexive
differentiation
is not an
lldo
ropeanism,
because eastern Indo-
European l anguages
have the ,ua. .*o..._
sron lor intensifiers
and reflexives (e. g.
per_
sian .r-or/-ai, Flindi aap). There are nJ oJ_
Irshed worl d-wi de
studi es yet,
but i t seenrs
that non-differentiation
ii very .ornrnon
around the world, and while diffeientiation
is
also found elscwhere,
it is not io"n,l i,i;;;;;
unmedratel y
adj acent
to European l anguages.
l . Some further l i kel y SAE features
n this section, I will mention a few features
vhich are less well-documented
than those iu
:2, or whose geographi cal
di stri buti on
i s i ess
i ' ' ' t l l ! t
tiil
: r : .
' ,
, ' :
r 500
structi on i n Europe i s shown i n Map 107.10'
following Haspelmath & Buchholz (1998:
297\.
Nnt s
Kom
Udm
Tat
LzB
crg
Map 107.10: Relative-based equative-constructions
Impressionalistically, relative-based equatives
seem to be rare in the world's languages, and
the eastern Indo-European languages do not
seem to use them in general (however, a
counterexample is Punjabi).
2.11. Subj ect person affi xes as stri ct
agreement markers
The majority of the world's languages have
bound person markers on the verb that cross-
refer to the verb's subject
(or agent). When
these subject afftxes cooccur with overt sub-
ject NPs (full NPs or independent subject
pronouns), they are called agreement mark-
ers. However, in most languages they can oc-
cur on their own and need not cooccur with
overt subject NPs. For example, in the Bul-
garian phrase vie rabotite
'you
(pl.) work', we
see the subject sufftx
-ite (2nd person plural)
cooccurring with the independent subject
pronoun lie
'you
(pl.)', showing that
-ile
is
an agreement marker. But in Bulgarian it is
equally possible and probably more common
to say
j ust raboti te' you (pl .) work' , i .e. the
subject sullix can have a referential function
on its orvn. In German, by contrast. this is
not possible:
'you
work' \s ihr arbeit-el. Since
the agreement sufftx
-el
does not have such
an independent referential function, the sub-
ject pronoun rlr cannot be omitted' Lan-
guages like German are often called
"non-
pro-drop languages", and languages like
Bulgarian are called
"pro-drop
languages";
better terms would be
"strict-agreement
lan-
guages" vs.
"referential-agreement
languages".
It has sometimes beeu thought that strict
agreement, as exhibited by German, English,
and French, is the norm and that referential
agreement is somehow special. But in fact,
referential agreement is far more widespread
XIV. Typological characterization of language families and linguistic areas
in the world's languages, and strict subject
agreement is characteristic of a few European
languages, some of which happen to be well-
known. In her world-wide sample of 272
languages, Siewierska
(1999) finds only two
strict-agreement languages, Dutch (an SAE
language) and Vanimo (a Papuan language
of New Guinea). Siewierska further notes
that outside of Europe, she is aware of only
two additional strict-agreement languages that
are not in her sample
(Anejom and Labu, two
Oceanic languages). Gilligan
(1987) reached
a similar conclusion on the basis of a sample
of 100 languages. The distribution of strict
subject agreement markers in some European
l anguages i s shown i n MaP 107.11.
Fin
Est
Lfu
ur
Pol
@u *
Hng LJk
-
[6nguagss with strict subject agreement
- - - -
languages with obligatory subject pronouns'
lacking verb agreement
Map 107.11: Obligatory subject pronouns
The map shows two non-contiguous areas in
which subject agreement suffrxes cannot have
a referential function: Germanic and Gallo-
Romance languages with Welsh on the one
hand, and Russian on the other. Perhaps only
the western European area should be thouefit
of as being relevant for SAE; in Russian,
past-tense verbs do not have subject person
affrxes, so Russian is not a very good exam-
ple of a strict-agreement language. In the
eastern Nordic languages (Norwegian, Swed-
ish, Danish), the subject pronouns are obliga-
tory as they are in English, German or Ice-
landic, but the languages have lost agreement
distinctions on the verb entirely (cf' Swedish
jag biterldu biterlhan biter
'llyoulhe
bite(s)',
Icelandic 69 bftbrt biturlhann bitur). T\ese
languages are thus
"non-pro-drop"
in a
sense, but they are not strict-agreement lan-
guages. English is approaching this type' as
the only remnant of subject agreement is the
3rd person singular present-tense suflix
-s.
(There are also some languages of this type
!
