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Dear Colleagues,</div>
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I would like to raise the question of how cross-linguistic frequencies of typological features ought to be reported. The issue has been discussed extensively, but I still find some aspects conceptually confusing, so I hope this discussion might be helpful for
others as well.</div>
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To make this concrete, consider the order of object and verb (OV, VO, no dominant order). Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we have complete data for every language in Glottolog. This would give us the
<i>actual</i> proportion of languages that are OV vs. VO in the present-day world. The core problem, however, is that languages are not independent datapoints, so these actual frequencies also reflect genealogical and areal biases.</div>
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For that reason, it is common practice to report <i>adjusted</i> frequencies instead, either through non-proportional stratified sampling (Dryer 2018) or through statistical bias controls (Becker & Guzmán Naranjo 2025). As far as I understand, both methods
aim to estimate something like: <i>If each language were independent (as if every language were an isolate and had no contact with its neighbors), what proportion would be OV vs. VO?</i> In other words, the population being described is not the set of existing
languages but a hypothetical (and unrealistic) set of independent languages.</div>
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Now, suppose that the actual frequencies of OV and VO are equal, but the adjusted frequency of OV is higher. In that case, it feels counterintuitive to say that OV is more common cross-linguistically than VO. Perhaps it is clearer to speak in terms of probabilities
rather than proportions, given that the population is hypothetical. For instance, we might say:
<i>“When genealogical and areal biases are controlled for, the probability of a language being OV is 0.6".
</i>This means that the chance that a randomly sampled language isolate with no contact would be OV is 0.6. By contrast, saying “60% of the world’s languages are OV” when referring to an adjusted frequency seems potentially misleading.</div>
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I would appreciate hearing what others in the community think about how such statistics should ideally be reported.</div>
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Best regards,<br>
Omri</div>
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References:</div>
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Becker, Laura and Guzmán Naranjo Matías. 2025. Replication and methodological robustness in quantitative typology.
<i>Linguistic Typology</i>.</div>
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Dryer, Matthew S. 2018. On the order of demonstrative, numeral, adjective, and noun.
<i>Language</i> 94(4), 798-833.</div>
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