The UNAM Lectures: Comparing grammars worldwide

Curso extracurricular: Comparing grammars worldwide: Verbal and nonverbal clause constructions (UNAM, 20-23 October 2025) MARTIN HASPELMATH 1. Clause constructions (Oct 20): A. Marking clausal arguments B. Issues of methodology C. (I) Functions vs. structures and (II) efficiency explanations 2. Alignment and differential coding (Oct 21): A. Accusative and ergative alignment B. Argument flagging splits C. Argument indexing vs. argument flagging 3. Nonverbal clause constructions (Oct 22): A. Overview B. Existential constructions C. Adjectives vs. verbs vs. nouns 4. Voice constructions (Oct 23): A. Causatives and anticausatives B. Passives C. Antipassives and inverses 1 Curso extracurricular: Comparing grammars worldwide (UNAM, 20-24 October 2025) Clause constructions: 1A. Marking clausal arguments MARTIN HASPELMATH Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology 1. Word order of clausal arguments Since Greenberg (1963), it has been well-known that the order of the subject and the object with respect to the verb is an important parameter of cross-linguistic variation. 2 We published the World atlas of language structrures in 2005, but interest in worldwide typological comparison is older. As early as 1926, Schmidt (1926) published a work on the world’s languages that contains some world maps of structural features, e.g. But for a long time, linguists thought that the most important typological parameter has to do with the internal structure of words: – isolating languages – agglutinating languages – fusional languages – incorporating languages, etc. This way of doing “morphological typology” goes back to German Romantics of the 19th century, e.g. Wilhelm von Humboldt (1836). Classical Nahuatl: ni-naca-qua (ni-naka-kwa) I-meat-eat (“incorporating”) 3 ni-c-qua in nacatl I-it-eat the meat However, “morphological typology” was based on too few data and too much speculation – I criticized it in Haspelmath (2009). Moreover, “morphological typology” presupposes that we can identify “words” – but this is not necessarily the case (see Haspelmath 2011). Maybe “words” exist primarily in the spelling of those languages that have spaces between “words”? Cf. this metro station in Beijing ( 安 华桥, an-hua-qiao): Anhua Qiao Anhuaqiao An Hua Qiao Constituent order typology, by contrast, is universally applicable – instead of saying, e.g., that “X is an agglutinating language”, it’s more informative to say “X is an SVO language”. 2. Argument marking by grammatical markers In addition to the order of constituents, basic grammatical patterns often include argument marking. Traditionally: “the subject is in nominative case, the (direct) object in accusative case” (1) Russian a. Sergej-Ø ljubi-t Nin-u. Sergey-NOM love-3SG Nina-ACC ‘Sergey loves Nina.’ b. Nin-a ljubi-t Sergej-a. Nina-NOM love-3SG Sergey-ACC ‘Nina loves Sergey.’ Traditionally: “the verb agrees with the subject in person and number” (2) Italian a. Lo studente lavor-a qui. the student work-3SG here ‘The student works here.’ 4 b. Gli student-i lavor-ano qui. the student-PL work-3PL here ‘The students work here.’ More recent terminology in typology: flagging and indexing flags: case-markers or adpositional markers (often hard to distinguish) (3) Japanese Seikoo -ga tomodati -ni manga -o age-ta. Seiko -NOM friend -DAT manga -ACC give-PST ‘Seiko gave her friend the manga.’ (4) French Seiko donna le manga àson ami. Seiko gave the manga DATher friend ‘Seiko gave her friend the manga.’ (flagging here replaces “case-marking or adpositional marking”) indexes: verbal person (and number) markers, most often not literally “agreeing” (5) Italian lavor-o ‘I work’ (subject indexing) lavor-i ‘you work’ lavor-a ‘she works’ (6) Maltese in-ħobb-ok ‘I love you’ (subject and object indexing) in-ħobb-u ‘I love him’ t-ħobb-ni ‘you love me’ (indexing (= bound person marking) here replaces “agreement or cross-referencing”) That flagging and indexing are complementary ways of marking arguments has been discussed by typologists since the 1980s (Lehmann 1982; 1985), but usually, they have used the terminology “case and agreement” (e.g. Siewierska 1997; Siewierska & Bakker 2009; Keine 2010; Baker 2013) The “flagging and indexing” terminology has become more widespread due to my work since 2005 (Haspelmath 2005; 2013; 2019). 5 3. Head marking and dependent marking (Nichols 1986) A closely related contrast is that of dependent marking (very similar to flagging) and head marking (similar to indexing). A recent formulation (Lander & Nichols 2020): “Head/dependent marking typologizes word and phrase morphosyntax, constructions, and whole languages according to whether grammatical relations are overtly marked on the head of the relevant phrase, a non-head, both, or neither. … (i) a. Hungarian az ember ház-a the man house-3SG.POSS ‘the man’s house’ b. English the man’s house The essential theoretical point is that the syntax of the Hungarian and English phrases is identical (at least to the extent that it is comparable) but the morphology is opposite.” The notions of “head” and “dependent” became well-known only after Nichols (1986) – in earlier times, linguists talked about “subjects”, “objects” and “modifiers”, but there was no general notion of dependent. Before Jackendoff (1977), there was no widely-known notion of head either. So these notions are fairly recent, and not as stable as the notion of word order. Nichols (1986; 1992) claimed that entire languages can be typologized as “dependent-marking” (e.g. Tagalog) vs. “head-marking” (e.g. Yucatec Maya). (7) Tagalog (Filipino) a. Hinabol nang+aso ang+pusa. chased ERG+dog ABS+cat ‘The dog chased the cat.’ b. aso nang+babae dog gen+girl ‘the girl’s dog’ (8) Yucatec Maya a. T-u=nes-ah-Ø hun-túul pàal. PFV-3SG.ERG=gnaw-CMPL-3SG.ABS one-CLF child ‘The cockroach bit a child.’ (Bohnemeyer et al. 2016: 177) b. u=k’àaba’ le xch’up-pàal-a’ 3SG.POSS=name the woman-child-DEM1 ‘this girl’s name’ (Lehmann 2002: 42) 6 Nichols (1986; 1992), Nichols & Bickel (2005): languages tend to be either generally dependent-marking or generally head-marking. However, there are many mixed cases, e.g. Spanish el perro de+la niña (dependent-marking) ‘the girl’s dog’ nosotros lo+vi-mos a+él (headand dependent-marking) ‘WE saw HIM’ 7 Probably a better universal (cf. Lehmann 1982): The further an element is to the left of the scale, the more likely it is to be indexed; and the further an element is to the right, the more likely it is to be flagged. The involvement scale subject > patient object > other object > beneficiary/instrument > place ←. indexing flagging → Yucatec (a “head-marking language”) has flagging with recipient objects: English (a “dependent-marking language”) has indexing with subjects: The girl tell-s a story to the boy. 8 4. Why indexing is better than “head-marking” or “agreement” 4.1. Indexing is better than “head-marking” – “Head-marking” presupposes a notion of “head”, which is not as straightforward as Nichols (1986) thought (in generative syntax since the 1990s, most “heads” are “functional heads”, and these are quite different animals) – head-marking need not be person-marking – it can be “construct-marking”, e.g. (9) a. Hebrew tmuna-t ha-yalda (cf. tmuna ‘picture’) picture-CSTR DEF-girl ‘the girl’s picture’ b. Mende ndopó-i l-oko-í (cf. tokó ‘arm’) child-DEF CSTR-arm-DEF ‘the child’s arm’ (Creissels 2009a: 80) Construction markers which occur on the “head” but are not person markers are not common, and they have no particular similarity to person markers. – indexes have a “pointing function” – they are often thought of as “referential devices” Spanish Cre-o que tien-es razón. ‘I think that you are right.’ 4.2. Indexing is better than “agreement” – With first and second person forms, it is odd to say that they “agree with” elements that are not present “on the surface” underlying Yo cre-o que tú tien-es razón. surface – creo que – tienes razón. The idea that there is “pro-drop” here is quite strange – and apparently based on German or English. A better way of conceptualizing this is by saying that the person indexes are the arguments, and that the additional pronouns are conominals (Haspelmath 2013). 15 Haspelmath, Martin. 2009. An empirical test of the Agglutination Hypothesis. In Scalise, Sergio & Magni, Elisabetta & Bisetto, Antonietta (eds.), Universals of language today, 13–29. Dordrecht: Springer. (Accessed May 27, 2016.) Haspelmath, Martin. 2011. On S, A, P, T, and R as comparative concepts for alignment typology. Linguistic Typology 15(3). 535–567. Haspelmath, Martin. 2013. Argument indexing: A conceptual framework for the syntax of bound person forms. In Bakker, Dik & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.), Languages across boundaries: Studies in memory of Anna Siewierska, 197–226. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. (https://zenodo.org/record/1294059) Haspelmath, Martin. 2015. Transitivity prominence. In Malchukov, Andrej L. & Comrie, Bernard (eds.), Valency classes in the world’s languages: A comparative handbook (Volume 1), 131– 147. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. (https://zenodo.org/deposit/4551122) Haspelmath, Martin. 2019. Indexing and flagging, and head and dependent marking. Te Reo 62(1). 93–115. (doi:10.17617/2.3168042) Hawkins, John A. 1986. A comparative typology of English and German: Unifying the contrasts. Austin: University of Texas Press. Humboldt, Wilhelm von. 1836. Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts, von Wilhelm von Humboldt. Berlin: Druckerei der königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften. (http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb30628312k) (Accessed October 24, 2025.) Jackendoff, Ray. 1977. X-bar syntax: A study of phrase structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Keine, Stefan. 2010. Case and agreement from fringe to core: A minimalist approach. Berlin: De Gruyter. Lander, Yury & Nichols, Johanna. 2020. Head/dependent marking. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. (doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.523) (https://oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore9780199384655-e-523) (Accessed March 7, 2020.) Lehmann, Christian. 1982. Universal and typological aspects of agreement. In Seiler, Hansjakob & Stachowiak, Franz Josef (eds.), Apprehension: Das sprachliche Erfassen von Gegenständen, 201–267. Tübingen: Narr. (https://www.christianlehmann.eu/publ/lehmann_agreement.pdf) Lehmann, Christian. 1985. On grammatical relationality. Folia Linguistica 19(1–2). 67–110. (doi:10.1515/flin.1985.19.1-2.67) Lehmann, Christian. 2002. Possession in Yucatec Maya (ASSidUE 10). 2nd, revised edition edn. Erfurt: Universität Erfurt. (http://www.christianlehmann.eu/publ/ASSidUE10.pdf.) Malchukov, Andrej. 2005. Case pattern splits, verb types, and construction competition. In Amberber, Mengistu & de Hoop, Helen (eds.), Competition and variation in natural languages: The case for case, 73–117. London: Elsevier. Nichols, Johanna. 1986. Head-marking and dependent-marking grammar. Language 62(1). 56–119. Nichols, Johanna. 1992. Linguistic diversity in space and time. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Nichols, Johanna & Bickel, Balthasar. 2005a. Locus of marking in possessive noun phrases. In Haspelmath, Martin & Dryer, Matthew S. & Gil, David & Comrie, Bernard (eds.), The world atlas of language structures, 102–105. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (http://wals.info/chapter/24) Nichols, Johanna & Bickel, Balthasar. 2005b. Locus of marking in the clause. In Haspelmath, Martin & Dryer, Matthew S. & Gil, David & Comrie, Bernard (eds.), The world atlas of language structures, 98–101. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (http://wals.info/chapter/23) Nichols, Johanna & Bickel, Balthasar. 2005c. Locus of marking: Whole-language typology. In Martin Haspelmath, David Gil & Bernard Comrie, Matthew S. Dryer (ed.), The world atlas of language structures, 106–109. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schmidt, Wilhelm. 1926. Die Sprachfamilien und Sprachenkreise der Erde. Heidelberg: Winter. Seifart, Frank. 2013. Bora valency patterns. In Hartmann, Iren & Haspelmath, Martin & Taylor, Bradley (eds.), Valency Patterns Leipzig. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (http://valpal.info/languages/yaqui) 1 Curso extracurricular: Comparing grammars worldwide (UNAM, 20-24 October 2025) Clause constructions: 1B. Issues of methodology MARTIN HASPELMATH Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology 1. Two ways of approaching the study of Human Language (A) the description-comparison approach we describe many languages worldwide and compare them (B) the “deep reality” approach we look for some deep “underlying” structure that is not immediately apparent The description-comparison approach may look a bit boring – like collecting butterflies and displaying them in a museum. The “deep reality” approach may look more exciting – like chemistry and physics, where it has been shown that the stuff that surrounds us consists of elements of atoms. But I argue that the description-comparison approach is better suited to helping us understand the nature of Human Language. 2. The study of Human Language, and of particular languages I assume that – we are interested in theoretical linguistics (not just in applied linguistics) – we are interested in Human Language, not just in particular languages (p-languages) – in other words, we want to do general linguistics (g-linguistics) but how do we solve the general linguistics paradox? (Haspelmath 2021b) We want to explore and understand the nature of Human Language, but what we can observe directly is particular languages. answer: – we study universals [– alternatively: we study nonconventional aspects of Human Language] 2 When we observe a particular language, we can describe it, but it does not tell us anything about Human Language directly. Consider words such as house дом 房子 tree дерево 树 red красный 红 they differ across languages in random, accidental ways – they do not tell us anything about the nature of Human Language. The situation is basically the same with morphosyntax – languages differ in seemingly random ways, e.g. I have a red house. У меня красный дом. 