I
eq 9n
It scr
Sf Srd Rrn "lte:
Prt Alb Bl8 GB
"
Mtt Grk Trk Alm
Eng Dut Pol R6
Gm Cz
Fr Llng Uk
Sln
It SCr
r!;l,i
: , n a
I 502
Ital i an maggi ore' bi gger' , nti nore' smal l er' ,
peggi ore' worse' , mi gl i ore' better' ). Compara-
tive forms also exist in Basque
(e. g. haundi-
ago'bigg-er'), Hungarian
(nagy-obb'bigg-er')'
Fi nni sh (i so-mpi ' bi gg-er' ), and other Fi nno-
Ugrian languages.
Comparative forms are not completely un-
known outside of Europe. Arabic has a spe-
ci al comparati ve fbrm (e.g. ?akbar' bi gger' ,
from kabiir
'big'),
but it is unique among
Afro-Asiatic languages in this respect. Old
Indo-Iranian languages had comparative
forms, and the modern Iranian languages
have preserved them to some extent
(e. g. Per-
sian
-ter.
Zaza
-tr\.
But further east, in mod-
ern Indic, the comparative does not exist
anymore, and languages like Hindi-Urdu and
Bengali use a construction analogous to the
Japanese example
just cited. Similarly, in the
Uralic languages, the further east we go, the
fewer comparatives we find. For instance'
Khanty
(a Finno-Ugrian language spoken in
western Siberia, i. e. outside of Europe) does
have a comparative form in
'sak (e. g.
iant-sak
'better'),
which is used when no standard is
present. But in a complete comparative con-
struction. no marking is found on the adjec-
tive
(e. g. narl ke:se:-n e:x'elt
iarn [you
knife-
2sc from goodl
'better
than your knife'. Ni-
kolaeva 1999:21).
Thus, although this feature is not contined
to Europe, it is typical of a SAE feature in
that it is robustly present in western [ndo-
European and Uralic languages, but gets
rarer the further east we go in these families.
3. 3.
" A
and- B" conj unct i on
The feature discussed in this section is less
distinctive than the others mentioned so far'
but I hope to show that it is not at all devoid
of interest. Stassen
(2000) offers the first
world-wide typological study of NP conjunc-
tion strategies, based on a sample of 260
languages
(- Art.82). He distinguishes two
basic types, and-languages
(using a symmet-
ric particle) and l'illr-languages
(using an
asymmetric comitative marker). Two thirds
of Stassen's sample languages are and-lan'
guages, and since SAE clearly belongs to this
type, too, it is not a very distinctive
property.
And-languages cover all of northern Eurasia,
South Asia, the Middle East and northern
Africa, Australia, New Guinea, and parts of
Central and South America. Mllr-languages
are encountered in sub-Saharan Africa, East
and Southeast Asia, the islands of Oceania,
and large areas of North and South America.
However, within the and-languages there are
several sub-types according to the position of
the particle, which we may call
"A
and-B",
"A-ind
8",
"A-and
B-and", and
"A
B-and"
(of the remaining logical possibilities'
"and-A
B" seems to be inexistent, and
"and-A
and-
B" occurs only as a secondary
pattern). Most
European languages, and in particular all
SAE languages, belong to the sub-type
"A
and-B". The types
"A-and
B-and" and
"A-
and B" are found in some languages of the
Caucasus and in some Turkic languageg as
well as scattered throughout northern Eu-
rasia and South fuia
(e. g. in Abkhaz, fuchi,
Persian. Sinhalese, Tamil, Burmese, Korean
according to Stassen; Stassen also points out
that there is a correlation with verb-final
word order here). Furthertnore' some periph-
eral European languages make restricted use
of the ruitft-strategy
(e. g. Russian my s toboj
'I
and you', lit.
'we
with you', and also Old
Irish, Lithuanian, Polish and Hungarian,
according to Stassen). Taken together, these
data do show that belonging to the
"A
and-
B" type is not a trivial feature of the SAE
linguistic area.
3.4. Comitative-instrumental
syncretism
In all SAE languages, the preposition that
expresses accompaniment
(: comitative) also
serves to express the instrument role (e. g.
English with: w'ith her husbqndlrith the ham-
rrer). Such languages are said to exhibit com-
itative-instrumental syncretism. Stolz (1996)
studied comitative and instrumental markers
in a world-wide sample of 323 languages and
found that this kind of syncretism is typical
of Europe. Non-European languages more
commonly
possess separate markers for these
two semantic roles (e. g. Swahili na
'with
(comitative)', krvc'with
(instrumental)'. As
Table 107.1 shows, about two thirds of Stolz's
sample languages are non-syncretic, and only
one quarter is syncretic.
