Typology and Universals

Second Edition

W I LLI A M CROFT
Department of Linguistics
University of Manchester
published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom
cambridge university press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
Ruiz de Alarcon 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain
Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa
http://www.cambridge.org

C William Croft 1990, 2003

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1990

Reprinted 1993, 1996
Second Edition 2003

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

Typeface Times 10/13 pt System LATEX 2 [tb]

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Croft, William.
Typology and universals / William Croft. 2nd edn.
p. cm. (Cambridge textbooks in linguistics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-521-80884-7 ISBN 0-521-00499-3 (pbk.)
1. Typology (Linguistics) 2. Universals (Linguistics) I. Title. II. Series.
P204 .C7 2002
410 .1 dc21 2002019247

ISBN 0 521 80884 7 hardback

ISBN 0 521 00499 3 paperback
 Contents

List of figures page xii

List of tables xiii
Preface to the second edition xv
Preface to the first edition xvii
List of abbreviations xix
List of symbols xxiv

1 Introduction 1
1.1 What is typology? 1
1.2 Typology, universals and generative grammar 4
1.3 Cross-linguistic comparison 6
1.4 The problem of cross-linguistic comparability 13
1.5 Language sampling for cross-linguistic research 19
1.6 Data sources 28

2 Typological classification 31
2.1 A cross-linguistically valid description of morphosyntactic
structures 31
2.1.1 Simple strategies 32
2.1.2 Relational strategies 33
2.1.3 Indexical strategies 34
2.1.4 Classifiers: indexical or relational? 37
2.1.5 More grammaticalized strategies 38
2.1.6 Summary 40
2.2 What is being classified? 42
2.3 Morphological typology 45

3 Implicational universals and competing motivations 49

3.1 Restrictions on possible language types 49
3.2 Unrestricted and implicational universals 52
3.3 Competing motivations 59
3.4 Deeper explanations for word order and affix order universals 69
3.5 Typology, universals and generative grammar revisited 80
3.6 Conclusion 86

ix
x List of contents

4 Grammatical categories: typological markedness,

economy and iconicity 87
4.1 Typological markedness 87
4.1.1 Structural coding 91
4.1.2 Behavioral potential 95
4.1.3 Neutral value: not a criterion for typological markedness 100
4.2 Economy and iconicity 101
4.2.1 Structural coding, economy and syntagmatic
isomorphism 102
4.2.2 Economy, paradigmatic isomorphism and polysemy 104
4.3 Frequency and deeper explanations for economy and iconicity 110
4.4 Typological asymmetries in word order and phonology 117
4.5 Conclusion 120

5 Grammatical hierarchies and the semantic map model 122

5.1 Grammatical hierarchies and implicational universals 122
5.2 The animacy and definiteness hierarchies 128
5.3 A deeper explanation for hierarchies and categories: the semantic
map model 133
5.4 Conceptual spaces, structural coding and behavioral potential 140
5.5 The grammatical relations hierarchies 142
5.5.1 The external definition of grammatical relations 142
5.5.2 Subject and object, ergative and absolutive 144
5.5.3 Objects: direct and indirect, primary and secondary 152
5.5.4 The conceptual space for grammatical relations 154
5.6 Conclusion 155
Appendix: typological markedness patterns in grammatical
categories 156

6 Prototypes and the interaction of typological patterns 158

6.1 Interactions of categories 158
6.1.1 Place of articulation 158
6.1.2 Person 160
6.2 Interactions of values: typological prototypes 162
6.3 Grammatical relations 165
6.3.1 Animacy, definiteness and participant roles 166
6.3.2 Transitivity 175
6.3.3 Deeper explanations for the typology of grammatical
relations 178
6.4 Parts of speech 183
6.5 Other prototypes and markedness reversals 188
6.6 Conclusion 192
 List of contents xi

7 Syntactic argumentation and syntactic structure

in typology 194
7.1 Typology and syntactic argumentation 195
7.2 Iconicity, economy and syntactic structure 201
7.2.1 Conceptual distance and constituent structure 205
7.2.2 Syntactic and conceptual independence 213
7.2.3 The encoding of objects and events 219
7.2.4 Other universals of linguistic structure 224
7.3 Typological conspiracies and communicative motivation 226
7.4 Conclusion 231

8 Diachronic typology 232

8.1 The dynamicization of synchronic typology 232
8.2 From states to processes 244
8.3 Grammaticalization 253
8.3.1 Phonological processes 254
8.3.2 Morphosyntactic processes 257
8.3.3 Functional processes 261
8.3.4 Issues in grammaticalization 264
8.3.5 Explanations for grammaticalization 268
8.4 Inferring diachrony from synchrony 272
8.5 Conclusion 279

9 Typology as an approach to language 280

9.1 Scientific approaches (research traditions) and linguistic theories 280
9.2 Thinking like a typologist 282
9.3 Description, explanation and generalization 283
9.4 Typology, the Saussurean dichotomies and the evolutionary model 286

List of references 291

Map of languages cited 313
Author index 324
Language index 329
Subject index 333
 Figures

2.1 Diachronic paths for dependency codings page 40

3.1 Harmonic relations between word orders based on evidence
in Greenberg 1966a and Hawkins 1983 63
3.2 Correlations between word orders based on evidence
in Dryer 1992a 73
3.3 Correlations between word orders based on log-linear analysis 75
3.4 Attested constructional changes across word orders analyzed
by Justeson and Stephens 1990 78
4.1 Formmeaning correspondence in This car runs 103
5.1 Semantic maps of plural inflection in various languages 134
5.2 Conceptual space for indefinite pronouns 135
5.3 Semantic map of Hungarian indefinite pronouns 137
5.4 Semantic maps of plural inflection and plural indexation 142
5.5 Conceptual space for participant roles in transitive and
intransitive situations 145
5.6 Attested semantic maps of syntactic roles defined
by case-marking 145
5.7 Conceptual space for intransitive, transitive and ditransitive
participant roles 154
6.1 Semantic maps for animate/definite direct objects 168
6.2 Semantic maps for incorporation in Southern Tiwa 169
6.3 Semantic maps of Dyirbal and Cashinawa split ergativity 173
6.4 Semantic map for Lummi active and passive constructions 175
6.5 Conceptual space for parts of speech 187
6.6 Semantic map of English parts of speech constructions 188
6.7 The causal structure of typological markedness 193
8.1 Dynamicization of a word order universal 238
8.2 Conceptual space for basic color terms 277

xii
 Tables

3.1 Dominance patterns for word order universals page 61

3.2 The OV and VO word order types 72
3.3 Predicted and attested language types for the pro-drop
parameter 82
3.4 Universals and evidence for universals pairs of pro-drop
properties 83
4.1 Possible formmeaning correspondences in syntagmatic
isomorphism 104
4.2 Possible formmeaning correspondences in paradigmatic
isomorphism 106
4.3 Asymmetric cross-linguistic patterns among paradigmatic
alternatives 120
6.1 Prototypical transitivity 176
6.2 Overtly marked structural coding constructions for parts
of speech 185
7.1 Linguistic distance among expressions of possession 206
7.2 Low categoriality noun and verb types, and their
clustering patterns 214
7.3 Distribution of [case] and [+case] relativization strategies 230
8.1 Dynamicization of typological markedness 241
8.2 Evolution of word order in Ethiopian Semitic languages 249
8.3 Grammaticalization processes 255
8.4 Clustering and grammaticalization 259
8.5 Two- to five-term basic color term systems 277

xiii