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<p>Getting back to the issue of "cross-linguistic frequencies": </p>
<p>Even though I don't engage in high-level statistics myself, I
don't see how we could distinguish between (i) chance, (ii)
inheritance, (iii) contact influence and (iv) the
universal/non-historical residue if we didn't use statistics. </p>
<p>Peter said:</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 24.11.25 14:55, Peter Arkadiev
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:710241763992006@mail.yandex.ru">
<div>when I wrote "the whole enterprise does not appear to be very
productive" I rather meant the enterprise of trying to discover
universal factors by means of a statistical analysis of language
samples. </div>
</blockquote>
<p>Maybe we can say that there have been no statistics breakthroughs
over the last two decades, but "the whole enterprise" began in
1975 with Sherman's paper on language sampling, and it seems to me
that since then, awareness of the problems in identifying
universals quantitatively has gradually increased, and has been
crucial in our understanding of the relationship between
universal, areal and genealogical factors. Maybe what Peter meant
was that the solution will not come from "statistics", but from
better sampling, and I sympathize with this: </p>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:710241763992006@mail.yandex.ru">
<div>I fully appreciate the efforts aimed at improving methods of
both constructing samples and analysing them, since these
methods allow us to test other types of hypotheses and
generalisations.</div>
</blockquote>
<p>In any event, the issue of "primary" vs. "secondary" data
(discussed by Bill Croft and Jürgen Bohnemeyer) is orthogonal to
this, though truly worldwide data from a substantial number of
languages is hardly available outside of secondary sources. If we
want more fine-grained data (as in my 1997 book on "Indefinite
pronouns", where I had to collect some "primary data"), we usually
have to limit ourselves to fairly few languages (my sample of 40
languages was small and very skewed). Thus, there is a trade-off
that will not go away – but all the approaches that were mentioned
have been "productive", I feel.</p>
<p>Martin</p>
<p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="2">Sherman, D. (1975). Stop and fricative systems: A discussion of paradigmatic gaps and the question of language sampling. In Working Papers on Language Universals 17, 1–31. Stanford University.</font></span></p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:710241763992006@mail.yandex.ru">
<div> </div>
<div>----------------</div>
<div>Кому: Martin Haspelmath (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:martin_haspelmath@eva.mpg.de">martin_haspelmath@eva.mpg.de</a>), Peter
Arkadiev (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:peterarkadiev@yandex.ru">peterarkadiev@yandex.ru</a>);</div>
<div>Копия: Linguistic Typology
(<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>);</div>
<div>Тема: [Lingtyp] Reporting cross-linguistic frequencies;</div>
<div>24.11.2025, 15:22, "Sylvain Kahane"
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:sylvain@kahane.fr"><sylvain@kahane.fr></a>:</div>
<blockquote>Dear Peter and Martin,
<div> </div>
<div>
<div>Just a quick note about primary and secondary data. By
typology based on primary data, I assume you are referring
to typology based on tokens (or what we called typometrics
in one of our articles). Basing our assertion on corpora has
some advantages: we can have quantitative statements using
the frequency of our observations, and our results can also
be more easily verified and possibly refuted if the data we
are working with is freely available (such as the UD
collection of syntactic databases). But I wouldn't say that
we are working on primary data, because this data must be
transcribed and annotated in order to be used. Even if you
use an LLM on raw data, your LLM has been trained on
secondary data. If you examine tags such as nsubj or ADJ in
a UD database, you need to be very careful, because even if
the annotators followed the universal annotation scheme,
there are different possible interpretations of these
concepts, especially in ergative or functionally
inconsistent languages, or in languages whose lexeme
categorization differs from that of Indo-European languages.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Best</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Sylvain
<div>
<blockquote>
<div>Le 24 nov. 2025 à 08:56, Martin Haspelmath via
Lingtyp <<a
href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org"
rel="noopener noreferrer" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>>
a écrit :</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>I agree with Peter that the corpus-based methods
employed by Hawkins, Wälchli, Cysouw, Levshina and
others have been very important, and also with
Jürgen that "when confronting the causal inference
problem in typology, we must consider every source
of evidence that we can get our hands on."</p>
<p>But I don't agree with Peter that "the whole
enterprise [of overcoming genealogical and areal
biases] does not appear to be very productive",
and I don't agree with Jürgen that we "must
eventually move from secondary data typology to
primary data typology".</p>
<p>I think that the enterprise of controlling for
family and contact effects is absolutely
necessary, because otherwise we cannot distinguish
outcomes of universal/non-historical factors from
outcomes of historical events. Peter recognizes
this implicitly when he says that we should
"combine experimental research ... with a
quantitative study of variation in corpora across
a small number of sufficiently distinct
languages". That's precisely the point: Which
languages are "sufficiently distinct"? And hasn't
the search for empirical universals been *highly
productive* over the last few decades? The recent
paper by Verkerk et al. (2025) has found good
evidence for most of the empirical universals that
had been seriously discussed earlier, so the
Greenbergian universals seem to very robust
findings compared to many other prestigious claims
in linguistics.</p>
<p>And I think that there is no reason to abandon
secondary-data typology just because we can also
(increasingly) do primary-data typology.