(The remaining l1n-
guuges belong to a mixed type, which I ig-
nore here for the sake of simplicity; thus, the
percentages do not add uP to 100%.)
Two areas diverge significantly from the
general trend: Oceania has far less syncretism
ihan the world average, and Europe has far
more syncretism than the world average'
When we look at the pattern within Europe'
it becomes even clearer that we are dealing
with an SAE feature
(as Stolz recognizes, cf'
1996: 120). Of the l 6 non-syncreti c l anguages
in Europe, l0 are Caucasian languages, i.e'
they are clearly outside of SAE, and one is
' l l l
I
l
l l i l
:
t l
I i ,
f : ' , r t ,
l . ; : , 1
h;;rl ,
I r l : t t l i ;
EEI I I i
Table 107.1: comitative-instrumental: syncretic and non-syncretic languages
I 503
syncretic (e. g. English)
languages percentage
non-syncretl c (e. g. Swahi l i )
languages percentage
Europe
Africa ,
Americas
tuia
Oceania
World
25
20
l 6
l 2
6
79
49%
3 t %
2 t %
18%
t0%
24%
l 6
38
54
4 t
54
209
3r,yn
58%
69%
7 l o
86%
65"1,
only politically,
not anthropologically,
in
Europe (Greenlandic).
Four of the remainine
five languages are also otherwise not typica-i
instances of SAE (Basque,
Finnish, tr,tattese.
Mari). And when we look at the 38 Indo-
European languages in Stolz's sample, we
see that syncretism cannot be regarded as an
Indo-Europeanism:
Of the eight Indo-Euro-
pean languages not spoken in Europe, only
th show syncretism, while five show non-
syncretism. Thus, in Asia Indo-Europearr lan-
guages behave like Asian languages, and there
is no general pattern for Indo-European.
3.5. Suppletive second ordinal
Most languages have a suppletive form of the
ordinal numeral
'first',
i. e. a form not de-
rived from the cardinal numeral
.one'.
An
example is Gerrnan, where'lst' is erster
(un-
rel ated to ei ns' l ' ), contrasti ng wi th other
ordinals such as zweiter'2nd' (cf. zwei
,2'\,
vierter'4th' (cf . vier'4'), and so on. In Stolz's
(2001b)
study of 100 ldnguages world-wide,
there are 95 languages with special ordinal
numerals, and of these, 78 have a suppletive
word for
'hrst'.
Thus, languages that say
(literally)
'oneth'
for
'lst'
are not common.
However, the same sample has only 22 lan-
guages in which the word for
.2nd,,
too, is
suppletive and not derived from..2' (e. g.
E1 ;h second). Thus, most languages have
(literally)
'twoth'
for
'2nd'.
The 22languages
that have a suppletive
'2nd'word
are lieavilv
concentrated in Europe: 17 are European
languages, and this type is clearly the mijor-
ity within Europe (which is represented by 27
languages in Stolz's sample). Of the l0 Euro-
pean languages that do not have a suppletive
second ordinal, six are clearly outside SAE
(Basque,
Turkish, Armenian, Georgian, Lez-
gian,
Greenlandic). Among SAE linguages,
only some Balkan languages (Romanian,
Al-
banian, Romani) and German lack a supple-
tive second ordinal.
This is clearly a very marginal feature in
grammar,
but it is intriguing that it should
show such a clear geographical
distribution.
3.6. Some other characteristics of SAE
The features examined so far present the
most striking evideuce for Standard Averase
Furopean, but there are probably -uny -oi"
features that will turn out to be characieristic
of the core European languages in one way
or another. In this subsection, several such
candidates will be mentioned brieflv. The first
few features in the following list ire purely
negative: At first glance, this may seem odd,
but of course the lack of a category that is
widespread elsewhere is no lesJ sienificant
than the presence of a category that is rare
elsewhere.
(i) Lack of an alienable/inalienable
opposi-
tion in adnominal possession ('
Art.
jil.
ln
Ni chol s' s (1992)
worl d-wi de sampl e. al most
hal f of the l anguages show such an opposi -
ti on, but no European l anguage does
l i l l Z:
123). More generally,
this opposition is rarer
in the Old World and common in the New
World, but in Europe it is even less common
than in Africa and Asia.
(ii) Lack of an inclusive/exclusive
opposition
in.first person non-singular pronouns. Again,
this opposition is commonest in the New
World and in the Pacihc region, but in
Europe it is even rarer than in Africa and
Asi a, as was shown by Ni chol s (1992:
123).
