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THanks Martin for pointing out this interesting discrepancy. I would be very sad if my views never changed with the passage of time and the surging of new ideas.... I'm not sure I would now agree with that 2009 passage</div>
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Best NIck</div>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size:11pt" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Haspelmath, Martin <haspelmath@shh.mpg.de><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Thursday, January 23, 2020 10:24 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Lingtyp] Proto-World explains universals</font>
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<div class="x_moz-cite-prefix">There is an interesting tension between one passage in Evans (2017):<br>
<br>
<p style="margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"STIX",serif">“widespread multilingualism should increase the rates of language change, in particular the rate at which new typological features appear.” (Evans 2017: 930)
</span><span lang="EN-US" style=""></span></p>
<br>
and one passage in Evans & Levinson (2009):<br>
<br>
<p style="margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"AdvPSA1A1",serif; color:#211E1E">“The structural properties of language change on a near-glacial time scale. ... a structural feature within a single large language-family like
Austronesian changes on average just once about every 50,000 years.<span style="top:-4.0pt">
</span>What that implies is that </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"AdvPSA1A4",serif; color:#211E1E">all the languages we now sample from are within structural spitting distance of the ancestral tongue!
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"AdvPSA1A1",serif; color:#211E1E">It is quite surprising in this light that typologists have been able to catalogue so much linguistic variation.” (Evans & Levinson 2009: 477)</span></p>
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Dear Colleagues</div>
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In connection with this, you might be interested in the attached article where I argue that the old battlefield of 'monogenesis vs polygenesis' should be reconceptualised to one of 'polysemigenesis', where language arose by putting together various semi-languages,
developed in separate places, and pooling their 'inventions' in a multilingual environment. That has obvious consequences for Martin's question.</div>
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Best, Nick Evans</div>
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<div id="x_x_divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" color="#000000" style="font-size:11pt"><b>From:</b> Lingtyp
<a class="x_moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org">
<lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org></a> on behalf of Ian Maddieson <a class="x_moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:ianm@berkeley.edu">
<ianm@berkeley.edu></a><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Tuesday, January 21, 2020 12:50 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> David Gil <a class="x_moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:gil@shh.mpg.de">
<gil@shh.mpg.de></a><br>
<b>Cc:</b> <a class="x_moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org">
lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a> <a class="x_moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org">
<lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org></a><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Lingtyp] Proto-World explains universals</font>
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<div class="" style="word-wrap:break-word; line-break:after-white-space">I agree with David that monogenesis of human language is unlikely for various reasons, but I think Martin’s
<div class="">original question had to do with whether an argument had been presented in the linguistic literature with the</div>
<div class="">specific form of claiming that a universal exists because it was in the prototype of all languages. An argument</div>
<div class="">of this basic form could be made without assuming monogenesis if the hypothesis was that each episode of 'language</div>
<div class="">creation' started in similar ways.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
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<div class="">Ian<br class="">
<div><br>
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">
<div class="">
<div class="x_x_x_moz-cite-prefix">On 20/01/2020 19:45, Haspelmath, Martin wrote:<br class="">
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" class="">Dear all,<br class="">
<br class="">
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?<br class="">
<br class="">
Cysouw (2011: 417) has suggested this as a possibility:<br class="">
<br class="">
<font class="" size="-1">"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)."</font><br class="">
<br class="">
But while this is logically possible, are there any concrete suggestions with a global scope?<br class="">
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?<br class="">
<br class="">
Thanks,<br class="">
Martin<br class="">
<br class="">
************<br class="">
<br class="">
References:<br class="">
<div class="x_x_x_csl-bib-body" style="line-height:1.35; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em">
<div class="x_x_x_csl-entry">Cysouw, Michael. 2011. Understanding transition probabilities.
<i class="">Linguistic Typology</i> 15(2). 415–431.<br class="">
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<span class="x_x_x_Z3988" title="url_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fzotero.org%3A2&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Understanding%20transition%20probabilities&rft.jtitle=Linguistic%20Typology&rft.volume=15&rft.issue=2&rft.aufirst=Michael&rft.aulast=Cysouw&rft.au=Michael%20Cysouw&rft.date=2011&rft.pages=415%E2%80%93431&rft.spage=415&rft.epage=431"></span></div>
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<div class="x_x_x_column">Maslova, Elena. 2000. A dynamic approach to the verification of distributional universals.
<i class="">Linguistic Typology</i> 4. 307 – 333.<br class="">
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<pre class="x_x_x_moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a class="x_x_x_moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>)
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 </pre>
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<pre class="x_moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a class="x_moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>)
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 </pre>
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