Typological comparison can be done at multiple
scales and multiple levels of granularity, and it
is not clear that we can dispense with any of
these levels. For example, we want to do typology
of phonological segments (along the lines of the
Phoible.org database), or typology of word
meanings (lexification typology, cf. <a
href="https://clics.clld.org/"
rel="noopener noreferrer" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://clics.clld.org/</a>),
and for these, it seems that secondary data will
not be easily replaced.</p>
<p>Best,</p>
<p>Martin</p>
<p> </p>
<div>On 21.11.25 16:04, Juergen Bohnemeyer wrote:</div>
<blockquote>
<div dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
Dear Peter — I’m a massive fan of corpus-based
typology. More broadly, there is no question in
my mind that we should, and must, eventually
move from secondary data typology to primary
data typology. Nobody seems to deny that
secondary data typology is fraught with too many
problematic idealizations: in particular, it
reduces entire languages to single observations,
and it suffers from incomparable decisions on
what is treated as a language in different parts
of the world. </div>
<div dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
<br>
</div>
<div dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
(The second problem is closely related to, but
not entirely identical with, the countability
problem Ian Joo mentions. The fact that <i>language</i> is
a count noun is a powerful illustration of how
ordinary language can frame reality in ways that
may impede scientific progress if it goes
unchecked, as Whorf pointed out. However,
actually counting languages is not the issue for
regression-based modeling, since regression
models don’t operate on counts. But the question
whether what is treated as an observation (i.e.,
a language) is uniform across the sample is of
course very much a concern for the validity of
sampling-based and regression-based modeling
alike.)</div>
<div dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
<br>
</div>
<div dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
There is a broader answer to your question,
though: as a matter of course, when confronting
the causal inference problem in typology (i.e.,
when hunting for the causal forces that shape
languages), we must consider every source of
evidence that we can get our hands on. Aside
from corpus-based typology, this includes
field-based psycholinguistics and the toolkit of
evolutionary linguistics, including simulations
and miniature artificial language experiments. </div>
<div dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
<br>
</div>
<div dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
Let me also suggest a distinction between
methods that are primarily geared toward the
discovery of typological distributions and the
examination of their statistical properties and
methods than can be used to test hypotheses of
causal inference (i.e., explanatory hypotheses).
Experimental research such as what I just
mentioned has its uses primarily for testing
explanatory hypotheses. Corpus-based research
can have both functions. But if we want to use
corpora to discover typological distributions,
we’ll need very large parallax corpus databases.