(i i i )
Lack of redupl i cati ng constructi ons. I
have no systematic evidence to back uo the
claim that this is a characteristic feature of
European languages, but reduplication is so
common across languages that its almost to_
tal absence in the core European languages
becomes striking. (Interestingly,
reduplication
existed in older Indo-European
languages at
least in one construction, the perfect, but
even here it was lost entirely by the Middle
Ages.)
I 504
(i v) Di scourse pragmati c noti ons such as
topic and focus are expressed primarily by
sentence stress and word order difl-erences
(Lazard
1998: I I 6). Onl y the Cel ti c l anguages
and French give a very prominent role to
cl efti ng, and parti cl es rnarki ng di scourse
pragmati c noti ons are vi rtual l y unknown.
(v) SVO basi c word order at the l evel of the
clause. This feature is of course found else-
where in the world, but in Europe it corre-
lates particularly well with rhe orher SAE
features. The Celtic languages in the west
have VSO order (except
for Breton, which is
al so otherwi se more SAE than Iri sh and
Wel sh), and the eastern l anguages have SOV
word order. Interesti ngl y, Bal to-Fi nni c (Fi n-
ni sh, Estoni an, etc.) and (l ess
unequi vocal l y)
Hungarian have SVO word order, whereas
the eastern Ural i c l anguages have SOV. Si mi -
larly, the eastern Indo-European languages
tend to show SOV word order.
(See
Drver
1998 i or more on word ordcr i n the l i n-
guages of Europe.)
(vi) European languages tend to have just
one converb (- Art. 83) (cf. Nedjalkov 1998).
For instance, Romance languages have the
gerundio I gt ronrlrf, English has the
-lng-form,
and Sl avi c and Bal kan l anguages have thei r
adverbial participle. The Celtic languages in
the west completely lack such a fonn, and the
languages east of SAE tend to have more
than one converb. Otherwise the core Euro-
pean languages tend to have adverbial con-
j uncti ons
(' Art.63) to make adverbi al
clauses. According to Kortmann (1997:
344\,
they have
"a
large, semantically highly dif-
ferentiated inventory of free adverbial sub-
ordinators placed in clause-initial position".
More generally, they tend to have finite rather
than non-finite subordinate strategies (r
Art. 100), though a multi-purpose infinitive
usually exists (except lbl the Balkan lan-
guages).
(vii) European languages usually have a spe-
cial construction for negative coordination,
e. g. English neitlrcr A nor B, Italian ni A nt
.8, Russi an ni A ni ,B, Dutch noch A noch B,
Hungarian sem A sem B. Again, no world-
wi de study has been publ i shed, but such a
negative coordinating construction is rarely
reported from languages outside Europe (cf'.
Haspelmath to appear).
(vi i i ) SAE l anguages have a l arge number of
characteristic properties in the area of phasal
adverbials (expressions like alread1,, still, no
longer, not yet) (van der Auwera 1998b).
These are rather well documented. but for the
Typological characterization of language families and linguistic areas
detail I have to refer the reader to van der
Auwera's thorough study.
(ix)
"Preterite
decay": the loss of the old
preterite and its replacement by the former
present perfect. This is a change that oc-
curred i n the l ast mi l l eni um i n French, Ger-
man and northern Italian, as well as in some
other adjacent European languages (cf. Thie-
roff 2000: 285). Its distribution is far nar-
rower than that of the other Europeanisms,
but it is the only feature of those studied by
Thieroff whose geography comes close to
Standard Average European (cf. also Abra-
ham 1999).
Quite
a l-ew additional features have been
mentioned in the earlier literature as charac-
teristic of SAE, but earlier authors have
sometimes neglected to make sure that a pro-
posed Europeanism is not also common else-
where in the world. Most of Whorf's original
examples of SAE features seem to be of this
kind. For instance, he notes that in contrast
to SAE, Hopi lacks
"imaginary
plurals" (such
as
'ten
days', according to Whorf a
"meta-
phorical aggregate"). But of course, we have
no evidence that such plurals of time-span
nouns are in any way characteristic of Euro-
pean languages. It may well be that they are
common throughout the world. (To give
Whorf his due, it must be added that he was
not interested in demonstrating that SAE
Ianguages form a Sprachbund. He
just
used
this term as a convenient abbreviation for
"English
and other European languages
likely to be known to the reader", without
necessarily implying that these languages are
an excl usi ve cl ub.)