我有一座红房子. [wǒ yǒu yī zuò hóng fángzi] English has a transitive verb that shows agreement with the possessor, while Russian has no verb and a spatial preposition (u menja ‘near me’), and Chinese seems to have an existential verb (有 you ‘there is’) (‘I, there is a red house’). Thus, particular languages (p-languages) are not an immediate window to human cognition – they differ across populations, and they are learned like other aspects of human culture. so we are confronted with the general linguistics paradox: (Haspelmath 2021b) We want to explore and understand the nature of Human Language, but what we can observe directly is particular languages. Cf. religious studies: What we can observe directly is particular religions. But how do we learn from them about Human Religion in general? The solution: comparing cultures: – comparing religions (comparative religious studies) – comparing languages (comparative grammar studies) 3. The “deep reality” approach: Languages are made from the same building blocks Example: dependent case theory (e.g. Baker 2015) Baker (2015) claims that grammatical case-marking patterns in the world’s languages are usually determined by dependent-case rules as in (1). 3 (2) a. High case in the clause is ergative. b. Low case in the clause is accusative. c. High case in VP is dative. e. High case in NP is genitive. f. Unmarked case is nominative-absolutive. Cls: NP → ERG VP: NP → DAT VP: NP → unmarked = ABS Ali-di za-z ktab wuga-na. (Lezgian) Ali-ERG I-DAT book give-AOR ‘Ali gave me a book.’ There is no unique way to determine what is “high” and “low”, but Baker is not worried by this: “We should not expect to find many differences between c-command and a notion like thematic prominence, since the two notions are closely related.” (p. 81) But elsewhere, he appeals to a movement operation in order to explain some casemarking effects. Thus, Sakha (a Turkic language) has differential object marking on definite nominals (p. 125-126): 4 Baker’s actual proposal for the movement is rather intricate and thus quite “deep” (p. 126): Hypothesizing a “deep reality” of this kind makes sense only if the building blocks of language structure are hypothesized to be innate – if they are natural kinds, analogous to the chemical elements (cf. Baker 2001) In Haspelmath (2021b), I noted that there are three ways in which the study of a particular language can contribute to general linguistics (three ways to get around the “general linguistics paradox”): (1) nonconventional aspects of Human Language e.g. psycholinguistic measurements, slips of the tongue (2) worldwide language comparison e.g. Greenberg (1963), World Atlas of Language Structures (3) a natural-kinds programme for the building blocks of languages (i.e. the proposal that the ingredients of grammars are innate) The natural-kinds programme is fascinating, and has been compared to the discovery of the chemical elements of the 19th century (Mendeleyev’s Periodic Table of Elements). The idea of an essentialist approach to grammar is not absurd But we have not made much progress – we do not know what the innate categories and features of the human mind are… 5 4. Comparison uses comparative concepts, defined uniformly across languages In order to compare languages systematically, one needs comparative concepts, and these need to be defined in the same way for all languages. For example, flagging and indexing must be defined uniformly – we cannot say that a flag (case marker, adposition) is defined differently in different languages. This principle is not always observed, as can be seen in the following quotation (from Svenonius 2007: 67): example of Chinese: dào Shànghǎi ‘to Shanghai’ ‘arrive in Shanghai’ Proposals for defining the terms adposition, case marker, flag, clitic, and affix: adposition An adposition is a clitic flag. case marker A case marker is an affix flag. flag A flag is a marker = clitic or affix) that occurs on a nominal and gives information about its semantic role or syntactic function. clitic A clitic is a bound morph that is not a root or an affix. (Haspelmath 2023) affix An affix is a bound morph that is not a root, that occurs on a root, and that cannot occur on roots of different root classes. (Haspelmath 2021a) These definitions do not always give “intuitive” results, but our intuitions are usually based on particular phenomena we know well, not necessarily on something deep. 6 For example, “clitic” is widely thought to be defined phonologically, as “prosodically deficient” – however, affixes are usually “prosodically deficient” in the same way, and clitics are often prosodically complete. The stereotype does not work as a definition. 5. Comparative concepts are defined sharply, not as prototypes Comparative concepts are tools for comparing languages systematically – so they must be sharp tools. If we want to make a database, we need to be able to say whether a phenomenon falls under concept A or concept B. If A and B are not sharply defined, there is no clear answer to this. In practice, typologists often define their terms in somewhat vague terms, e.g. Iggesen 2005 (in WALS) “A marker does not necessarily have to be attached to the phrasal head to be counted as nominal case; it is only required that the marker show a sufficient degree of bondedness (phonological integration) with its host noun …” But what is a “sufficient degree”? Linguists often note that the space of variation is continuous, and therefore they feel that the terms should not be sharply defined but as “prototypes”, e.g. Fagard & Mardale (2012) about the definition of “adposition”: “Elements which do not fit in well … can then be described as ‘poor’ instances of the category in question: ‘pseudo’ adpositions, ‘improper’ adverbs, etc. In our view, a prototypical framework more adequately describes such classes: grammatical categories are then seen as heterogeneous paradigms containing elements which display the category’s prototypical features to various degrees. In the case of adpositions, we expect to find a core of prototypical adpositions, a set of less prototypical elements and finally a set of elements which share only some (proto)typical features of adpositions. The prototypical framework implies, besides, that these distinctions are not clear-cut, and that many elements can be shown to be in-between these subcategories.” However, if a grammatical term such as adposition denotes a prototype rather than a sharply delineated concept, – we canot use it for making cross-linguistic databases – we cannot use it to test hypotheses quantitatively 7 6. Defining comparative concepts is not “difficult” Linguists often say that it is “difficult” to define a term, especially in survey articles where they are supposed to define it, e.g. https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2675 However, it is not “difficult” to provide a definition for a term – definitions are often short and pithy (e.g. “A clitic is a bound morph that is not a root or an affix”, Haspelmath 2023). What may be “difficult” is to find a “satisfactory” definition – but what is “satsifactory”? This is a subjective notion. Linguists often note that a term is used in a variety of different ways, and in such cases, it is impossible (not just difficult) to provide a definition that covers all the usages in the earlier literature. For example, Nevins’s (2000) task of surveying the literature on clitics is made difficult by the variety of ways in which the term clitic has been used. (And does it even make sense to survey “the literature on clitics” if “clitic” is used in very different ways?) 7. Switching the perspective from an essentialist approach to a measurement approach The methodological approach that I am proposing involves comparative concepts similar to units of measurement, not to essentialist natural kinds (as in the “deep reality” approach). 8 Instead of – looking for the “correct analysis” of a language-particular pattern – debating the “status” of a phenomenon – proposing “underlying” entities that allow a more elegant description ... I think we should “measure” the differences between languages and use these measurements to find general pattern. Units of measurements are not claimed to correspond to anything in nature – they merely serve as yardsticks to allow scientists to compare related phenomena and to state possible generalizations. Science should “cut nature at its joints”, but when nature appears to be continuous, a measurement approach may be fruitful. In comparative linguistics, we use comparative concepts to compare languages (Haspelmath 2010). They are artificial concepts designed for the purpose of “measuring” (= identifying and assessing) differences and similarities between languages. They are not claimed to correspond to “nature’s joints”, but merely serve the practical purpose of allowing comparison, just like the symbols of the IPA. Mendeleev vs. Passy: The periodic table of elements shows the natural kinds of chemistry (“nature’s joints”). But the IPA table (developed by Paul Passy and his colleagues since the 1880s) does not show the natural kinds of phonology. It seems that we cannot identify the natural kinds of phonology and syntax, if there are any (at least not yet, and we do not seem to be moving closer). The situation would then be as in comparative anthropology, where we cannot identify natural kinds either (maybe with the exception of kinship): categories like “tribe”, “chief”, “trade”, “land ownership”, “religion”, “god”, “art”, “taboo” are highly variable across cultures, so in order to compare societies, anthropologists must work with artificial comparative concepts such as “moralizing high god” (e.g. Botero et al. 2014). References Baker, Mark C. 2015. Case: Its principles and parameters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Botero, Carlos A. & Gardner, Beth & Kirby, Kathryn R. & Bulbulia, Joseph & Gavin, Michael C. & Gray, Russell D. 2014. The ecology of religious beliefs. Proceedings of 9 the National Academy of Sciences 111(47). 16784–16789. (doi:10.1073/pnas.1408701111) Fagard, Benjamin & Mardale, Alexandru. 2012. The pace of grammaticalization and the evolution of prepositional systems: Data from Romance. Folia linguistica 46(2). 303– 340. Greenberg, Joseph H. 1963. Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. In Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.), Universals of language, 73–113. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Haspelmath, Martin. 2010. Comparative concepts and descriptive categories in crosslinguistic studies. Language 86(3). 663–687. (doi:10.1353/lan.2010.0021) Haspelmath, Martin. 2021a. Bound forms, welded forms, and affixes: Basic concepts for morphological comparison. Voprosy Jazykoznanija 2021(1). 7–28. (doi:10.31857/0373658X.2021.1.7-28) Haspelmath, Martin. 2021b. General linguistics must be based on universals (or nonconventional aspects of language). Theoretical Linguistics 47(1–2). 1–31. (doi:10.1515/tl-2021-2002) Haspelmath, Martin. 2023. Types of clitics in the world’s languages. Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 3(2). 1–59. (doi:10.6092/issn.2785-0943/16057) Iggesen, Oliver A. 2005. Number of cases. In Haspelmath, Martin & Dryer, Matthew S. & Gil, David & Comrie, Bernard (eds.), The world atlas of language structures, 202–205. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (http://wals.info/chapter/49) Nevis, Joel A. 2000. Clitics. In Booij, Geert E. & Lehmann, Christian & Mugdan, Joachim (eds.), Morphology: An international handbook on inflection and word-formation (Volume 1), 388–404. Berlin: de Gruyter. (https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110111286.1.5.360) Svenonius, Peter. 2007. Adpositions, particles and the arguments they introduce. In Reuland, Eric & Bhattacharya, Tanmoy & Spathas, Giorgos (eds.), Argument structure, 63–103. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 7 b. Oni ubili sebja. they killed themselves ‘They killed themselves.’ In these examples, reflexive marking is differential in that it depends on the lexical subclass (introverted vs. extroverted). The shorter forms (zero-coded in English, reflexive -s’ in Russian) are used with introverted verbs, because these occur more frequently with agent-patient coreference than extroverted verbs. More generally, in a differential-coding pair, we are dealing with a USUAL ASSOCIATION of a grammatical meaning with a grammatical context or a lexical subclass. The claim is that such usual associations need less coding than unusual associations. There is also a usual association of person with mood, in that imperatives tend to have second person subjects and indicatives tend to have 3rd person subjects. Languages often have split coding of bound 2nd and 3rd person person forms, and as predicted, there is a tendency for 2nd person form to be short or zero in imperatives (Aikhenvald 2010: 46), and 3rd person forms to be short or zero (Siewierska 2010). Latin Turkish IMPERATIVE 2ND lauda-Ø ‘(you) praise!’ bak-Ø ‘(you) look’ 3RD lauda-to ‘let her praise!’ bak-sın ‘let her look’ INDICATIVE 2ND lauda-v-isti ‘you praised’ bak-ıyor-un ‘you are looking’ 3RD lauda-v-it ‘she praised’ bak-Iyor-Ø ‘she is looking’ There is also a usual association of semantic class with discourse function: Property concept roots tend to occur in attributive discourse function, while action roots are usually associated with predicative function. As a result, in most languages, property concept roots have short (or Ø) coding in attributive function, while action roots tend to need overt attributive markers (participial affixes or relativizers). By contrast, in predicative function, property concept roots tend to need special marking by a copula, while action roots do not (Croft 1991: 67). French M. Chinese ATTR PROPERTY petit Ø enfant xiăo Ø háizi ‘small child’ ACTION enfant qui joue wán de háizi ‘child who plays’ PRED PROPERTY l’enfant est petit háizi Ø xiăo ‘the child is small’ ACTION l’enfant joue-Ø háizi Ø wán ‘the child plays’ 8 II.4. Conclusion Like universals of word order (Hawkins 2014), universals of asymmetric coding can be explained as a functional-adaptive response to demands on speaker and hearers. It is much more efficient to use overt coding when it is unexpected than the other way round. Maybe the reason why processing explanations of word order have been more widely accepted and discussed is that (i) it is intuitively clear that some word orders are difficult to process (ii) meanings do not play a big role in ordering words But efficiency explanations have been successful in a wide range of domains (e.g. Gibson et al. 2019), and nobody really doubts the efficiency explanation for Zipfian shortness of words (“Short words are short because they are frequent”). If we stop thinking only in terms of boxes (grammar vs. lexicon etc.), it is very natural to extend the efficiency explanation also to grammatical asymmetries of coding. References Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2010. Imperatives and commands. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Croft, William. 1991. Syntactic categories and grammatical relations: The cognitive organization of information. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Croft, William. 2003. Typology and universals. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Croft, William. 2022. Morphosyntax: Constructions of the world’s languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Diessel, Holger. 2019. The grammar network. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Geniušienė, Emma. 1987. The typology of reflexives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Gibson, Edward & Futrell, Richard & Piandadosi, Steven T. & Dautriche, Isabelle & Mahowald, Kyle & Bergen, Leon & Levy, Roger. 2019. How efficiency shapes human language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 23(5). 389–407. (doi:10.1016/j.tics.2019.02.003) Haiman, John. 1983. Iconic and economic motivation. Language 59(4). 781–819. (doi:10.2307/413373) Haspelmath, Martin. 2008a. A frequentist explanation of some universals of reflexive marking. Linguistic Discovery 6(1). 40–63. (doi:10.1349/PS1.1537-0852.A.331) Haspelmath, Martin. 2008b. Creating economical morphosyntactic patterns in language change. In Good, Jeff (ed.), Linguistic universals and language change, 185–214. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Haspelmath, Martin. 2019. Can cross-linguistic regularities be explained by constraints on change? In Schmidtke-Bode, Karsten & Levshina, Natalia & Michaelis, Susanne Maria & Seržant, Ilja A. (eds.), Competing explanations in linguistic typology, 1–23. Berlin: Language Science Press. (http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/220) Haspelmath, Martin. 2021. Explaining grammatical coding asymmetries: Form-frequency correspondences and predictability. Journal of Linguistics 57(3). 605–633. (doi:10.1017/S0022226720000535) Haspelmath, Martin. 2023a. Comparing reflexive constructions in the world’s languages. In Janic, Katarzyna & Puddu, Nicoletta & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.), Reflexive constructions in the world’s languages, 19–62. Berlin: Language Science Press. Haspelmath, Martin. 2023b. On what a construction is. Constructions 15(1). (doi:10.24338/cons-539) Hawkins, John A. 2004. Efficiency and complexity in grammars. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 9 Hawkins, John A. 2014. Cross-linguistic variation and efficiency. New York: Oxford University Press. Malchukov, Andrej L. & Ogawa, Akio. 2011. Towards a typology of impersonal constructions: A semantic map approach. In Malchukov, Andrej & Siewierska, Anna (eds.), Impersonal constructions: A cross-linguistic perspective, 19–56. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Shibatani, Masayoshi. 2019. What is nominalization? Towards the theoretical foundations of nominalization. In Zariquiey, Roberto & Shibatani, Masayoshi & Fleck, David W. (eds.), Nominalization in languages of the Americas, 15–167. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Siewierska, Anna. 2010. Person asymmetries in zero expression and grammatical function. In Floricic, Franck (ed.), Essais de typologie et de linguistique générale: Mélanges offerts à Denis Creissels, 471–485. Lyon: ENS Éditions. Zipf, George Kingsley. 1935. The psycho-biology of language: An introduction to dynamic philology. Cambridge: MIT Press. 1 Curso extracurricular: Comparing grammars worldwide (UNAM, 20-24 October 2025) Alignment and differential coding: 2A. Accusative and ergative alignment MARTIN HASPELMATH Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology 1. Accusative, ergative and neutral alignment (in monotransitive constructions) a. accusative alignment b. ergative alignment c. neutral alignment Figure 1: The three monotransitive alignment types accusative pattern: transitive P (patient) gets a special marker (accusative marker) transitive A (agent) is marked like the intransitive subject (S) (1) Latin (Napoli 2018: 64, 62) a. ille fugit periculo he.NOM escaped danger ‘he escaped from danger’ b. ill-um ex periculo eripuit he-ACC from danger rescued.3SG ‘he rescued him from danger’ (Caes. Gall. 4, 12, 5) ergative pattern: transitive A (agent) gets a special marker (ergative marker) transitive P (patient) is marked like the intransitive subject (2) Kavalan (a language of Taiwan; Liao 2004: 214-215) a. Mawtu=ti a paqapaRan ta taiwan. come=PRF ABS catcher LOC Taiwan ‘The catcher came to Taiwan.’ b. Inebana=ti na hetay a rawang. close=PRF ERG soldier ABS city ‘The soldiers closed the city (gate).’ 2 Figure 2. Five alignment types of argument markers Universal 1: The accusative-ergative universal In all languages, if the coding is asymmetric, accusative and ergative flags are longer than nominative and absolutive flags (Comrie 1978; Dixon 1979). Explanation: frequency-induced predictability – because accusative is less frequent than nominative, and ergative is less frequent than absolutive Moreover, the only commonly occurring patterns are accusative, ergative and neutral. This has a well-known functional explanation: – tripartite alignment is uneconomical, and horizontal alignment does not make the right distinctions 3 2. Indirective, secundative and neutral alignment (in ditransitive constructions) Similarly, there are three types of ditransitive alignment (Malchukov et al. 2010; Haspelmath 2015): a. indirective alignment b. secundative alignment c. neutral alignment (P=T vs. R) (P=R vs. T) (P=T=R) a. accusative alignment b. ergative alignment c. neutral alignment 4 Universal 2: The indirective-secundative universal In all languages, if the coding is asymmetric, indirective and secundative markers are longer than directive and primative markers (Malchukov et al. 2010; Haspelmath 2015). Two more examples: (5) a. R flag is overt, no T flag Wappo (California) ce k’ew-i chica-thu ew ma-hes-ta? DEM man-NOM bear-DAT fish DIR-give-PST ‘The man gave the fish to the bear.’ (Thompson et al. 2006: 12) b. T flag is overt, no R flag Teiwa (Alor-Pantar) Ui ga’an u sen ma n-oma’ g-an. person 3SG DIST money SEC 1SG.POSS-father 3SG.OBJ-give ‘That person gave money to my father.’ (Klamer 2010: 444) Explanation: as above (frequency-induced predictability) Three striking features of these universals: – they are based on the notion of flag (a concrete form), rather than on abstract “case assignment” – they are based on a view of core argument marking in which S=A alignment (accusative) and S=P alignment (ergative) are treated on a par – accusative and ergative are mirror-image concepts, with no preference for the European-style accusative pattern – they also highlight the parallelism between monotransitive and ditransitive constructions: The asymmetry of A and P in monotransitives is parallel to the asymmetry of R and T! 5 3. Alignment of indexing Accusative vs. ergative alignment can also be shown by indexing, and this also applies to indirective vs. secundative alignment. (6) English (accusative indexing: S=A) (-s : “nominative index”) a. The tree fall-s. (S indexed) b. The mother hug-s the boy. (A indexed) (7) Yucatec Maya (Lehmann 2015; ergative indexing: S=P) a. H=lúub-Ø le che’-o’. (S indexed) PFV=fall.CMPL-3SG.ABS DEM wood-DEM2 ‘The tree fell.’ b. T-u=méek’-ah-Ø u=chaan xibpal le maamah-o’. PFV-3.ERG=hug-CMPL-3SG.ABS 3.POSS=little boy DEM mother-DEM2 ‘The mother hugged her little boy.’ (P indexed) 6 (8) Maltese (indirective indexing: P=T) a. Raj-t-u lil Ġanni. (P indexed) saw-1SG.SBJ-3SG.ACC OBJ Gianni ‘I saw Gianni.’ (Borg & Comrie 1984: 113) b. Pietru kitib-hie-lu l-ittra lil ħu-h. Pietro wrote-3SG.ACC-3SG.DAT DEF-letter OBJ brother-3SG.POSS ‘Piero wrote the letter to his brother.’ (T indexed) (Borg & Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 56) (9) Lunda (Bantu; Kawasha 2002: 35, 39; secundative indexing: P=R) a. Na-yí-télekí. 3SG.G1.SBJ.PRF-3SG.G9.OBJ-cook ‘He (gender 1) has cooked it (gender 9).’ (P indexed) b. N-a-mw-inká-wu. 1SG.SBJ-PST-3SG.G1.OBJ-give-3SG.G3.THM ‘I gave it (gender 3) to him (gender 1).’ (R indexed) Note: in mismatching constructions, accusative indexing and secundative indexing are preferred: When flagging and indexing do not match, we only get combinations of ergative flagging and accusative indexing, as well as indirective flagging and secundative indexing – but not the other way round. ergative flagging and accusative indexing (10) Warlpiri (Pama-Nyungan; Hale 1982) a. Ngaju =rna ngapa-ku ngampurrpa. I.NOM =1SG.NOM water-DAT want ‘I want water.’ b. Ngajulu-rlu ka=rna marlu nya-nyi. I-ERG PRS=1SG.NOM kangaroo see-PRS ‘I see the kangaroo.’ indirective flagging and secundative indexing (11) Hyow (Tibeto-Burman; Peterson 2003: 174, 179) a. yɔntɯʔa uy=la key ʔɔ-ŋoʔwey-sɔ yesterday dog=ERG me 1SG.P-bite-CONCL 'Yesterday a dog bit me.' b. cu=la key=a cɔ ʔe-pek he=ERG me=LOC book 1SG.R-give 'He gave me a book.' There are a number of proposed explanations for this, also in the generative literature (Bobaljik 2008, Bárány 2024) – and I made a tentantive proposal in Haspelmath (2005). 7 Whatever the explanation, it is clear that the monotransitive A and the ditransitive R are similar: A and R tend to be human and definite, while P and T tend to be nonhuman and indefinite – we can say that A and R are “higher in role rank”: A > P R > T 4. Are ergative clauses transitive? Comments on Mel’čuk This depends on the definition of “transitivity”… Igor A. Mel’čuk (*1932) was a visiting professor at the University of Vienna in 1983, when I was a first-year student there. There I learned about Mel’čuk (1981), a paper about Lezgian, with a fascinating theory of Lezgian clause structure: Mel’čuk claimed that Lezgian has no transitive ergative construction, but that its Ergative-marked argument, as seen in (12), is an oblique causal complement! (12) Aлиди кицI кьена. Ali-di kic’ q’e-na. Ali-ERG dog kill-AOR ‘Ali killed the dog.’ Basically, all Lezgian clauses are claimed to be intransitive. Clause (1) literally means ‘The dog died through Ali’. (See also Mel’čuk 1988; 2013.) In one of my first journal papers (Haspelmath 1991), I tried to show that this was wrong: (12) was in fact a transitive clause – but how could I tell? What is a “transitive clause”, in general? According to Mel’čuk an ergative construction must have ergative marking on the subject – and he is not convinced that the ergative nominal in (12) is a subject. But what is a “subject”, in general? 14 Comrie (1978), Lazard (2002), Haspelmath (2011a): – A is the agent argument of a physical-effect verb like ‘kill’ or ‘break’ (in the usual construction) – P is the patient argument of such a verb – S is the argument of a change-of-state verb like ‘fall’ or ‘die’ (Haspelmath 2011a) These comparative concepts can be applied to all languages uniformly, because all languages have verbs with these meanings and have nominal arguments with particular coding properties. One might also use more fine-grained semanic roles, as in Hartmann et al. (2014): Many authors define “subject” in such a way that different criteria are applied in different languages: Mel’čuk (2013: x): “...the SyntSubj [is] cross-linguistically universal. However, in a different sense, the SyntSubj is language-specific in so far as syntactic privileges are different in different languages: thus, in many Indo-European languages the main privilege of a clausal element is to impose agreement on the Main Verb, while in Malagasy it is to occupy the clause-final position.” Riesberg et al. (2019: 524) 15 “We use the term ‘subject’ here as equivalent to what is termed ‘privileged syntactic argument’ (PSA) in Van Valin (2005) and elsewhere. A PSA is defined as the syntactic element that controls coding properties such as agreement and that is the pivotal element in complex constructions such as relativization, NP deletion, control, and so forth.” This procedure is unlikely to pick out uniform phenomena across languages – if different subjects may be recognized by different criteria, how do we know that they are all “subjects”? “I know it when I see it?” – no, we need strict definitions of comparative concepts that allow rigorous testing 4. Mark Baker’s theory of “dependent case” Baker (2015) claims that grammatical case-marking patterns in the world’s languages are usually determined by dependent-case rules as in (4). (4) a. High case in the clause is ergative. b. Low case in the clause is accusative. c. High case in VP is dative. e. High case in NP is genitive. f. Unmarked case is nominative-absolutive. Cls: NP –> ERG VP: NP –> DAT VP: NP –> unmarked = ABS Ali-di za-z ktab wuga-na. Ali-ERG I-DAT book give-AOR ‘Ali gave me a book.’ There is no clear way to determine what is “high” and “low”, but Baker is not worried by this: “We should not expect to find many differences between c-command and a notion like thematic prominence, since the two notions are closely related.” (p. 81) But elsewhere, he appeals to a movement operation in order to explain some casemarking effects. Thus, Sakha has differential object marking on definite nominals (p. 125-126): 16 Baker’s actual proposal for the movement is rather intricate and thus quite “deep” (p. 126): But he misses the generalization that differential object marking is found on definite objects also when there is no word order alternation (as in Hebrew). (How do we know that Hebrew indeed represents “the same phenomenon”? Because it obeys the same generalization, as can be determined by objective hypothesis-testing.) If comparison is based on “deep analyses”, with different considerations playing a role for different languages, then this means that we have to rely on the analysis 17 being correct. But if the analysis in turn relies on the general theory, this becomes a very intricate process... Baker (2015: 222) on case of predicate nominals: NP NP (5) Zi buba Joxanes kešiš ja. my father(ABS) Johannes(ABS) priest(ABS) COP ‘My father Johannes is a minister.’ (from Haspelmath 1993: 311) The subject nominal is “higher” than the predicate nominal – why doesn’t it bear Ergative case in Lezgian? NP EP NP This “E” (which projects an EP that prevents case assignment) is generally empty, but maybe attested in Tamil (auffix -aa following the predicate nominal). Baker’s methodological move: Hypothesize that an underlying element exists, and look for phenomena that might match this phenomenon. If there is someting to be found (whatever it may be), this is taken as conformation. This was called “diagnostic-fishing” in an earlier paper (Haspelmath 2018: 102). But confirmation bias is one of the best-known problems in all domains of knowledge acquisition. If there is no objective method of measuring and counting effects, one can easily be led astray. Baker on PPs Baker (2015: 185-186) observes that neither PPs nor oblique-marked nominals trigger ergative case on the subject: But his theory predicts that Jose should be ergative because the object nominal is not a PP. So he hypothesizes that these are in fact PPs, with an empty adposition that assigns oblique case. 18 Baker posits not only empty adpositions (in PP) that assign case, but also surface adpositions that are really case forms (in NP), and surface case forms that are really adpositions (in PP) (p. 2, p. 9). For such cases, he says that “the theory will have to decide (p. 13)” (i.e. the theory is not motivated here). But one can “hope that one can find some fine-grained syntactic properties which distinguish the two kinds [...] : a process of clefting, perhaps, or quantifier floating – the sorts of syntactic phenomena known to apply to NPs but not to PPs in some languages” How far can the “depth of analysis” go? Baker (2015: 25-26): “We could contemplate taking a more radical view, which would claim that all languages are really tripartite languages in their syntactic case marking.... Some strict minimalist theorists might find this view attractive. However, I believe that this universalist view goes too far. Rather, I claim that languages are parameterized...” But how can we tell whether Baker is right or wrong? My proposal: Let’s work with observations at the level of community norms, not with deeper analyses. Thus, any pedagogical grammar should be sufficient for comparative purposes. 5. Mel’čuk and Lezgian again Mel’čuk provides the following definition of “subject” (1988: 163): “A grammatical subject (GS) in L is either a basic GS or any other nominal that is most similar to the basic GS from the viewpoint of relevant syntactic properties {Pi}.” And he observes: “The syntactically privileged status of NPs is language-specific. Thus a syntactic property relevant in one language may turn out nonexistent or immaterial in another. For example, controlling the agreement of the main verb is a mark of privileged status in Russian or Italian, while it does not appear at all in Dyirbal, Lezgian or Japanese...” He walks through a number of subject criteria and argues that the presumed Lezgian “ergative construction” lacks them (see Haspelmath 1991 for detailed discussion). (1) Aлиди кицI кьена Ali-di kic’ q’e-na. Ali-ERG dog kill-AOR ‘Ali killed the dog.’ 19 In a footnote (p. 244), he admits that A. E. Kibrik (1979-1980) has noted some phenomena that seem to contradict his analysis, because the ergative subject (and also the dative subject) seem to have the same privileges of occurrence in ‘want’ complements as the absolutive subject: (6) a. гададиз рушаз килигиз кIанзава Gadadi-z [ rɨša-z kʰlig-iz kan-zava]. boy-DAT ABS girl-DAT look-INF want-IMPF ‘The boy wants to look at the girl.’ b. гададиз руш катаз кIанзава Gadadi-z [ rɨš kʰatʰa-z kan-zava]. boy-DAT ERG girl(ABS) beat-INF want-IMPF ‘The boy wants to beat the girl.’ c. гададиз руш акваз кIанзава Gadadi-z [ rɨš akʰwa-z kan-zava]. boy-DAT DAT girl(ABS) see-INF want-IMPF ‘The boy wants to see the girl.’ d. гададиз руш вичиз килигна кIанзава Gagadi-z [rɨš üčʰü-z kʰlig-na kan-zava]. boy-DAT girl(ABS) self-DAT look-CVB want-IMPF ‘The boy wants the girl to look at him.’ Mel’čuk (1988: 247) says: “I would still say that in Lezgian, the [absolutive nominal] of all verbs is the grammatical subject, that is, I would stand my ground anyway. The reason is that, to me, in Lezgian the property of PRO-control is motivated semantically... regardless of its actual surface-syntactic role... I consider the property “being a PRO-controller” as less weighty or less relevant than the previously considered subjecthood properties...” But again, this represents arbitrary choice of criteria. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon linguistics, though it is rarely admitted so clearly. Cf. also: Börjars (1998: 44): “The behaviour of elements is often not totally consistent. This means that in order to arrive at the conclusion that an element is either a clitic or an affix, certain criteria must be assumed to be less crucial.” (cited by Haspelmath 2011b: 59) 6. What “depth of analysis” is good for I conclude that the much-praised “detailed” and “deep” analyses of generative grammar seem to have little value for comparative purposes. But of course, “detailed” study is good – we want to know everything about all languages. Not only all the words, but also all the constructions and all their interactions need to be studied. 20 Grammatical descriptions should be complete, and consist of many volumes. But “deep” analysis is not necessarily good, because it is often unclear whether the “deep” generalizations are true. In Haspelmath (1991; 1993), I ended up saying that there is some evidence for a Subject category in Lezgian, because this allows us to generalize over intransitive Absolutive, transitive Ergative, and experiencer Dative arguments, which behave alike in ‘want’ complements clauses (see 6a-d above). But the evidence for this is hardly compelling. 7. Measurement uniformity and building-block uniformity Instead of “depth of analysis”, comparative research is best based on objectively defined comparative concepts. e.g. transitive construction: = a minimal-clause construction with an A-argument and a P-argument (Haspelmath 2011a) A-argument and P-argument: = the ‘killer/breaker’ argument of the verbs ‘kill/break’, and arguments that have the same kind of argument coding argument coding: = flagging and indexing (cf. Haspelmath 2019) ergative flag: = a flag that can be used for the A but not for the P or the S S-argument: = the ‘faller/dieer’ argument of the verbs ‘fall/die’ and arguments that have the same kind of argument coding On the basis of the notion of “ergative flag”, one can formulate and test universals about differential ergative marking, as seen in Godoberi (2a-c above). As we saw, these universals have a good functional explanation (in terms of efficient grammatical coding). Baker (2015) operates in terms of invisible “case features”, which are often (but need not be) spelled out on the “surface”. Thus, he assumes zero spellout for the classical Australian split-ergative languages, e.g. Diyari (Austin 1981) 1st/2nd other pronouns full nouns A Ø -li -li (ERG) P -na -na (ACC) -Ø (ABS) S Ø Ø -Ø (ABS) 21 Baker regards such languages as having “tripartite case”, with widespread zerorealization. He thus misses the generalization that these languages conform to the high-level generalization about differential flagging: (3) The role-reference association universal (Haspelmath 2020b) Deviations from usual associations of role rank and referential prominence tend to be coded by longer grammatical forms if the coding is differential. Arkadiev (2017): When a language has two different ergative markers, there is a (slight) preference for the longer ergative marker to be Like all generative grammarians, Baker assumes building-block uniformity: All languages are basically made from the same innate building blocks. These building blocks are both the stuff of language-particular analyses, and the basis of comparison. But there are no arguments – building-block uniformity is simply assumed by generative grammarians, as if no alternative existed. The better alternative is to have two different sets of concepts: – descriptive categories for language-particular generalizations – comparative concepts for measurement uniformity (Haspelmath 2010; 2018) Language-particular research creates language-particular theories. Comparative research creates comparative and general theories. The difference between generative (Baker-style) comparative grammar and Greenberg-style comparative grammar is that Baker-style comparison relies on innate building blocks, while Greenberg-style comparison does not. It’s a difference in methodological choices (not ideologies). How do we find out? We look which approach finds the better (more stable) theories which fit the world’s linguistic diversity better – though we should probably invest less in building-block uniformity approach, because of its inherent unlikeliness. 8. Conclusion The primary contrast is not between “typology” (Greenberg-style) and “parameters” (Baker-style), but between two methodological orientations: – measurement uniformity (cf. Mel’čuk’s emphasis on definitions) – building block uniformity (cf. Cinque’s cartographic ideas) 22 In chemistry, the building-block uniformity approach has worked well (cf. Mendeleyev’s Periodic Table of Elements). It is conceivable that it will work in linguistics as well – I call it the Mendeleyevian Vision (cf. Baker 2001). But measurement uniformity is the more tractable approach, which allows us to engage in systematic and quantitative language comparison. In view of “Darwin’s Problem” (the low likelihood of a rich innate grammar evolving over a very short period), this approach is also more likely, and is the only one compatible with Berwick & Chomsky (2016). References Arkadiev, Peter. 2017. Multiple ergatives. Studies in Language 41(3). 717–780. doi:10.1075/sl.41.3.06ark. Austin, Peter K. 1981. A grammar of Diyari, South Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baker, Mark C. 2001. The atoms of language. New York: Basic Books. Baker, Mark C. 2015. Case: Its principles and parameters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barrett, Lisa Feldman. 2006. Are emotions natural kinds? Perspectives on Psychological Science 1(1). 28–58. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6916.2006.00003.x. Berwick, Robert C. & Noam Chomsky. 2016. Why only us: Language and evolution. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Börjars, Kersti. 1998. Feature distribution in Swedish noun phrases. Oxford: Blackwell. Comrie, Bernard. 1978. Ergativity. In Winfred P. Lehmann (ed.), Syntactic typology: Studies in the phenomenology of language, 329–394. Austin: University of Texas Press. DeLancey, Scott. 1981. An interpretation of split ergativity and related patterns. Language 57. 626–657. Hartmann, Iren, Martin Haspelmath & Michael Cysouw. 2014. Identifying semantic role clusters and alignment types via microrole coexpression tendencies. Studies in Language 38(3). 463–484. Haspelmath, Martin. 1991. On the question of deep ergativity: The evidence from Lezgian. 44/45(1–2). 5–27. doi:10.5281/zenodo.225289. Haspelmath, Martin. 1993. A grammar of Lezgian (Mouton Grammar Library 9). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Haspelmath, Martin. 2007. Ditransitive alignment splits and inverse alignment. Functions of Language 14(1). 79–102. Haspelmath, Martin. 2010. Comparative concepts and descriptive categories in crosslinguistic studies. Language 86(3). 663–687. doi:10.1353/lan.2010.0021. Haspelmath, Martin. 2011a. On S, A, P, T, and R as comparative concepts for alignment typology. Linguistic Typology 15(3). 535–567. Haspelmath, Martin. 2011b. The indeterminacy of word segmentation and the nature of morphology and syntax. Folia Linguistica 45(1). 31–80. Haspelmath, Martin. 2018. How comparative concepts and descriptive linguistic categories are different. In Daniël Van Olmen, Tanja Mortelmans & Frank Brisard (eds.), Aspects of linguistic variation: Studies in honor of Johan van der Auwera, 83–113. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.570000. Haspelmath, Martin. 