As are being developed now. </div>
<div dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
<br>
</div>
<div dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
Best — Juergen</div>
<div dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
<br>
</div>
<div dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
<br>
</div>
<div dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
<br>
</div>
<div
id="1dadbb124ddfd57c2650379a47ad6a82ms-outlook-mobile-signature">
<div
style="font-family:'calibri' , sans-serif;font-size:11pt;margin:0in"><span
style="font-family:'helvetica';font-size:9pt">Juergen Bohnemeyer
(He/Him)<br>
Professor, Department of Linguistics<br>
University at Buffalo <br>
<br>
Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus<br>
Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY
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Phone: <span
class="1f1ea193f6735cf0wmi-callto">(716)
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<div
style="font-family:'calibri' , sans-serif;font-size:11pt;margin:0in">-- </div>
<p
style="font-family:'calibri' , sans-serif;font-size:11pt;margin:0in"> </p>
</div>
<div
id="a072bc9780e9b7b3b9a49a25572a5efdmail-editor-reference-message-container">
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing"
style="border-color:rgb( 181 , 196 , 223 ) currentcolor currentcolor currentcolor;border-style:solid none none none;border-width:1pt medium medium medium;font-family:'aptos';font-size:12pt;padding:3pt 0in 0in 0in;text-align:left">
<b>From: </b>Lingtyp <a
class="1f85fe41a9161661477b40489dd2f552moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org"
moz-do-not-send="true"><lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org></a>
on behalf of Peter Arkadiev via Lingtyp <a
class="1f85fe41a9161661477b40489dd2f552moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" moz-do-not-send="true"><lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org></a><br>
<b>Date: </b>Friday, November 21, 2025 at
05:59<br>
<b>To: </b>Martin Haspelmath <a
class="1f85fe41a9161661477b40489dd2f552moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:martin_haspelmath@eva.mpg.de"
moz-do-not-send="true"><martin_haspelmath@eva.mpg.de></a>,
Linguistic Typology <a
class="1f85fe41a9161661477b40489dd2f552moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" moz-do-not-send="true"><lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org></a><br>
<b>Subject: </b>Re: [Lingtyp] Reporting
cross-linguistic frequencies<br>
<br>
</div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">Dear
Martin, dear all,</div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing"> </div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">I
am starting to wonder whether statistical
analysis of a language sample is at all a
suitable method for "detecting universal
tendencies that are caused by
universal/non-historical factors" (Martin's
formulation). Given that there is no consensus
as for how to overcome genealogical and areal
biases and even whether those biases must be
overcome at all and what trying to overcome
them actually gets us (apart from getting some
of us high-profile publications with ever more
complicated mathematical apparatus which
others among us struggle to understand and
cannot evaluate; not being in any way a
"mathematically-gifted person", to borrow
Stela's expression, I belong to the latter
group), the whole enterprise does not appear
to be very productive. What if the more
appropriate method, at least if purported
functional factors are being concerned, is the
one employed by John Hawkins, Natalia Levshina
and some others, i.e. to combine experimental
research on production / processing with a
quantitative study of variation in corpora
across a small number of sufficiently distinct
languages? If we can show that certain
well-defined factors are operative in language
processing and result in skewed distributions
in corpora ultimately translatable into
tendencies of diachronic change, and moreover
are able to corroborate these results by
similarly skewed distributions of variables in
reasonably designed cross-linguistic samples,
then what else do we need? In any case, as has
been repeatedly stated many times, even if we
find that in a certain language sample,
however well-designed, a certain variable
shows a clearly skewed distribution of, say
80% vs 20%, nothing follows from this in terms
of "universal preferences" unless we are able
to independently show that the more frequent
value is in some or other way "preferred" in
processing / production etc. I am sorry if the
above is self-evident or naive.</div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing"> </div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">Best
regards,</div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing"> </div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">Peter<br>
</div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing"> </div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">----------------</div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">Кому:
<a
class="324de92b3f6b2f5e993df2fdf11fa1c7moz-txt-link-abbreviated moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" moz-do-not-send="true">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>
(<a
class="324de92b3f6b2f5e993df2fdf11fa1c7moz-txt-link-abbreviated moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" moz-do-not-send="true">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>);</div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">Тема:
[Lingtyp] Reporting cross-linguistic
frequencies;</div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">21.11.2025,
10:19, "Martin Haspelmath via Lingtyp" <a
class="1f85fe41a9161661477b40489dd2f552moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" moz-do-not-send="true"><lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org></a>:</div>
<blockquote>
<p
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">Thanks,
Jürgen! I like the "wave vs. particle"
analogy, because these concrete expressions
help us make sense of what seems to be going
on (given the experimental results).</p>
<p
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">In
worldwide comparative linguistics, we also
want to make sense of what is going on, but
it seems to me that we need analogies not
only for interpreting results, but also for
understanding what we are aiming for. For
me, "removing areal and
genealogical/phylogenetic bias" has the aim
of detecting universal tendencies that are
caused by universal/non-historical factors.</p>
<p
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">I
would think that on the imagined concrete
scenario of a sample of isolated isolates
(e.g. 100 languages that have long existed
on isolated islands, maybe of the Rapanui
type), looking at these 100 isolates should
give the same results as looking at 100
sample languages from larger families that
have been shaped also by contact.</p>
<p
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">Are
there reasons to doubt this? If not, then we
can take the "isolated isolates" scenario
simply as a way of illustrating our goals in
concrete terms (somewhat like "wave" and
"particle" serve as concrete
illustrations). </p>
<p
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">But
maybe the imagined scenario (which is not an
"assumption"!!) is somehow problematic,
because the goals of our enterprise are
DIFFERENT. In Bickel's (2007) paper (LiTy
11), which has been widely cited, the idea
seems to be that looking for "history-free"
tendencies is somehow an obsolete goal.</p>
<p
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">Some
people have suggested that in identifying
universal trends, one MUST take into account
genealogies, and isolates are problematic
because they are not part of any genealogy.