4. Degrees of membership in SAE
Membership in a Sprachburrd is typically a
matter of degree. Usually there is a core of
languages that clearly belong to the Sprach-
bund, and a periphery of surrounding lan-
guages that share features of the linguistic
area to a greater or lesser extent.
In order to quantify the degrees of mem-
bership in SAE, a simple procedure suggests
itself that was first applied to areal typology
by van der Auwera (1998a). In addition to
individual maps in which the lines denote iso-
gl osses ( as i n Maps 107. 1- 12) , we can com-
bine ditlerent features in a single map and
show the number of isoglosses shared by the
l anguage. Map 107.13 shows such a
"cl uster
map" i n whi ch the l i nes stand for
"quanti fi ed
isoglosses" (or
"isopleths").
The map com-
bines nine features of$ 2.: definite and indcfi-
nite articles, relative clauses with relative pro-
nouns,'have'-perfect, participial passive, da-
tive external possessors, negative pronouns
and lack of verbal negation, relative-based
equative constructions, subject person afllxes
as strict agreement markers, and intcnsitier-
reflcxive diflbrentiation. The languages in the
nucleus (French and German) show the SAI:
value in all nine of these features. The lan-
guages in the next layer (Dutch,
other Ro-
mance, Albanian) show eight features, tire
next l ayer (Engl i sh,
Greek, Romani an) shows
seven features, and so on. In this map, the
resulting picture is actually very clcar, be-
cause the SAE area with at least five SAE,
features stands out from thc remai ni ng l an-
guages, whi ch have at most two SAE fca-
tures.
I:i n
- - r L. t
Lt
Rrl
Nnl s
. . . v. l :
crs
I
Irk Ann
r 505
hi stori cal rol e pl ayed by speakers of these
trvo l anguages both i n thc earl y rr.redi eval hi s-
tory of conti uental E,urope and !n tl i e vety
recent attempt at Eul opcan uni l l cati on, thi s
i s of coursc au extrcrl el y i ntri gui ng resul t.
(b) The southcrn Europcan l anguages (both
Romancc and Il al kan l anguages) arc at l cast
as cl osc, i f not cl oscr t o l hc nucl cus t han t hc
northcrn l anguages aud l -ugl i sh. Thi s means
t hat i t i s nr i sl eadi ng t o cal l SAE l cat ur cs
"Westcrn
Ii uropcan l catur.es", as i s sonrc-
ti rnes donc. It i s truc that the Sl avi c l an-
guages i n the cast l ack many SAE features.
but thc Bal kan l angr.ri rgcs ar.c gcncr.al l v urorc
SAE than Sl avi c, al tl i ough thcy are not wcst-
em European.
(c)
Engl ancl stands sonrcwhat apart l l -oni thc
Eur opcan nucl cus ( as
not cd al so by van dcr
Auwcra 1998a: 823), al thou_qh i t i s cl oscl y
rel ated gencal ogi cal l y
to Gcrnran ancl has
been thoroughl y i nfl uenccd by Frcnch. Si ncc
Engl i sh i s cr.rrrcntl y thc donri nant l anguagc
throughout thc rvorl d, i t i s rvorth poi nti ng
out i t s sont e$, hat mar gi nal st at us among i t s
Eurol tcan si stcr l anguagcs.
It i s i nrpcl l tant to kccl t i rt rni nd that thc l ' ca-
t ur cs on whi ch Map 107. 13 i s based have nr . - r t
becn scl cctcd randoml y and are thus by no
mcans rcprcscntati ve. of the ntorphosyntacti c
l i ' i tturcs ol ' Luropcan l anguagcs. thcl ' rvcrc
i ncl uded preci sel y bccause thcy werc knowrr
to show a di stri buti on that suppor.ts the SAI:
hypotl resi s. Thus. no cl ai nr i s rnadc that al l
(or cvcn thc nraj ori ty ol -) fcutures rvi l l shorv u
si uri l ar di stri buti on. It i s perl ' cctl y possi bl c
that rve u,i i l some day di scover anothcr
Spracltbuntl, bascd on a difi'crent set of t'ca-
tures, thal has Russi an at i ts core and extends
al l the way to wcstern Si beri a i n the east ancl
central Asi a i n the south, but wi thi n EuroDe
conrpri scs oul y the Sl avi c, Bal kan. ancl Scai -
di navi an l anguagcs. Thi s area woul d overl ao
wi t h SAE. but i t r voul d not cont r adi cr i i .
