[Lingtyp] Reporting cross-linguistic frequencies

Wed Nov 19 20:16:30 UTC 2025

Sorry, I'm confused by two things that have been said.

Michael Cysouw said:

"Any frequency measured depends on many assumptions, including that the 
current linguistic situation in the world’s languages might very well be 
different from any situation in the (far) past or (far) future. Even 
something like estimates of the stable state from a dynamic model of 
typological transition probabilities (my favourite kind of numbers) is 
probably just a reflection of the forces influencing languages over the 
last few thousand years. That is very interesting (I think), but still 
just one aspect of human language."

Isn't "the stable state from a dynamic model of typological transition 
probabilities" the same as what Omri talked about in terms of "a 
hypothetical (and unrealistic) set of independent languages"?

And isn't this the most important indicator in Greenbergian universalist 
typology? (Of course, one may also be interested in non-universalist 
questions and use typological notions and results, but this wouldn't be 
Greenbergian.)

And Östen Dahl said:

"The idea of a language without relatives or neighbours is somewhat 
reminiscent of “homo economicus” in economics or closer to our concerns, 
Chomsky’s “ideal speaker-listener in a completely homogeneous 
speech-community”. Like those phantoms, the isolated isolate can at most 
serve as a useful temporary construct but can hardly be the final goal 
of our endeavour."

But nobody has suggested that the "isolated isolates" fiction should be 
a "goal of our endeavor". The goal is to estimate the probability of a 
feature appearing in a language regardless of its history. For example, 
if we want to argue that high elevation makes ejectives more likely (see 
Urban & Moran 2021 
<https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0245522> 
for recent discussion), we need to look at multiple independent cases of 
ejectives in high-elevation locations. Pointing to a lot of ejectives in 
the Caucasus is not convincing because ejectives there could be an areal 
feature that is largely due to contact.

So I don't see any problems with Omri's "isolated isolates" fiction.

Martin

On 19.11.25 16:36, Michael Cysouw via Lingtyp wrote:
> Dear Omri,
>
> The real question is what you want to report. There is real value in all numbers that you propose, so simply report them all, explaining how you obtained them.
>
> I think that your question arose because of the misconception (in my opinion) that there is something like the “true” frequencies of a typological parameter. They do not exist. Any frequency measured depends on many assumptions, including that the current linguistic situation in the world’s languages might very well be different from any situation in the (far) past or (far) future. Even something like estimates of the stable state from a dynamic model of typological transition probabilities (my favourite kind of numbers) is probably just a reflection of the forces influencing languages over the last few thousand years. That is very interesting (I think), but still just one aspect of human language.
>
> best
> Michael
>
> ————————
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>
>> On 18. Nov 2025, at 10:23, Omri Amiraz via Lingtyp<lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:
>>
>> Dear Colleagues,
>> 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.
>> 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 theactual 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.
>> For that reason, it is common practice to report adjusted 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: 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? In other words, the population being described is not the set of existing languages but a hypothetical (and unrealistic) set of independent languages.
>> 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: “When genealogical and areal biases are controlled for, the probability of a language being OV is 0.6". 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.
>> I would appreciate hearing what others in the community think about how such statistics should ideally be reported.
>> Best regards,
>> Omri
>>
>> References:
>> Becker, Laura and Guzmán Naranjo Matías. 2025. Replication and methodological robustness in quantitative typology. Linguistic Typology.
>> Dryer, Matthew S. 2018. On the order of demonstrative, numeral, adjective, and noun. Language 94(4), 798-833.
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-- 
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
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