This is because we should not look primarily
at languages, but at *transitions* (changes
from one type to another). If I understood
Verkerk et al. (2025) correctly, they solved
the "isolates problem" by using an
artificial world tree (where all languages
are somehow included; the very beautiful
tree is used in <a
href="https://www.mpg.de/25723124/1114-evan-enduring-patterns-in-the-world-s-languages-150495-x"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
style="margin-bottom:0px;margin-top:0px"
moz-do-not-send="true"> the press release</a>).
Are Verkerk et al. pursuing a different
goal? That is not really clear to me.</p>
<p
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">I
find the notion of an artificial world tree
profoundly strange, much stranger than the
hypothetical scenario of 100 isolates on
remote islands. But maybe it is needed,
because the goal of the enterprise is
somehow different (along Bickel's lines)? So
I like the imagined "isolated isolates"
scenario also because it clarifies what I'm
interested in.</p>
<p
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">(And
isn't Trudgill's idea that isolates are
somehow "exotic" very speculative?
Shcherbakova et al. 2023 have not provided
strong evidence against the idea, but they
simply did not find evidence in favour of
it.)</p>
<p
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">One
last point: Yes, all isolates are survivors
from some larger family, but why is that
relevant? Languages may have existed for
half a million years or longer, and we know
almost nothing about that deep past. Most of
the currently existing families probably had
more branches in earlier times, and the
protolanguages we reconstruct may or may not
have been isolates themselves. We cannot
tell, but I don't see why we would need to
know.</p>
<p
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">Best,</p>
<p
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">Martin</p>
<div> <br
class="8672d732fde65ac6f461de0ab2a199c5webkit-block-placeholder">
</div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">On
21.11.25 07:07, Juergen Bohnemeyer via
Lingtyp wrote:</div>
<blockquote>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing"
dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
Dear all — Here’s a quick explanation of
why the assumption of an “isolated
isolate” is profoundly strange: </div>
<div
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dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
<br>
</div>
<div
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dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif"> <span
style="font-size:12pt">Leaving aside
sign languages, constructed languages,
and artificial languages, nobody seems
to entertain the possibility that
languages have emerged spontaneously out
of something that we wouldn’t consider a
language itself over the last few
thousands of years. In other words, the
languages we consider isolates are
without exception lone survivors; but
they did descend from ancestors which
are often </span><span
style="background-color:rgb( 255 , 255 , 255 );font-size:16px">lost and
unknown</span><span
style="font-size:12pt">, and these
ancestors biased the offshoot's
properties by dint of
inheritance/transmission.</span></div>
<div
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dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
<br>
</div>
<div
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dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
The reason isolates are interesting from a
sampling perspective is that they may
represent entire genera or families
without forcing us to pick a member. But
being an isolate does not mean being free
of phylogenetic bias. On the contrary:
isolates of unknown descend are actually
particularly problematic in the sense that
they are shaped by biases that we have no
way of identifying directly since the
biasing ancestors have been lost to time.</div>
<div
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dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
<br>
</div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing"
dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif"> <span
style="font-size:12pt">As to contact.
