[Lingtyp] Proto-World explains universals

[Harald Hammarström]

Re basic constituent order argued to be (partly) the reflection of
proto-world SOV, see:

Gell-Mann, Murray & Merritt Ruhlen. 2011. The origin and evolution of
word order. PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of
the United States of America 108(42). 17290-17295.

Maurits, Luke & Thomas L. Gri?ths. 2014. Tracing the roots of syntax
with Bayesian phylogenetics. PNAS 111(37). 13576?13581.

Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2000. On the reconstruction of 'Proto-World' word
order. In Chris Knight, Michael Studdert-Kennedy & James R. Hurford
(eds.), The evolutionary emergence of language: social function and the
origins of linguistic form, 372-390. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.



Pada tanggal Sen, 20 Jan 2020 pukul 18.45 Haspelmath, Martin <
haspelmath at shh.mpg.de> menulis:

> Dear all,
>
> Does anyone know a case where it has been proposed (or suggested)
> concretely that an observed universal tendency (or absolute universal) is
> due to inheritance from Proto-World?
>
> Cysouw (2011: 417) has suggested this as a possibility:
>
> "It is possible that there are still founder effects available in the
> current distribution of the world’s languages, i.e., that there are
> preferences in the current world’s languages that go back to incidental
> events during the spread of languages over the world (Maslova 2000)."
>
> But while this is logically possible, are there any concrete suggestions
> with a global scope?
> Word order universals such as the Greenbergian correlations, or
> phonological universals such as vowel dispersion cannot be due to
> Proto-World (or some other founder effect), because the universality lies
> in the implicational patterns, not in specific structures that all
> languages share. Has anyone suggested that any other universal properties
> (e.g. the fact that all languages can express negation or questions, or
> that agent-patient organization is universal, or that all languages have
> recursion) may be due to Proto-World inheritance?
>
> Thanks,
> Martin
>
> ************
>
> References:
> Cysouw, Michael. 2011. Understanding transition probabilities. *Linguistic
> Typology* 15(2). 415–431.
> Maslova, Elena. 2000. A dynamic approach to the verification of
> distributional universals. *Linguistic Typology* 4. 307 – 333.
>
> --
> Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de)
> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
> Kahlaische Strasse 10	
> D-07745 Jena
> &
> Leipzig University
> Institut fuer Anglistik
> IPF 141199
> D-04081 Leipzig
>
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