Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language” - Online First

Multi-constituent numerals involve a decision as to whether the lower value should precede or follow the higher value. While most languages go for consistent ordering, a minority of languages use both orders in the range from ‘11’ to ‘99’ (compare English seven-teen [unit-ten order] to seventy-two [ten-unit order]). This study presents a typological analysis of 258 inconsistent-order languages. Most, but not all inconsistent languages switch from unit-ten to ten-unit order. Numeral 20 is by far the most preferred switch point. A combination of natural order, the frequent-before-infrequent principle, paradigm consistency and the internal structure of numeral systems can account for the empirical results. The frequent-before-infrequent bias facilitates the emergence of the unit-ten order. Because the frequency of numerals decreases with increasing numerical magnitude, the frequency bias gradually loses its force, thereby enabling the natural order to take over and bringing about the switch from the unit-ten to the ten-unit order.

Many languages exhibit some form of differential argument marking (DAM), where the same generalized argument role can be marked differently. Approaches explaining these phenomena have in common that they assume some form of ranking among linguistic elements of the same kind. While previous approaches emphasize this relative ranking based on semantic features (e.g., animacy, definiteness, transitivity) or information structure (e.g., topicality), several observations from the literature suggest that differential argument marking might also depend on discourse factors. In this contribution, we explore recent empirical work on differential argument marking in selected languages (Spanish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Tima, Yali) and illustrate the discourse sensitivity of these phenomena. In particular, we present evidence that discourse prominence, i.e., the dynamic ranking and keeping track of referents in discourse, interacts with the phenomena under discussion. This contribution offers new perspectives on the interplay of differential argument marking and discourse prominence, highlighting perspectives for future research.

We probe a new approach to linguistic areas. Instead of similarity of a feature across languages of the area, we focus on its adaptation to the area. Adaptation is a set of changes and/or retentions in a language towards, but not necessarily into, similarity with the other languages of the area. Technically, we estimate adaptation by comparing the distance between the focus language from the area and a geographically and genealogically closely related language outside of the area (its benchmark language) as tertium comparationis. If the focus language is closer to the area than its benchmark, we interpret it as evidence for adaptation towards the other languages of the area. Adaptation includes all possible scenarios of change and non-change. We test word order and find that all languages of the CB area show effects of adaptation, with Baltic Romani and both Baltic languages being in the center of the area.