Languages that are not in contact with
other languages over long stretches of
time are extremely rare and unusual. In
fact, as I’m sure everyone here is
aware, such languages have been
plausibly argued to tend to evolve
exotic properties as a result of their
isolation (</span><span
style="background-color:rgb( 255 , 255 , 255 );font-size:16px">Lupyan
& Dale 2010; </span><span
style="font-size:12pt">Trudgill 2011),
although this is controversial
(Shcherbakova et al. 2023). In any case,
I would certainly not want to make such
languages the basis for causal inference
in typology.</span></div>
<div
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dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
<br>
</div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing"
dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
But it gets a lot worse. The “isolated
isolate” interpretation doesn’t just
require us to think of a language that
isn’t currently in contact with any other
language. We would have to assume a
language that has <b>never</b> come into
contact with any other language at any
point in its history (at least not
long/intensively enough to change as a
result of it). I’m seriously uncertain
whether such a language has ever existed
on this planet. </div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing"
dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
<br>
</div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing"
dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
Here’s an analogy from quantum mechanics:
Schrödinger’s and Heisenberg’s equations
are mathematical models that describe the
experimentally observed behavior of
elementary particles under various
conditions. The particle and the wave
interpretation are interpretations that we
use to make sense of these mathematical
models. We find these models useful
because most of us don’t think in
mathematical equations (not even
theoretical physicists, it would seem).
But if we push these interpretations
beyond a certain point, they break down.
To begin with, we can’t think of something
simultaneously as a wave and as a
particle. </div>
<div
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dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
<br>
</div>
<div
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dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
In the same way, we can mathematically
describe the influence phylogeny and
areality exert on the probability of a
particular language having certain
properties. The “isolated isolate”
interpretation is just that - an
interpretation of the statistical models;
but, as I tried to show above, it runs
into absurdities rather more quickly than
the particle and wave interpretations in
quantum mechanics. </div>
<div
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<br>
</div>
<div
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dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
Best — Juergen</div>
<div
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dir="ltr"
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<br>
</div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing"
dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
G. Lupyan, R. Dale, Language structure is
partly determined by social structure.
PLOS ONE5, e8559 (2010).</div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing"
dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
<br>
</div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing"
dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
O. Shcherbakova, S. M. Michaelis, H. J.
Haynie, et al. Societies of strangers do
not speak less complex languages. <i>Scientific
Advances </i>9, eadf7704 (2023).</div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing"
dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
<br>
</div>
<div
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dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
P. Trudgill, <i>Sociolinguistic Typology:
Social Determinants of Linguistic
Complexity </i>(OxfordUniv. Press,
2011).</div>
<div
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dir="ltr"
style="font-family:'aptos' , 'arial' , 'helvetica' , sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
<br>
</div>
<div
id="c43567bf72e9785131187258bb81de281dadbb124ddfd57c2650379a47ad6a82ms-outlook-mobile-signature">
<div
style="font-family:'calibri' , sans-serif;font-size:11pt;margin:0in"><span
style="font-family:'helvetica';font-size:9pt">Juergen Bohnemeyer
(He/Him)<br>
Professor, Department of Linguistics<br>
University at Buffalo <br>
<br>
Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North
Campus<br>
Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall,
Buffalo, NY 14260 <br>
Phone: <span
class="1f1ea193f6735cf0wmi-callto">(716)
645 0127</span> <br>
Fax: <span
class="1f1ea193f6735cf0wmi-callto">(716)
645 3825</span><br>
Email: </span><span
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style="font-family:'helvetica';font-size:9pt"> <br>
<br>
</span>Office hours Tu/Th 3:30-4:30pm in
642 Baldy or via Zoom (Meeting ID 585 <span
class="1f1ea193f6735cf0wmi-callto">520
2411</span>; Passcode Hoorheh) <span
style="font-family:'helvetica';font-size:9pt"><br>
<br>
There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s
How The Light Gets In <br>
(Leonard Cohen) </span></div>
<div
style="font-family:'calibri' , sans-serif;font-size:11pt;margin:0in">-- </div>
<p
style="font-family:'calibri' , sans-serif;font-size:11pt;margin:0in"> </p>
</div>
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<b>From: </b>Lingtyp <a
class="e78fc4d19319e3dbcccf38048379940e1f85fe41a9161661477b40489dd2f552moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org"
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<lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org></a> on
behalf of Matías Guzmán Naranjo via
Lingtyp <a
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href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" moz-do-not-send="true">
<lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org></a><br>
<b>Date: </b>Thursday, November 20,
2025 at 04:01<br>
<b>To: </b><a
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<lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org></a><br>
<b>Subject: </b>Re: [Lingtyp] Reporting
cross-linguistic frequencies<br>
<br>
</div>
<div
class="36472014ab394f30c45e8fa241f08493662abf391f8b56b11ba8165b7bd48bb4PlainText"
style="font-size:11pt">I'll jump in with
some thoughts.<br>
<br>
<br>
- Dryer's method and ours aim at doing
basically the same thing:<br>
quantifying what's "left" after removing
genetic and areal bias.<br>
<br>
- Whether you should call them
proportions or adjusted frequencies...<br>
I'm not sure that it matters that much?