2019. Indexing and flagging, and head and dependent marking. Te Reo 62(1). 93–115. doi:10.17617/2.3168042. Haspelmath, Martin. 2020a. Explaining grammatical coding asymmetries: Form-frequency correspondences and predictability. To appear. https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004531. Haspelmath, Martin. 2020b. Role-reference associations and the explanation of argument coding splits. To appear. https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004047. Kibrik, Alexandr (ed.). 1996. Godoberi. München: Lincom Europa. Lazard, Gilbert. 2002. Transitivity revisited as an example of a more strict approach in typological research. Folia Linguistica 36(3–4). 141–190. Melʹčuk, Igor A. 1981. Grammatical subject and the problem of the ergative construction in Lezgian. In Bernard Comrie (ed.), Studies in the Languages of the USSR, 229–276. Carbondale & Edmonton: Linguistic Research. Mel’čuk, Igor A. 1982. Towards a language of linguistics: A system of formal notions for theoretical morphology. Munich: Fink. Melʹčuk, Igor A. 1988. Dependency syntax: Theory and practice. Albany: State University Press of New York. 23 Mel’čuk, Igor A. 2013. Syntactic subject, once again. In Valentina Apresjan, Boris Iomdin & Ekaterina Ageeva (eds.), Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Meaning-Text Theory, Prague, August 30-31, 2013, iii– xxxiii. Prague. Nichols, Johanna. 2011. Ingush grammar (University of California Publications in Linguistics, 141). Berkeley: University of California Press. Polinsky, Maria. 2011. Linguistic typology and formal grammar. In Jae Jung Song (ed.), The Oxford handbook of linguistic typology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Polinsky, Maria & Robert Kluender. 2007. Linguistic typology and theory construction: Common challenges ahead. Linguistic Typology 11(1). 273–283. doi:10.1515/LINGTY.2007.022. Riesberg, Sonja, Kurt Malcher & Nikolaus P. Himmelmann. 2019. How universal is agent-first? Evidence from symmetrical voice languages. Language 95(3). 523–561. doi:10.1353/lan.2019.0055. Roberts, Ian. 2019. Parameter hierarchies and universal grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schmidtke-Bode, Karsten & Natalia Levshina. 2018. Assessing scale effects on differential case marking: Methodological, conceptual and theoretical issues in the quest for a universal. In Ilja A. Seržant & Alena Witzlack-Makarevich (eds.), Diachrony of differential argument marking (Studies in Diversity Linguistics 19), 463–489. Berlin: Language Science Press. 7 5. Single-argument splits in ditransitive constructions (cf. Haspelmath 2007) 5.1. Split T coding 5.1.1. Specificity-conditioned split T-flagging In Akan, another Kwa language from West Africa, the T argument must be indefinite in a simple double-object construction, and a construction with a special T-marking serial verb must be used instead (dè lit. 'take') (25) Akan (Osam 1996: 63-64) a. Kofi ma-a abofra no akokɔ Kofi give-COMPL child DEF chicken ‘Kofi gave the child a chicken.’ b. *Kofi ma-a abofra no akokɔ no Kofi give-COMPL child DEF chicken DEF (‘Kofi gave the child the chicken.’) c. Kofi de akokɔ no ma-a abofra no Kofi take chicken DEF give-COMPL child DEF ‘Kofi gave the chicken to the child.’ 5.2. Split R-flagging 5.2.1. Person-conditioned split R-marking (26) French person clitics T (ACC) R (DAT) T (ACC) R (DAT) 1SG me me 1PL nous nous 2SG te te 2PL vous vous 3SG le, la lui 3PL les leur (27) Warlpiri (Hale 1972) a. ngajulu-rlu ka-rna-ngku karli-Ø yi-nyi nyuntu-ku I-ERG PRS-1SG.NOM-2SG.ACC boomerang-ABS give-NPST you-DAT ‘I am giving you a boomerang.’ b. ngajulu-rlu ka-rna-rla karli-Ø yi-nyi kurdu-ku I-ERG PRS-1SG.NOM-3.DAT boomerang-ABS give-NPST child-DAT ‘I am giving a boomerang to the child.’ Table 2: Object person forms (1st person singular and 3rd person masculine singular) language 1st person R/T ‘(to) me’ aliophoric R ‘to him’ aliophoric T ‘him’ French me lui le Tangalea -no/-nọ -ni/-nị mbé]ẹndâm Yimasb ŋa- -(n)akn naKrongoc àʔàŋ àníŋ ìʔìŋ a Jungraithmayr (1991: 36) b Foley (1991) c Reh (1985) 8 5.2.2. Nominality-conditioned split R-flagging (28) Northeastern Neo-Aramaic of Telkepe (Coghill 2010) (full nominal R) a. wəl-lə pārə ta xa-məskenɒ gave-he money to a.certain-poor.person ‘He gave money to a certain poor person.’ (= Coghill’s 11b) b. kəm-yāwəl-lə ta məskenɒ PST-he.give-3SG.M.OBJ to poor.person ‘He gave it to a poor person.’ (= 14b) (person-form R) c. kəm-yāwəl-lə hadiynɒ PST-he.give-3SG.M.OBJ present ‘He gave him a present.’ (= 14c) d. kəm-yāwəl-lux-ila PST-he.give-2SG.M.OBJ-3SG.M.SEC ‘He gave them to you.’ (= 16b) 5.2.3. Animacy-conditioned split R-flagging. In Yakkha, a Kiranti language of Nepal, Rarguments are in the Locative case when inanimate, but otherwise in the (zero-coded) Absolutive case. (29) Yakkha (Schackow 2012: 161-162) a. ka nniŋda photo-ci ham-biʔ-meʔ-nenin=ha 1SG[NOM] 2PL[NOM] photo-PL[NOM] distribute-BEN-NPST-1>2PL-PL ‘I distribute the photos to you all.’ b. sarkar=ŋa yaŋ tenten=be ŋ-hapsu-bi-ci=ha government=ERG money[NOM] villages=LOC 3PL.A-distribute-BEN-3PL.P=PL ‘The government distributed the money to the villages.’ 5.2.4. Specificity-conditioned split R-flagging In Wolof, an Atlantic language of Senegal, a dative flag is required on R when it is indefinite. (30) Wolof (Becher 2005: 19) a. Jox naa xale bu jigéén ji benn velo. give 1SG girl DEF INDF bicycle ‘I gave the girl a bicycle.’ b. *Jox naa benn xale bu jigéén velo bi. give 1SG INDF girl bicycle DEF ‘I gave a girl the bicycle.’ c. Jox naa velo bi ci benn xale bu jigéen. give 1SG bicycle DEF to INDF girl ‘I gave the bicycle to a girl.’ 9 6. Some scenario splits 6.1. Monotransitive, person-conditioned. Yukaghir: accusative flag is required on P when the A is allophoric (like Teop, see above). (31) Kolyma Yukaghir (Maslova 2003) a. met es'ie tet pulut-kele kudede-m my father.NOM your husband-ACC kill-TR.3SG! ‘My father has killed your husband.’ b. met tolow kudede I.NOM deer.NOM kill.TR.1SG ‘I killed a deer.’ 6.2. Monotransitive, definiteness-conditioned. Eastern Khanty has Ergative case on the Aargument when the P-argument is specific (cf. Baker 2015: 128) (33) Eastern Khanty a. Mä t’əkäjəɣlämnä ula mənɣäləm. we.DU.NOM younger.sister.COM berry pick.PST.1PL.SBJ ‘I went to pick berries with my younger sister.’ b. Mə-ŋən ləɣə əllə juɣ kanŋa aməɣaloɣ. we-ERG them large tree beside put.PST.3PL.OBJ/1PL.SBJ ‘We put them (pots of berries) beside a big tree.’ 6.3. Ditransitive, conditioned by person of T This is what is known in the literature as “person-case constraint” (PCC) (Haspelmath 2004). Bulgarian: dative preposition is required on R when T is 1st/2nd person (34) Bulgarian (Hauge 1976 [1999]) a. (3>3) Az im ja preporâčvam. I 3PL.DAT 3SG.F.ACC recommend.PRES.1SG 'I recommend her to them.' b. (3>2) *Az im te preporâčvam. I 3PL.DAT 2SG.ACC recommend.PRES.1SG 'I recommend you to them.' c. Az te preporâčvam na tjah. I 2SG.ACC recommend.PRES.1SG to them 'I recommend you to them.' 6.4. Ditransitive, conditioned by by nominality of T In many varieties of English (especially American, it seems), the R cannot be coded in the simplest way when the T is a person form rather than a full nominal. In these varieties, (37a) is unacceptable (*Pat showed him it). 10 (36) a. (pers > nom, downstream) Kim showed me his house. b. (nom > nom, balanced) Lee showed her brother her new house. (37) a. (pers > pers, balanced) *Pat showed him it. b. OK: Pat showed it to him. c. (nom > pers, upstream) *Pat showed his wife it. d. OK: Pat showed it to his wife. 7. Explanation: Frequency-based coding efficiency (57) Universal 4: The role-reference association universal Deviations from usual associations of roles and referential prominence tend to be coded by longer grammatical forms. a functional-adaptive constraint: • Languages tend to use efficient coding, i.e. zero or short coding for frequently occurring meanings and functions, and overt and long coding for rarely occurring functions. • Through adaptability in language use, languages come to have or restore efficient patterns. For role-reference associations, this kind of explanation has long been advocated, for example by Caldwell (1857: 276), who deserves to be quoted again here (cf. Filimonova 2005: 78): “[. . .] the principle that it is more natural for rational beings to act than to be acted upon; and hence when they do happen to be acted upon – when the nouns by which they are denoted are to be taken objectively – it becomes necessary, in order to avoid misapprehension, to suffix to them the objective case-sign” References Aissen, Judith. 1999. Markedness and subject choice in Optimality Theory. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 17. 673–711. Aissen, Judith. 2003. Differential object marking: Iconicity vs. economy. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 21(3). 435–483. Baker, Mark C. 2015. Case. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Becher, Jutta. 2005. Ditransitive Verben und ihre Objekte im Wolof: Positionsregeln und Kombinierbarkeit. Hamburger afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere (HAAP) 3. 13–27. Bickel, Balthasar. 1995. In the vestibule of meaning: Transitivity inversion as a morphological phenomenon. Studies in Language 19(1). 73–127. doi:10.1075/sl.19.1.04bic. Bossong, Georg. 1985. Differenzielle Objektmarkierung in den neuiranischen Sprachen. Tübingen: Narr. 11 Bossong, Georg. 1998. Le marquage différentiel de l’objet dans les langues d’Europe. In Jack Feuillet (ed.), Actance et valence dans les langues de l’Europe, 193–258. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Essegbey, James. 2010. Inherent complement verbs and the basic double object construction in Gbe. In Enoch Oladé Aboh & James Essegbey (eds.), Topics in Kwa syntax, 177–193. Dordrecht: Springer. Filimonova, Elena. 2005. The noun phrase hierarchy and relational marking: Problems and counterevidence. Linguistic Typology 9(1). 77–113. Georgi, Doreen. 2012. A local derivation of global case splits. In Artemis Alexiadou, Tibor Kiss & Gereon Müller (eds.), Local modelling of non-local dependencies in syntax, 305–336. (Linguistische Arbeiten). Tübingen: Niemeyer. Haspelmath, Martin. 2010. Framework-free grammatical theory. In Heine, Bernd & Narrog, Heiko (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis, 341–365. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Haspelmath, Martin. 2011. On S, A, P, T, and R as comparative concepts for alignment typology. Lingustic Typology 15(3). 535–567. Haspelmath, Martin. 2015. Ditransitive constructions. Annual Review of Linguistics 1. 19–41. Haspelmath, Martin. 2019. Can cross-linguistic regularities be explained by constraints on change? In Schmidtke-Bode, Karsten & Levshina, Natalia & Michaelis, Susanne Maria & Seržant, Ilja A. (eds.), Competing explanations in linguistic typology, 1–23. Berlin: Language Science Press. (http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/220) Haspelmath, Martin. 2020. The structural uniqueness of languages and the value of comparison for description. Asian Languages and Linguistics 1(2). 346–366. (doi:10.1075/alal.20032.has) Haspelmath, Martin. 2021a. Explaining grammatical coding asymmetries: Form-frequency correspondences and predictability. Journal of Linguistics 57(3). 605–633. (doi:10.1017/S0022226720000535) Haspelmath, Martin. 2021b. Role-reference associations and the explanation of argument coding splits. Linguistics 59(1). 123–174. (doi:10.1515/ling-2020-0252) Haspelmath, Martin. 2021c. General linguistics must be based on universals (or nonconventional aspects of language). Theoretical Linguistics 47(1–2). 1–31. (doi:10.1515/tl-2021-2002) Joseph, John E. 2022. Saussure’s universal grammar, Chomsky’s structuralism. In Cosenza, Giuseppe & Forel, Claire A. & Puskas, Genoveva (eds.), Saussure and Chomsky: Converging and diverging, 19–36. Berne: Peter Lang. Keine, Stefan. 2010. Case and agreement from fringe to core: A minimalist approach. Berlin: De Gruyter. Lockwood, Hunter T. & Monica Macaulay. 2012. Prominence hierarchies. Language and Linguistics Compass 6(7). 431–446. doi:10.1002/lnc3.345. Malchukov, Andrej. 2008. Animacy and asymmetries in differential case marking. Lingua 118. 203–221. Maslova, Elena. 2003. A grammar of Kolyma Yukaghir. . Vol. 27. (Mouton Grammar Library). Berlin / New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Moravcsik, Edith A. 1978a. On the case marking of objects. In Joseph H Greenberg (ed.), Universals of human language, vol. 4: Syntax, 249–289. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Moravcsik, Edith A. 1978b. On the distribution of ergative and accusative patterns. Lingua 45. 233–279. Reinöhl, Uta. 2016. A single origin of Indo-European primary adpositions?: Unveiling the Indo-Aryan branch-off. Diachronica 33(1). 95–130. (doi:10.1075/dia.33.1.04rei) Rude, Noel. 2009. Transitivity in Sahaptin. Northwest Journal of Linguistics 3(3). 1–37. Silverstein, Michael. 1976. Hierarchy of features and ergativity. In Robert M. W. Dixon (ed.), Grammatical categories in Australian languages, 112–171. Canberra: Australian National University. Smirnova, Anastasia & Jackendoff, Ray. 2017. Case assignment and argument realization in nominals. Language 93(4). 877–911. (doi:10.1353/lan.0.0225) Stroński, Krzysztof. 2009. Variation of ergativity patterns in Indo-Aryan. Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 46(2). 237–253. doi:10.2478/v10010-010-0012-8. Watters, David E. 2002. A grammar of Kham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whitney, William D. 1875. The life and growth of language. London: Henry S. King & Co. Zúñiga, Fernando. 2006. Deixis and alignment: Inverse systems in indigenous languages of the Americas. (Typological Studies in Language). Amsterdam: Benjamins. 