Thus, a l anguage nray i n pri nci pl e bel ong to
di l l ' crcnt l i ngui sti c arcas. aud di f]' cr-ent l i n-
gui sti c arcas uray cocxi st
"on
top of' eacl r
othcr. Si nce areal typol ogy i s onl y i n i ts i n-
fancy, rve do not knorv how comnron such
si tuaLi ons are, but nothi ng i n the l ogi c of a
Sprocl buttd i mpl i cs that thc rvorl d shoul d bc
exhausti vel y di vi si bl e i nto non-overl appi ng
Sprachbtindc.
In fact, a nuurber of srnal l er l i ngui sti c
areas wi thi n Eul ope have bcen proposed i n
the l i terature (apart
l i ' om the Bal kan arca.
rvhosc i mportance i s l tot doubtcd by anyonc).
-1
Rust l Ll t t rn
I
uLr / T.rr
Map 107.13: A cl uster map conrbi ni ng ni ne fcl -
tu rcs
Such cluster maps are thus a fairly direct rep-
resentation of degrees of membership in a lin-
guistic area. But of course, the cluster rnao
dircctly reflects the choice of features that arc
combined, and this choice is always sorne-
what arbitrary. Of the twelve features in g
2,
onlv nine were selected here bccause inforrna-
tic n the other three was incomplete. Icle-
al l y, the features of
g
3 shoul d have bcen
added, too. But i t seems to me that thc mai rr
resul ts of Map 107.13 woul d uot be changed
(this rnap can also be compared to thc vcry
si mi l ar map i n van der Auwera (1998a:
823),
rvhich combines five adverbial featurcs or
l-eature clusters). The ntost striking featurcs
of Map 107. 13 ar e:
(a) The nucleus of Standard Average Euro-
pean is formed by French and German (a
hnding that led van der Auwera (1998a:
824)
to propose the term Clnrlemagne Sprachbund
l or the nucl ear area of SAE). In vi erv of the
l 506
e. g. by Lewy ( 1942) . Wagner ( 1959) . Decsy
(1973), Haarmann (1976), and Urel and
(1985)
(cf. also Wintschalek 1993 on a Volga-Kama
area). Currentl y the most thoroughl y studi ed
areas are the Ci rcum-Bal ti c area (cf. Stol z
1991, Dahl & Koptj evskaj a-Tamm
(eds.)
2001) and the Mediterranean area (cf. Cris-
tofaro & Putzu (eds.) 2000). However, no
strong cl ai ms about a Ci rcum-Bal ti c or a Me-
diterranean linguistic area seem to have been
made as a resul t of these studi es.
5. How di d SAE come i nto bei ng' l
Li ngui sti c areas ari se through l anguage con-
tact, but preci sel y whi ch contact si tuati on
gave rise to Standard Average E,uropean is
not i nmedi atel y cl ear. And what i s the source
of the vari ous Europeani sms: Who borrowed
from whom? A ful l di scussi on of the soci o-
hi stori cal , cul tural and soci ol i ngui sti c i ssues
i s beyond the scope of thi s arti cl e, so I wi l l
restri ct mysel f here to menti oni ng
j ust
hve
possi bi l i ti es:
(i ) retenti on of Proto-Indo-European struc-
tures and assi mi l ati on ol some non-
Indo-European l anguages to l ndo-Euro-
pean l anguage structure;
(ii)
intluence from a common substratum
of a pre-Indo-European popul ati on i n
Europe:
(i i i ) contacts duri ng the great trans-
formations at the transition from late
anti qui ty to the earl y Mi ddl e Ages i n
Europe;
(i v) the oftl ci al l anguage (Lati n) and the
common European cul ture of the Mi d-
dle Ages;
(v) the common European cul ture of mod-
ern ti mes. l i om the Renai ssance to the
Enl i ghtenment.
The tlfth possibility must be rejected because
a ti me depth of 300-500 years i s not suffr-
ci ent to account for grammati cal common-
alities of the kind discussed above. If lexical
similarities between the European languages
are di scussed
-
tor i nstance neocl assi cal
compounding (socio-lpaleo-lortho-ldemo-,
-graphyl-log1,l-cracy,
etc.) or idiomatic struc-
ture (e. g. ivorl' to*'erltorue d'avoriolElferrbein-
tunn, as poor as a clurc'lt tnouselpattvre conune
un rat d'igliselarnr v'ie eine Kirchennraus)
-
then the l ast several centuri es are the appro-
priate time frame lbr explaining the historical
l i nks. but the basi c syntacti c structures com-
mon to SAE l anguages must be ol der.