As long as you understand how<br>
they were calculated...<br>
<br>
- How you want to interpret this "what's
left" is debatable, I guess,<br>
but I don't think I agree with Jürgen.
As far as I can tell it should be<br>
compatible with something along the
lines of an "isolated isolate" as<br>
described by Martin. You can also see
them as 'universal' preferences<br>
(more or less the same thing?).<br>
<br>
- "the probability of a random language
having a certain property<br>
depends on (or is influenced by, or
varies with, etc.) it being related<br>
to certain other languages, or being
spoken (or signed) in a particular<br>
area" -> In our approach we assumes
that the probability of a language L<br>
having some feature value F depends on
three things: 1) its relatedness<br>
to other languages, 2) its contact to
other languages, 3) some universal<br>
preference for F. Kind of the point of
what we do is that we try to<br>
estimate each of these factors. [We can
add more factors and more<br>
structure, but that's the most basic
model]<br>
<br>
- You can quantify the contribution of
the phylogenetic component and<br>
the areal component(s) with our
techniques, but this is a bit tricky<br>
because there is unavoidable overlap in
the information each one<br>
contains. These measures also have a
different meaning than the adjusted<br>
frequency and can't be used as a
replacement for them, you can use them<br>
in addition to.<br>
<br>
<br>
Matías<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
El 20/11/25 a las 9:36, Omri Amiraz via
Lingtyp escribió:<br>
> Dear all,<br>
> I agree with Ian that, in addition
to genealogical and areal biases,<br>
> the very question of what counts as
a language versus a dialect is<br>
> partly subjective. This makes
actual frequencies even more<br>
> problematic, since we would obtain
different results depending on<br>
> whether we treat Wu Chinese as one
language or as thirty separate<br>
> languages, as Ian pointed out.<br>
> Juergen wrote: "We can empirically
assess the extent to which the<br>
> probability of a random language
having a certain property depends on<br>
> (or is influenced by, or varies
with, etc.) it being related to<br>
> certain other languages, or being
spoken (or signed) in a particular<br>
> area."<br>
><br>
> I wonder whether it might be useful
to have a measure of the<br>
> genealogical and areal spread of a
feature, essentially quantifying<br>
> how broadly it is distributed
across families and regions in the<br>
> present-day world. Such a measure
might be more straightforward to<br>
> interpret than an adjusted
frequency/probability, since it is not<br>
> clear whether the described
population is a hypothetical set of<br>
> isolated isolates or something
else.<br>
><br>
> Is anyone aware of an existing
metric that captures genealogical or<br>
> areal spread in this way?<br>
><br>
> Best,<br>
> Omri<br>
><br>
>
_______________________________________________<br>
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<pre><div
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</blockquote>
<pre><div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">--
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
<a
class="56221ecd4cd88a7e220fd42e552d23b7moz-txt-link-freetext moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/</a></div></pre>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">,</div>
<p
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">_______________________________________________<br>
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class="56221ecd4cd88a7e220fd42e552d23b7moz-txt-link-freetext moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp"
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</blockquote>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing"> </div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing"> </div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">-- </div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing">Peter
Arkadiev, PhD Habil.</div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing"><a
class="56221ecd4cd88a7e220fd42e552d23b7moz-txt-link-freetext moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://peterarkadiev.github.io/"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://peterarkadiev.github.io/</a></div>
<div
class="39e1103e8e8cbb86b1168768346b5522ms-outlook-mobile-reference-message 728e41e5405915cc550e9daf9431b8d6skipProofing"> </div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<pre>--
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
<a
href="https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/"
rel="noopener noreferrer" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/</a></pre>
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</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>-- </div>
<div>Peter Arkadiev, PhD Habil.</div>
<div><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://peterarkadiev.github.io/">https://peterarkadiev.github.io/</a></div>
<div> </div>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/">https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/</a></pre>
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