1 Curso extracurricular: Comparing grammars worldwide (UNAM, 20-24 October 2025) Alignment and differential coding: 2C. Argument indexing vs. argument flagging MARTIN HASPELMATH Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology 1. Differential object flagging and differential object indexing let us compare: • differential object flagging (DOF) • differential object indexing (DOI) • the two corresponding types of differential subject marking (DSF and DSI) Differential object marking (DOM) has long been prominent in Romance linguistics and beyond (e.g. Bossong 1991; Aissen 2003; Kabatek et al. 2021): (1) Spanish (Fábregas 2013: 1) a. Encontré un problema. I.found a problem ‘I found a problem.’ b. Encontré a un superviviente. I.found ACC a survivor ‘I found a survivor.’ DOM describes a situation in which two classes of patient objects are marked in different ways depending on their intrinsic properties (such as animacy) or on their discourse properties (such as definiteness). Moravcsik (1978) and Bossong (1985): called the phenomenon differential object marking a more precise term for (1a-b): differential object flagging (DOF) (flag is a cover term for case and adpositional marking; Haspelmath 2019a) Crucially: DOM comes in two subtypes: DOF (differential object flagging) DOI (differential object indexing) the variable use of person indexing (or “agreement”, or “clitic doubling”), as in (2)-(3) 2 (2) Romanian (Irimia 2020: 429) a. Maria a văzut o stea. Maria has seen a star ‘Maria saw a star.’ b. Maria l-a văzut pe Ion. Maria 3SG.OBJ-has seen ACC Ion ‘Maria saw Ion.’ (lit. ‘Maria saw him, John’) (3) Mauwake (Trans-New Guinea; Berghäll 2015: 97; 216) a. Bom=iya kateres=iya fuurk-a-mik. bomb=COM cartridge=COM drop-PST-3PL ‘They dropped bombs and cartridges.’ b. Emeria wia=amukar-e-k. woman 3PL.ACC=scold-PST-3SG ‘She scolded the women.’ (lit. ‘She scolded them, the women.’) Romanian: both differential object flagging (with the preposition pe) and differential object indexing (prefix l-) in the same sentence Are the two phenomena (DOF and DOI) “the same” at some level? This has often been thought: (4) Presumption of DOM unity Differential object flagging and differential object indexing are manifestations of the same underlying or motivating factor. e.g. Dalrymple & Nikolaeva (2011: 1-2): “we understand DOM as covering both agreement and case-marking (case or adpositional marking on the object)” e.g. Kalin (2018: 113): “On an inclusive conception of DOM, which I adopt here, marking may take the form of case (e.g., Persian, Turkish), an adposition (e.g., Spanish, Hindi), agreement (e.g., Swahili, Ostyak), or clitic doubling (e.g., Macedonian, Catalan).” However: • there are good reasons to reject the presumption of unity of DOM • its two subtypes DOF and DOI should probably be explained in different ways (see also Just 2024) The two central observations: DOI and DSI is uniformly driven by referential prominence, but DOF and DSF show mirror-image patterns: DOF is found when the object is referentially prominent DSF is found when the subject is referentially unprominent 3 The latter observation can be explained in terms of the efficiency theory of asymmetric coding (Haspelmath 2021a; 2021b). Figure 1. The terminology of differential argument marking 2. Differential object indexing (DOI) and the prominent indexing universal 2.1. Referential prominence Differential argument indexing is typically conditioned by referential prominence, e.g. Romanian: indexing of definite objects but not of indefinite inanimate objects Mauwake: indexing of animate objects but not inanimate objects. This is a very general pattern (cf. Morimoto 2022; Iemmolo 2011; Haig 2018; Just 2022; 2023; 2024): (5) The prominent indexing universal (first version) When argument indexing is differential and is conditioned by referential prominence, all languages prefer indexing of referentially prominent arguments. Note: argument indexing = person-number indexing (Haspelmath 2013), i.e. argument marking by bound person-number forms no distinction between “agreement” and “pronouns”, or between marking by “affixes” or “clitics” !! object indexing is typically known as “clitic doubling” in Romance languages (e.g. Anagnostopoulou 2006; Poletto & Pinzin 2024). 4 six scales of referential prominence (or topicworthiness, or salience) (e.g. Aissen 1999; Siewierska 2004: 149; Lockwood & Macaulay 2012; Haspelmath 2021b: 127-128): (6) scales of inherent prominence person scale: 1st/2nd > 3rd person full nominality scale: person form (independent or index) > full nominal animacy scale: human (> animal) > inanimate (7) scales of discourse prominence specificity scale: definite (> specific indefinite) > indefinite nonspecific givenness scale: discourse-given > discourse-new focus scale: background > focus [Incidentally: these are comparative scales, not descriptive scales, cf. Haspelmath 2015] The prominent indexing universal means that if an argument is higher on one of these scales, it is more likely to be indexed than if it lower. 2.2. Pronominality-conditioned DOI In some languages such as Spanish, object indexing occurs with personal pronoun objects but not with full nominals. (8) Spanish a. Lo veo a él. 3SG.OBJ I.see ACC him ‘I see him.’ b. Veo a Pedro. I.see ACC Pedro ‘I see Pedro.’ (9) French (Kayne 2000: 165) a. Jean la connaît elle. Jean her knows her ‘Jean knows HER.’ b. *Jean la connaît Marie. Jean her knows Marie ‘Jean knows Marie.’ Instead of “languages preferring” A over B, we can state the universal (more precisely) in implicational terms: (10) The prominent indexing universal (second version) If a referentially less prominent argument is indexed in a language, the argument types higher on the scale are also indexed. 5 2.3. Animacy-conditioned DOI In some languges, object indexing occurs with animate but not with inanimate objects. (11) Oneida (Iroquoian; Koenig & Michelson 2015: 6) a. khe-núˑweh-seʔ 1SG>3-like-HAB ‘I like her (or them).’ b. k-núˑweh-seʔ 1SG.A-like-HAB ‘I like it.’ (12) Bunaq (Timor-Alor-Pantar; Schapper 2020: 125) a. Markus zo poi. Markus mango choose ‘Markus chose a mango.’ b. Markus zap go-poi. Markus dog 3.OBJ-choose ‘Markus chose a dog.’ 2.4. Definiteness-conditioned DOI In some languges, object indexing occurs with definite objects but not with indefinite objects. (14) Bulgarian (cf. Compensis 2022: 30) a. Kuče-to goni kotka. dog-DEF.N chases cat-DEF.F ‘The dog chases a cat.’ b. Kuče-to ja goni kotka-ta. dog-DEF.N 3SG.F.OBJ chases cat-DEF.F ‘The dog chases the cat.’ 2.5. Topicality-conditioned DOI In some languges, object indexing occurs with topical objects but not with nontopical objects. (15) Sanvalentinese (Abruzzo) (D’Alessandro 2017: 7) a. Ajə cciosə li pellistrə. I.have killed.M.SG the chickens.M.PL ‘I have been killing chickens.’ b. Ajə ccisə li pellistrə. I.have killed.M.PL the chickens.M.PL ‘I have killed the chickens.’ 12 Irimia, Monica Alexandrina. 2020. Variation in differential object marking: On some differences between Spanish and Romanian. Open Linguistics 6(1). 424–462. (doi:10.1515/opli-2020-0110) Just, Erika. 2022. A functional approach to differential indexing: Combining perspectives from typology and corpus linguistics. Leiden: Leiden University. (PhD dissertation.) Just, Erika. 2023. Differential indexing and information structure management. In Barotto, Alessandra & Mattiola, Simone (eds.), Discourse phenomena in typological perspective (Studies in Language Companion Series), 269– 293. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Just, Erika. 2024. A structural and functional comparison of differential A and P indexing. Linguistics 62(2). 295–321. (doi:10.1515/ling-2021-0124) Kabatek, Johannes & Obrist, Philipp & Wall, Albert. 2021. The third wave of studies on DOM in Romance: An introduction to this volume. In Kabatek, Johannes & Obrist, Philipp & Wall, Albert (eds.), Differential Object Marking in Romance, 1–20. Berlin: De Gruyter. (doi:10.1515/9783110716207-001) Kalin, Laura. 2018. Licensing and differential object marking: The view from Neo-Aramaic. Syntax 21(2). 112–159. (doi:10.1111/synt.12153) Kalin, Laura & Weisser, Philipp. 2019. Asymmetric DOM in coordination: A problem for movement-based approaches. Linguistic Inquiry 50(3). 662–676. (doi:https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00298) Kayne, Richard S. 2000. Parameters and universals. New York: Oxford University Press. Koenig, Jean Pierre & Michelson, Karin. 2015. Invariance in argument realization: The case of Iroquoian. Language 91. 1–47. Lambrecht, Knud. 2000. When subjects behave like objects: An analysis of the merging of S and O in Sentence-Focus Constructions across languages. Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language” 24(3). 611–682. (doi:10.1075/sl.24.3.06lam) Lockwood, Hunter T. & Macaulay, Monica. 2012. Prominence hierarchies. Language and Linguistics Compass 6(7). 431–446. (doi:10.1002/lnc3.345) Malchukov, Andrej. 2008. Animacy and asymmetries in differential case marking. Lingua 118. 203–221. Merlan, Francesca. 1982. Mangarayi. Amsterdam: North-Holland. Moravcsik, Edith A. 1978. On the case marking of objects. In Greenberg, Joseph H (ed.), Universals of human language, vol. 4: Syntax, 249–289. Stanford: Stanford University Press. (https://zenodo.org/record/4688136) Morimoto, Yukiko. 2002. Prominence mismatches and Differential Object Marking in Bantu. Proceedings of the LFG02 Conference, 292–314. Stanford: CSLI Publications. (http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/) Nikolaeva, Irina. 1999. Object agreement, grammatical relations, and information structure. Studies in Language 23(2). 331–376. (doi:10.1075/sl.23.2.05nik) Ouhalla, Jamal. 1993. Subject-extraction, negation and the antiagreement effect. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 11(3). 477–518. (doi:10.1007/BF00993167) Polinsky, Maria & Comrie, Bernard. 1999. Agreement in Tsez. Folia Linguistica 33(1–2). 109–130. (doi:10.1515/flin.1999.33.1-2.109) Schapper, Antoinette. 2022. A grammar of Bunaq (Mouton Grammar Library). Berlin: De Gruyter, Mouton. Schikowski, Robert & Iemmolo, Giorgio. 2015. Commonalities and differences between differential object marking and indexing (working paper). Zurich: University of Zurich. (doi:10.5281/zenodo.7738049) Siewierska, Anna. 2004. Person. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Souag, Lameen. 2014. The development of dative agreement in Berber: Beyond nominal hierarchies. Transactions of the Philological Society. (doi:10.1111/1467-968X.12049) Stolz, Thomas & Levkovych, Nataliya & Urdze, Aina. 2017. When zero is just enough … In support of a Special Toponymic Grammar in Maltese. Folia Linguistica 51(2). 453–482. (doi:10.1515/flin-2017-0016) Tournadre, Nicolas. 1995. Tibetan ergativity and the trajectory model. In Nishi, Y. & Matisoff, James A & Nagano, Yasuhiko (eds.), New horizons in Tibeto-Burman morphosyntax, 261–275. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology. Witzlack-Makarevich, Alena & Seržant, Ilja A. 2018. Differential argument marking: An introduction. In Seržant, Ilja & Witzlack-Makarevich, Alena (eds.), The diachronic typology of differential argument marking. Berlin: Language Science Press. Zhou, Chenlei. 2022. Zhoutun (Routledge World Languages). London: Routledge. 1 Curso extracurricular: Comparing grammars worldwide (UNAM, 20-24 October 2025) Nonverbal clause constructions: 3A. Overview MARTIN HASPELMATH Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology 1. Seven initial examples (see Haspelmath 2025a) • clause types that lack a typical verb, as in (1)-(7). • in the literature, these are often called “copula(r) clauses” (e.g. Declerck 1988; Mikkelsen 2011) – but clauses expressing possession such as (6) and (7) are also included in the present discussion. • Perhaps the best-known label for all these clause types is “nonverbal predication” (e.g. Hengeveld 1992; Roy 2013; Overall et al. 2018; Creissels et al. 2026). (1) classificational construction Lee is a baker. (2) equational construction Kim is my mother. (3) attributional construction The bird is small. (4) predlocative construction (predicative-locative) The bird is on the roof. (5) existential construction There is a bird on the roof. (6) predpossessive construction (predicative-possessive) I have a boat. (7) appertentive construction (‘belong’ construction) The boat belongs to me. • Nonverbal clauses have been studied since Clark (1978) and Higgins (1973) (with Lyons 1967 as an important precursor). • Only copulaless “nominal clauses” were of interest in earlier times, e.g. Meillet 1906) (also called “equational clause”; Sebeok 1943), but an uninterrupted tradition of cross- • In typological linguistics, key earlier books were Hengeveld (1992), Heine (1997) and Stassen (1997) (see also Freeze 1992 in a generative framework) 2 2. Nonverbal clauses vs. nonverbal predication • I use the cover term NONVERBAL CLAUSE CONSTRUCTION for (1)-(7), rather than “nonverbal predication”, because not all of the construction types involve predication (see below on “predication”). • the general concepts and terms used here are comparative concepts (Haspelmath 2018) and not universal categories that are instantiated in different languages. • In terms of the distinction between construction-functions and (construction-)strategies made by Croft (2022) and Haspelmath (2025b), the construction types in (1)-(7) are construction-functions, defined independently of their formal properties. NOTE: Very recently, a new “comparative handbook” has been published, on “nonverbal predication”, edited by Bertinetto, Ciucci and Creissels The introduction text is called by the editors an “analytical framework” in the title, and a “theoretical framework” in the abstract; and in the concluding section, they say that they offer “a consistent set of descriptive concepts”. But if description/analysis is what linguists do when they deal with particular languages (p-linguistics), then their framework is not “descriptive/analytical”, but comparative. And if a theory is an explanatory account from which hypotheses can be derived, their framework is not theoretical, but remains at the methodological level, just like my 2025a paper. 