Explanation in Typology (Paperback)

This volume provides an up-to-date discussion of a foundational issue that has recently taken centre stage in linguistic typology and which is relevant to the language sciences more generally: To what extent can cross-linguistic generalizations, i.e. statistical universals of linguistic structure, be explained by the diachronic sources of these structures? Everyone agrees that typological distributions are the result of complex histories, as "languages evolve into the variation states to which synchronic universals pertain" (Hawkins 1988). However, an increasingly popular line of argumentation holds that many, perhaps most, typological regularities are long-term reflections of their diachronic sources, rather than being 'target-driven' by overarching functional-adaptive motivations. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

Author:

Ilja Serzant, Susanne Maria Michaelis, Natalia Levshina

Publisher:

Saint Philip Street Press

Publication Date:

Oct 09, 2020

Number of pages:

274 pages

Language:

English

Binding:

Paperback

ISBN-10:

1013292960

ISBN-13:

9781013292965