XI V. Typol ogi cal charact eri zat i on of l anguage f ami l i es and l i ngui st i c areas
The first possibility must be rejected be-
cause the great maj ori ty of Europeani sms
are i nnovati ons wi th respect to Proto-l ndo-
European. For i nstance, as far as we know,
Proto-l ndo-European di d not have arti cl es, a
' have' -perfect. "A
and-B" conj uncti on, stri ct
subject agreement. particle comparatives, or
relative clauses with relative pronouns (cf.
Lehmann 1974, Haspel math 1998). Wi th re-
spect to Proto-l ndo-European, and al so wi th
respect to the oldest Indo-European lan-
guages attested in Europe (Ancient Greek,
Ol d Lati n, Gothi c), Standard Average Euro-
pean i s cl ear l y an i nnovat i on.
The second possrbility, a pre-Indo-Euro-
pean substratum in Europe causing the SAE
features, would be extremely diffrcult to de-
monstrate, but i t mi ght be worth pursui ng. It
is intriguing to note that the geographical
space occupied by SAE languages coincides
l ai rl y preci sel y wi th the area of the Ol d Euro-
pean hydronymy, i. e. the homogeneous layer
of river names discovered by Hans Krahe
(see Vennemann 1994 for recent discussion).
Vennemann (1994) proposes that these Old
European hydronyms were not coi ned by an
earl y prehi stori c Indo-European popul ati on,
but by a pre-l ndo-European peopl e whi ch he
calls Vasconic (the only surviving Vasconic
language being Basque). Furthermore, the
Old European hydronymy is hardly attested
i n the Bri ti sh l sl es, where the Cel ti c l an-
guages are spoken, i . e. they coul d not have
been influenced by the Vasconic substratum.
This is in perfect harmony with the well-mo-
tivated hypothesis that the Celtic languages
acquired some of their striking t'eatures from
a different substratum related to the Afro-
Asi ati c l anguages (Pokorny 1927-30, Gens-
l er 1993) .
The main argument against the substratum
view is that the SAE features seem to be gain-
ing ground too late for a pre-Indo-European
substratum to have caused them. Some SAE
features appear only in the first millenium
CE, but also the earlier features usually come
fairly late, so that the earliest records of Indo-
European-languages in Europe still show
traces of the Proto-Indo-European patterns
(e. g. causatives, relative clauses, locative com-
parati ve.
"A
B-and" conj uncti on). If these
SAE features were caused by a substratum,
then we should have much more evidence of
the population speaking this substratum lan-
guage. Moreover, a Vasconic substratum can
hardly account for the SAE features because
modern Basque is in most relevant ways very
much unl i ke the SAE l anguages.
' i i l !l
r i I
L
107. The European linguistic area: Standard Average European I 507
Of the remaining two possibilities, we can
probably exclude option (iv) (tne influence of
Latin in the Middle Ages), because most SAE
features were absent in Latin and developed
only in the Romance languages. There are
only two features for which Latin influence
is a likely factor: negation and relative pro-
nouns. In the case of these two features. the
standard languages sometimes show devia-
tions from the vernacular dialects, so at least
the written standard languages may have
been influenced by Latin, the European writ-
ten language par excellence for many centu-
ries. Thus, non-standard English has con-
structions like I won't do nothing ('I won't do
anything'), and similarly in non-standard
German and French (cf. Haspelmath 199'l:
205). Analogously, Latin-type relative pro-
nouns occur widely in the standard languages
of Europe, but vernacular speech often pre-
fers relative particles (Lehmann 1984: 88,
' ^).
However, Latin probably only helped
t' reinforce these structures in those lan-
guages where they existed already indepen-
dently as variants.
Thus, we are left with option (iii), the time
of the great migrations at the transition be-
tween antiquity and the Middle Ages. This
seems to be the appropriate time frame at
least for articles, the
'have'-perfect,
the par-
ticipial passive, anticausatives, negative in-
definites, nominative experiencers and verb
fronting. The rise of these constructions can
be observed only with diffrculty because they
were by and large absent in the written classi-
cal languages but seem to be well in place
once the vernacular languages appear in the
written record toward the end of the first
millennium CE (cf. also Fehling 1980). This
hypothesis derives some further plausibility
from the fact that language contact must
have been particularly intensive and effective
during the great migrations, and in the case
lrench and northern Italian we have am-
ple records of the lexical effects of these con-
tactsf However, it is not so easy to fit features
su'a'|f as particle comparatives, ,,A and-B"
conjunction and relative pronouns into this
picture, because these features seem to have
developed around the middle of the first mil-
lenium BC or even earlier (cf. Haspelmath
1998). Of course, we must always reckon
with the possibility (or even likelihood) that
different SAE features are due to different
historical circumstances, and the correct pic-
ture is likely to be much more complicated
than we can imagine at the moment, let alone
discuss in this article.