3 3. Duonominal constructions: classificational and equational duonominal: two nominal expressions that are put in some kind of correspondence • two well-known subtypes: classificational and equational clauses (Creissels et al. : inclusion vs. identity predication) Classificational and equational clauses have the same coding properties in most languages, using the same copula and the same argument marking. (8) Lezgian (Nakh-Dagestanian; Haspelmath 1993: 311) a. classificational (or inclusional) Зи буба кешиш я. Zi buba kešiš ja. my father priest COP ‘My father is a minister.’ b. equational (or identificational) Ви ктаб им я. Wi ktab im ja. your book this.one COP ‘Your book is this one.’ (9) Welsh (Borsley et al. 2007: 130) two different copulas! a. classificational Mae Caerdydd yn ddinas hardd. be.PRS.3SG Cardiff PRED city beautiful ‘Cardiff is a beautiful city.’ b. equational Caerdydd yw prifddinas Cymru. Cardiff be.PRS.3SG capital Wales ‘Cardiff is the capital of Wales.’ (10) Egyptian Arabic (Eid 1991: 41) a. classificational no copulas ʕAli mudarris Ali teacher ‘Ali is a teacher.’ b. equational Miħammad huwwa ʕAli. (*Miħammad Ø ʕAli.) Mohammed COP Ali ‘Mohammed is Ali.’ Duonominal clauses are sometimes known as clauses with a “predicate nominal” or “nominal predicate” (e.g. Payne 1997: Ch. 6), and this term is quite appropriate for the classificational subtype. Classificational clauses are therefore often called predicational (e.g. Higgins 1973; 1979; Mikkelsen 2005). 4 Equational clauses, too, are often subsumed under “non-verbal predication”, but it is not clear that they can be said to contain a “predicate”! According to Stassen (1997: 12), predication is “the application of a general concept to a particular entity”, and this is not (necessarily) the case in equational clauses (Stassen 1997: 108). Equational clause constructions fall into four main subtypes: (12) a. characterizational clause Kim is the new statistics professor. b. specificational clause The new statistics professor is Kim. c. deictic-identificational clause That is my brother. d. tautotic clause (cf. Greek tautótēs ‘identity’) Dr Jekyll is Mr Hyde. 4. Attributional constructions An ATTRIBUTIONAL CLAUSE CONSTRUCTION expresses the attribution of a property to a subject referent, as already seen in (3) above. There are three more examples in (13)- (15). (13) Polish Marek jest uprzejmy. Marek is polite ‘Marek is polite.’ (14) Cantonese (Matthews & Yip 2011: 179) Léih go jái hóu gōu. you CLF son very tall ‘Your son is tall.’ (15) Kolyma Yukaghir (Maslova 2003: 68) Čumu omo-te-j. all good-FUT-3SG ‘Everything will be good.’ The property words used in attributional constructions are typically called “adjectives”, but in quite a few languages, they behave much like typical verbs and are treated as “stative verbs” (e.g. in Cantonese; see also Francis & Matthews 2005), BUT: for comparative purposes, it is best to use the terms noun, verb and adjective in a notional sense (Stassen 1997: 14; Pustet 2003: 28; Haspelmath 2023), so we may say that all of (13)-(15) contain “adjectival predicates”. 5 5. Predpossessive and appertentive constructions Four types of clauses having to do with location and possession: (4) predlocative construction (predicative-locative) The bird is on the roof. (5) existential construction There is a bird on the roof. (6) predpossessive construction (predicative-possessive) I have a boat. (7) appertentive construction (‘belong’ construction) The boat belongs to me. PREDPOSSESSIVE (‘I have a boat’) and APPERTENTIVE (‘The boat belongs to me’) clause constructions are analogous to existential and predlocative constructions: (22) possessional locational definite locatum/possessum appertentive (The boat is mine.) predlocative (The boat is on the shore.) indefinite locatum/possessum predpossessive (I have a boat.) existential (There is a boat on the shore.) Predpossessive constructions are famous for being expressed by fairly different strategies in different languages (e.g. Heine 1997; Creissels 2020). Transpossessive strategies make use of a transitive verb (‘have’), compossessive strategies use a comitative flag (‘with’) on the possessum, and locpossessive strategies use a locative flag on the possessor (‘on, at’). (23) transpossessive strategy: Persian دارم زﯾ ﺎ دی ﭘﻮل ﻣﻦ Man pul ziyâde dâram. I much money have. ‘I have a lot of money.’ (24) compossessive strategy: Hausa Bàlki ta-nàa dà kùjèeruu màasu kyâu. Balki 3F.SG-be with chairs having beauty ‘Balki has nice chairs.’ (Lit. ‘Balki is with nice chairs.’) (Abdoulaye 2006: 1122) (25) locpossessive strategy: Finnish Peka-lla on auto. Pekka-ADESS is car.SG.NOM ‘Pekka has a car.’ (Lit. ‘A car is at Pekka’; Creissels 2013: 468) 6 There are also two salient strategies for appertentive clauses (see Stolz & Levkovych 2019): (26) oblique-possessor appertentive strategy: Russian Mašin-a prinadležit Miš-e. car-NOM belongs Misha-DAT ‘The car belongs to Misha.’ (27) independent-possessor appertentive strategy: Spanish Esta canasta es mía. this basket is mine. ‘This basket is mine.’ (Stolz & Levkovych 2019: 326) 6. The role of “predicates” in nonverbal clause constructions • since Hengeveld (1992), the term nonverbal predication has become common as a cover term for most of the constructions discussed here. • In earlier times, these constructions were typically called “be constructions” (cf. Verhaar (ed.) 1967-1972) or “copula clauses”, but: – many languages or constructions lack a copula – predpossessive clauses are not included • But why “nonverbal predication”? What is a predicate and a predication? In classificational (Lee is a baker), attributional (The bord is small), predlocative (The bird is in the tree), and appertentive constructions (The boat is mine), it is clear that there is a subject and a predicate. Dixon (2010: 163) rejects this usage and prefers to treat adjective, nominal and locative phrase as “copula complements”, i.e. as kinds of arguments, regarding the copula itself as the predicate But in the other three construction types (equational, existential and predpossessive), it is not clear what the predicate might be. Many linguists have of course tried to extend the notions of “subject” and “predicate” to these clauses, too, but no common understanding has emerged. Freeze (2001: 945) claims that the locative phrase is the subject in existential clauses like (28): (28) Russian V gorode byl doktor. in town was doctor ‘There was a doctor in town’, But many other linguists would insist that the existent phrase (‘the doctor’) must be the subject. 7 → it is probably best to say that • some of the nonverbal clause constructions are predicational (exhibiting a topiccomment structure), • while others are nonpredicational (as is done by Croft 2022). predicational appertentive (‘belong’) predlocative attributional classificational duonominal nonpredicational equational characterizational specificational deicticidentificational existential temporary-location existential permanent-presence existential predpossessive (‘have’) hyparctic (‘exist’) Table 1: The main types of nonverbal clause constructions and subtypes equational classificational ascriptive attributional predlocative locational locopossessional existential predpossessive possessional appertentive hyparctic Table 2: Nonverbal clause construction types and super-types 7. Copulas Many nonverbal clause types have copulas: (28) Gyeli (Bantu) Àdà àà ngɛblɛńɛb. Ada COP.G1 teacher(G1) !‘Ada is a teacher.’ (Grimm 2021: 440) (29) Jamaican (English-based creole) Fi-dem moni de pan di tiebl. of-them money LCOP on the table ‘Their money is on the table.’ (Farquharson 2013) 8 A copula is best defined as a form that indicates a stative link between the two argument positions of an equational, ascriptive or locational clause (i.e. a predlocative or existential clause). Comments: (1) maybe it would be more natural to say that a copula is any linking element in a nonverbal clause? But ‘have’ verbs in predpossessive clauses and ‘belong’ verbs in an appertentive clauses (e.g. 26) are never called copulas – copulas must be restricted to equational, ascriptive and locational clauses, even though these are not a natural class of clause types. (2) a copula is defined as a kind of form, and since a form is overt and segmental by definition, this definition excludes the possibility of a “zero copula”. This also means that tonal marking of nonverbal predication, as has been reported for a number of African languages by Gibson et al. (2019: §2.3), does not count as “copula”. (30) Herero (Bantu; Gibson et al. 2019: §2.3) a. ò-tjì-havérò AUG-G7-chair ‘chair’ b. ó-tjì-havérò AUG-G7-chair ‘it is a chair’ (3) a form can be affixal, so affixal copulas such as -y in (31) from Turkish are included in the definition as well (Creissels et al. (2026) call such forms “copulative affixes”). (31) Turkish Satıcı-y-dı-m. seller-COP-PST-1SG ‘I was a seller.’ (Kornfilt 1997: 57) But affixal markers that only indicate person-number, tense and so on do not count as copulas; an example is -t in (32). In Bertinetto et al. (2019), such constructions are called predicative inflection. (32) Erzya (Uralic) Ist’amo šumbra ćora-t di a śim-at. such wealthy man-2SG and NEG drink-2SG ‘You are such a wealthy man and you don’t drink.’ (Turunen 2011: 148) Such forms may look quite verb-like in these languages! 9 (4) the definition does not say anything about a copula’s “verbal” or “nonverbal” nature. Many copulas are quite verb-like, but others clearly look non-verb-like (e.g. Egyptian Arabic huwwa in (10b), which derives from a personal pronoun ‘he’). (Creissels et al. 2026 say that copulas are special because they do not assign semantic roles to the subject, so they do not count as “verbal” in this sense.) 8. Juxtaposition tendencies In Haspelmath (2025a), I formulate no generalizations, but Creissels et al. (2026: 19) note a number of cross-linguistic tendencies for the use of juxtaposition (as opposed to a copula): 9. Equational clauses: Characterizational and specificational subtypes Equational clauses have two subtypes: CHARACTERIZATIONAL and SPECIFICATIONAL clauses. The difference between them is best characterized by means of the notions of TOPIC and COMMENT, and of VARIABLE and VALUE (cf. Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 53; Mikkelsen 2011: 1810) (35) a. characterizational clause WarsawVALUE is the capital of PolandVARIABLE. b. specificational clause The capital of PolandVARIABLE is WarsawVALUE. Characterizational and specificational clauses do not simply equate two referents (“Dr. Jekyll is Mr. Hyde”), but combine a value with a variable. 16 Overall, Simon E. 2018. Nonverbal predicates and copula constructions in Aguaruna (Chicham). In Overall, Simon E. & Vallejos, Rosa & Gildea, Spike (eds.), Nonverbal predication in Amazonian languages, 135–161. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Overall, Simon E. & Vallejos, Rosa & Gildea, Spike (eds.). 2018. Nonverbal predication in Amazonian languages. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Padučeva, Elena V. 1985. Vyskazyvanie i ego sootnesennost’ s dejstvitel’nost’ju: Referencial’nye aspekty semantiki mestoimenij. Moskva: Nauka. Paducheva, Elena V. 2008. Locative and existential meaning of Russian быть. Russian Linguistics 32(3). 147–158. Partee, Barbara H. 2010. Specificational Copular Sentences in Russian and English. Oslo Studies in Language 2(1). (doi:10.5617/osla.127) (https://journals.uio.no/osla/article/view/127) (Accessed July 19, 2021.) Partee, Barbara H. & Borschev, Vladimir. 2007. Existential sentences, BE, and the genitive of negation in Russian. In Comorovski, Ileana & von Heusinger, Klaus (eds.), Existence: Semantics and syntax, 147–190. Dordrecht: Springer. Payne, Thomas. 1997. Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Petrollino, Sara. 2019. Existential predication in Hamar. Nordic Journal of African Studies 28(4). 27–27. Pustet, Regina. 2003. Copulas: Universals in the categorization of the lexicon. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rehg, Kenneth L. & Sohl, Damian G. 1981. Ponapean reference grammar. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Rennison, John R. 1997. Koromfe (Descriptive Grammar Series). London: Routledge. Rothstein, Susan. 1995. Small clauses and copular constructions. In Cardinaletti, Anna (ed.), Small clauses, 27–48. New York: Academic Press. (doi:10.1163/9780585492209_003) Roy, Isabelle. 2013. Nonverbal predication: Copular sentences at the syntax-semantics interface. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sabbagh, Joseph. 2009. Existential sentences in Tagalog. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 27(4). 675–719. (doi:10.1007/s11049-009-9083-3) Sebeok, Thomas A. 1943. The equational sentence in Hungarian. Language 19(4). 320–327. (doi:10.2307/409935) Stassen, Leon. 1997. Intransitive predication. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stassen, Leon. 2005. Predicative possession. In Haspelmath, Martin & Dryer, Matthew S. & Gil, David & Comrie, Bernard (eds.), The world atlas of language structure, 474–477. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ((http://wals.info/chapter/117)) Stassen, Leon. 2009. Predicative possession. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stolz, Thomas. 2001. To be with X is to have X: Comitatives, instrumentals, locative, and predicative possession. Linguistics 39(2). 321–350. (doi:10.1515/ling.2001.013) Stolz, Thomas & Levkovych, Nataliya. 