6. Abbrevi ati ons of l anguage names
Al b
Arm
Bl g
Brt
Bsq
Cz
Dut
Eng
Est
Fin
Fr
Gae
Grg
Grk
Grm
Hng
Ice
I r
It
Kom
Lat
Laz
Li t
Ltv
Lzg
Mar
Ml t
Mrd
Nnt s
Nor
Pol
Prt
Rorn
Rus
SAE
Sam
SCr
Sl n
Spn
Srd
Swd
Tat
Trk
Ubv
Udm
Ukr
Wel
Al bani an
Armenian
Bul gari an
Breton
Basque
Czech
Dutch
Engl i sh
Estoni an
Fi nni sh
French
Scots Gaelic
Georgi an
Greek
German
Hungari an
Icel andi c
l ri sh
Iral i an
Komi
Lati n
Laz
Li thuni an
Latvi an
Lezgian
Mari
Mal tese
Mordvi n
Nenets
Norwegi an
Pol i sh
Portuguese
Romanian
Russi an
Standard Average European
Saami
Serbi an/Croati an
Slovene
Spanish
Sardi ni an
Swedi sh
Tatar
Turkish
Ubykh
Udmurt
Ukrai ni an
Welsh
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1. G6neral i tes
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ques remonte ii la premidre moiti6 du XIX"
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expliquer les traits communs par I'influence
du substrat, une p6riode classicpte oi la lin-
guistique balkanique acquiert ses lettres de
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Linguistique balkanique. Problimes et rtsul-
tats de Sandfeld, qui repr6sente la premiere
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nalisation des recherches
(nombreuses revues
specifiques et organisation de congres).
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i r
j uxtaposer
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verses dont le seul lien serait la contiguit6
g6ographique: il faut que ces langues for-
ment une < union linguistique > (Sprachbundl.
MCme si certai nes voi x s' 6l dvent encore pour
ni er l a r6al i t6 de I' uni on bal kani que (Andri o-
ti s & Kourmoul i s 1968), l a pl upart des l i n-
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[ Re-
pri nt ed i n Whorf (1956), 134- 159. 1
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ond realitl': Selected +tritirtgs of Beniatnin Lee
ll4nrl' . Edited by John B. Carroll, Cambridge/MA:
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$,nt
aktischer Abereinst innrungen in llblga-
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Martin Haspelmath, MPI Leipzig
( Deutschland)
effet, les traits communs sont trop nombreux
pour qu'ils soient le fruit du hasard. ll est
vrai que les sp6cialistes discutent encore de
la notion de < balkanisme ), que I'on dehnira
ici comme un trait typologique propre ir au
moi ns troi s l angues de I' uni on. Ce trai t n' a
pas besoin d'tre unique en son genre (ainsi,
I'article d6fini postpose existe dans les lan-
gues scandinaves, le < redoublement > de I'ob-
jet
se retrouve dans les langues romanes); il
doi t 6tre l e r6sul tat d' une convergence qui
aboutit I un r6sultat identique ou quasi iden-
tique, alors qu'il n'existait pas ir des stades
plus anciens.
Les tAches de la linguistique balkanique
sont consign6es dans l'histoire de la disci-
pline. Elles ont un triple aspect: synchronique
(description) panchronique (extension) et
diachronique (formation et 6volution). Bien
que I'essentiel du travail descriptif semble
avoir et6 acompli (la monographie de Sand-
feld a 6te compl6tee, souvent am6lioree, par
des centaines d'articles et d'6tudes de d6tail
qui ont permis d'accroitre et d'approfondir
les donn6es), il reste toujours beaucoup ir
faire. L 6tude de I'extension des balkanismes
n6cessite le recours ir la geographie linguisti-
que (ou linguistique areale) pour determiner
avec exactitude le lieu d'apparition de chaque
balkanisme et son extension r6elle sur le ter-
rain. Enfin, la perspective diachronique n'est
jamais perdue de vue par les balkanologues,
malgr6 les nombreuses difficult6s auxquelles
ils sont confront6s, faute de documents 6crits.
Trois aspects sont ir prendre en consid6ra-
tion: l) La gendse de I'union linguistique
balkanique; 2) La genese des balkanismes; 3)
t i
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