2019. On belonging: Preliminary thoughts on the typology of belongconstructions. In Johanson, Lars & Mazzitelli, Lidia Federica & Nevskaya, Irina (eds.), Possession in languages of Europe and North and Central Asia, 313–363. Amsterdam: Benjamins. (https://benjamins.com/catalog/slcs.206) Tham, Shiao Wei. 2013. Possession as non-verbal predication. Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, vol. 39, 302–316. Turunen, Rigina. 2010. Nonverbal predication in Erzya: Studies on morphosyntactic variation and part of speech distinctions. Helsinki: University of Helsinki. (Ph.D. dissertation.) (https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/19652) (Accessed September 13, 2021.) Vallejos, Rosa. 2016. A grammar of Kukama-Kukamiria: A language from the Amazon. Leiden: Brill. van Gijn, Erik. 2006. A grammar of Yurakaré. Nijmegen: Radboud University. (Ph.D. dissertation.) (http://webdoc.ubn.ru.nl/mono/g/gijn_e_van/gramofyu.pdf) Van Valin, Robert D., Jr. 2005. Exploring the syntax-semantics interface. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Verhaar, John W. M. (ed.). 1967-1972. The verb “be” and its synonyms: Philosophical and grammatical studies (5 volumes, 1967-1972). Dordrecht: Reidel. Veselinova, Ljuba. 2013. Negative existentials: A cross-linguistic study. Rivista di Linguistica 25(1). 107–145. Veselinova, Ljuba & Hamari, Arja (eds.). 2022. The Negative Existential Cycle (Research on Comparative Grammar). Language Science Press (Research on Comparative Grammar). Berlin: Language Science Press. (Accessed September 13, 2021.) Ye, Jingting. 2020. Independent and dependent possessive person forms: Three universals. Studies in Language 44(2). 363–406. (doi:10.1075/sl.19020.ye) Ye, Jingting. 2021. Property words and adjective subclasses in the world’s languages. Leipzig: Leipzig University. (Ph D dissertation.) 1 Curso extracurricular: Comparing grammars worldwide (UNAM, 20-24 October 2025) Nonverbal clause constructions: 3B. Existential constructions MARTIN HASPELMATH Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology 1. Starting out from a stereotype (asking ChatGPT) Give a typical existential clause from English, Spanish and Chinese. Great question — let’s look at what an existential clause is first, and then examples from English, Spanish, and Chinese. ! What is an existential clause? An existential clause expresses the existence or presence of something — it answers “there is / there are” in English. It typically introduces something new into the discourse. " 1. English Example: There is a book on the table. Structure: there + be + noun phrase (+ location / complement) Explanation: “there” is a dummy subject — it doesn’t mean a place, just marks existence. # 2. Spanish Example: Hay un libro en la mesa. Structure: hay (from haber) + noun phrase (+ location) Explanation: “hay” literally means “there is / there are”. Spanish doesn’t need a dummy subject; the verb haber alone expresses existence. $ 3. Chinese (Mandarin) Example: 桌子上有一本书。 Zhuōzi shàng yǒu yī běn shū. “There is a book on the table.” Structure: [Location] + 有 (yǒu ‘have/there is’) + noun phrase Explanation: The verb 有 functions as an existential verb meaning “there is/are.” The location phrase comes first. 2 This is all fine, except the definition: “expresses the existence or presence of something”, which is far too vague. How can we improve on this? How can we study existential clauses systematically across languages? 2. The main strategies for existential clauses Existential clauses use a range of fairly different strategies that we may want to have specific terms for, e.g. (50) existive-copula strategy: Tagalog May mga tao sa labas. EXV PL person LOC outside ‘There are people outside.’ (Sabbagh 2009: 678) (51) transpossessive-existential strategy: Seychelles Creole Ler i annan koudvan zot pa reste lo sa zil. when 3SG have hurricane they not stay on the island ‘When there is a hurricane they don’t stay on the island.’ (Michaelis & Rosalie 2013) (52) prolocative strategy: Italian Ci sono molte montagne in Svizzera. PROLOC are many mountains in Switzerland ‘There are many mountains in Switzerland.’ French has a mixture of the latter two types, making use both of avoir ‘have’ and of a prolocative element y ‘there’ (e.g. il y a beaucoup de montagnes en Suisse ‘there are many mountains in Switzerland’). Spanish could be said to use the same mixture in the present tense (ha-y), but simply haber (transpossessive-existential) in other tenses. However, haber no longer means ‘have’, so synchronically, Spanish haber is best treated as an existive copula. The last type is merely characterized by the postposed ordering of the existent, as in (53). (53) existent-postposing strategy: Finnish Kato-lla on lintu. roof-ADESS is bird ‘There is a bird on the roof.’ (cf. Lintu on katolla ‘The bird is on the roof.’) And another strategy: no difference between existential and predicative-locative clauses: (57) Mandinka (Mande) Wùlôo bé yíròo kótò. dog.DET LCOP tree.DET under ‘The dog is under the tree.’ OR: ‘There is a dog under the tree.’ (Creissels 2019: 51) 3 3. A possible universal regularity: The existent prefers an object-like position VO languages: – post-copula position (there are mountains…) – post-“verbal” position (il y a des montagnes…) SOV languages: – immediately preverbal position Japanese Yane-no ue-ni tori-ga imasu. roof-GEN on-LOC bird-NOM be ‘There is a bird on the roof.’ Tori-wa yane-no ue-ni imasu. bird-TOP roof-GEN on-LOC be ‘The bird is on the roof.’ Freeze (1992: 555) gives the following examples from Hindi: Existential constructions are semantically quite similar to predicative-locative constructions: there is a locative phrase (e.g. ‘on the roof’), there is located element (the locatum), and the clause expresses the locational relationship. (Both can be said to be subtypes of “locational clauses”.) The locatum can be called the existent phrase in existential constructions (Haspelmath 2025; also called “pivot” in the literature). Existential constructions have not been studied very thoroughly from a worldwide perspective (but see Clark 1978; Freeze 1992; Creissels 2019). But one may propose the following universal: (1) The existent-position universal If a language prefers to place the existent phrase in a position different from the locatum phrase in a predicative-locative construction, it occurs in a position that is analogous to the position of the object in a transitive clause. The object-like position is understandable because the existent phrase is indefinite and is normally new information, just as objects typically are. 4 4. Existential clauses do not express “existence” Creissels (2019) objects to the term “existential clause”, because the clause type in question cannot be characterized by the notion of “existence”. (ChatGPT: “An existential clause expresses the existence or presence of something” – but this is not a good definition.) “if ‘exist(ence)’ is taken with its usual meaning ‘be(ing) an element of the world’, it should be clear that There is a cat in the tree does not express existence, since in languages having a verb such as English exist or French exister, it is impossible to use it to express the same meaning, and conversely, in many languages, clauses expressing pure existence without any reference being made to location, such as God exists / Dieu existe, cannot be paraphrased by means of the inverse-locational predicator.” (Creissels 2019: 37) Creissels is right – clauses expressing “pure existence” should not be called “existential clauses”. I have proposed a new term: hyparctic clauses (based on Greek hýparxis (ὕπαρξις) ‘existence’) A few examples: (64) Latin Cogito, ergo sum. I.think therefore I.exist ‘I think, therefore I am.’ (René Descartes, 1637) (65) French Il est des situations dans lesquelles personne n’aimerait se trouver. it is INDF situations in which nobody would.like self to.find ‘There are situations in which nobody would like to be.’ (Creissels 2019: 44) (66) Hamar (South Omotic) Bajó dáa. fate EXV ‘Fate exists.’ (Petrollino 2019: 8) (67) Classical Arabic ٱ# ﱠٰ ُ إ ِ ﻻ ﱠ إ ِ ﻟ َٰ ﮫ َ ﻻ َ Laa ʔilaah-a ʔillaa ’llaahu. not god-ACC unless Allah ‘There is no deity but God.’ (Qur’an 37:35) • there are diverse strategies for hyparctic clauses • there is a lot of overlap with existential clauses, but there are also differences (for example, French être (seen in (65)) can be used in hyparctic, but not in existential clauses) • hyparctic clauses have not been studied systematically yet, but it would be a worthwhile topic for typology 5 Creissels et al. (2026: 33): “The importance of a terminological distinction between these two clause types is also acknowledged by Haspelmath (2025), but the solution he proposes is different … the use of two etymologically equivalent labels (such as “existential” and “hyparctic”) for two distinct constructions does not contribute to more clearly reflecting their differences.” However, I do not think that etymology matters much in grammatical terminology. 5. Definitions: Locational and possessional clauses From the beginning (Lyons 1967; Clark 1978), it has been noted that existential clauses are related to predlocative clauses and/or predpossessive clauses in many languages. (4) predlocative construction (predicative-locative) The bird is on the roof. (5) existential construction There is a bird on the roof. (6) predpossessive construction (predicative-possessive) I have a boat. (7) appertentive construction The boat belongs to me. (22) possessional locational definite locatum/possessum appertentive (The boat is mine.) predlocative (The boat is on the shore.) indefinite locatum/possessum predpossessive (I have a boat.) existential (There is a boat on the shore.) • Predlocative vs. existential constructions A PREDLOCATIVE CONSTRUCTION is a clause construction in which a definite subject argument is said to be located in a place expressed by a locative phrase: (16) Wambaya (Australia; Nordlinger 1998: 177) Janji inyaga jalyu-ni! dog.NOM that.NOM bed-LOC ‘The dog is on the bed!’ (17) Koromfe (Gur, West Africa; Rennison 1997: 65) Də wɛ< dããnɛ. he LCOP at.home ‘He is at home.’ 6 An EXISTENTIAL CONSTRUCTION is a clause in which an indefinite nominal phrase (the EXISTENT) is said to be in some location that is generally expressed by a locative phrase. (18) Logudorese Sardinian (Bentley et al. 2015: 7) In custu istradone nch’ at una creža. in this road there have.3SG a church ‘In this road there is a church.’ (Lit. ‘It there has a church in this road.’) (19) Aguaruna (Chicham; Overall 2018: 154) Utuŋchat a-yi nuŋka=num. problem exist-PST.3SG.DECL land=LOC ‘There was a problem in the land.’ (20) Wambaya (Australia; Nordlinger 1998: 177) Garnguji julaji-rdarra gayangga darranggu-ni. many.NOM bird-GROUP.NOM high tree-LOC ‘There are lots of birds up in the trees.’ The existent is often called pivot (following Milsark 1977), and Creissels (2019) calls it the figure (contrasting with the ground expressed by the locative phrase). One interesting difference: – the locative phrase must be overt in a predlocative clause, but can be left implicit in an existential clause: The coffee is on the table. *The coffee is. There is coffee on the table. There is coffee. • temporary location vs. permanent presence In some languages, there is a clear difference between temporary location and permanent presence of the indefinite nominal, e.g. (21) German a. temporary location of existent Auf dem Tisch sind Blumen. on the table are flowers ‘There are flowers on the table.’ (Cf. ?*Auf dem Tisch gibt es Blumen.) b. permanent presence of existent In Thailand gibt es Tiger. in Thailand gives it tigers ‘There are tigers in Thailand.’ (Cf. ?*In Thailand sind Tiger.) 7 Some authors have treated this as an important distinction (e.g. Koch 2012), and Creissels (2019) restricts his attention to temporary-location existentials. However, many languages do not treat the two types differently. 6. Copulas and existive forms Some languages have a linking form that is restricted to existential (or predpossessive) clauses, such as Spanish hay in (33) or Tagalog may. I have proposed the term EXISTIVE for such special forms (called “specialized inverselocational predicators” by Creissels 2019: 80). (33) Spanish Hay mucha gente afuera. EXV many people outside ‘There are many people outside.’ Particularly common are negative existives, e.g. Russian net ‘there isn’t’, Turkish yok ‘there isn’t’ (Veselinova 2013; Veselinova & Hamari 2022). Note that an existive is a type of copula: it can be defined as a copula that does not occur outside of existential and predpossessive clauses. 7. “Inverse-locational” and other existential clauses In Haspelmath (2025a), an EXISTENTIAL CLAUSE is a clause in which an indefinite nominal phrase (the locatum) is said to be in some location. This definition of the term existential clause corresponds to widespread usage (since Lyons 1967; 1968: §8.4; Clark 1978). A few more examples of existential clauses are given in (54)-(56). (54) Kukama-Kukamiria (Tupí-Guaraní) Emete ɨkɨratsen tukini=kuara. exist kid hammock=INESS ‘There is a kid in the hammock.’ (Vallejos 2016: 345) (55) Hinuq (Nakh-Dagestanian) Ardel elu-de ʡaši šayt’an-be zoq’e-s=ňen. formerly we-LOC many devil-PL be-PST=QUOT ‘Formerly in our village there were many devils.’ (Forker 2013: 533) (56) English There was a bird on the roof. On the roof was a bird. A BIRD was on the roof. 8 Some authors have used the term existential in a narrower sense, to refer to a subclass of existential clauses that are “noncanonical” in some way, “whether due to some aspect of their syntax or the presence of a distinguished lexical item (e.g. Spanish hay)” (McNally 2016: 212). But this is not a homogeneous class, because “what is canonical differs from language to language” (as McNally notes), so it is better to use the traditional term existential in a broad functional-semantic sense. Creissels (2019) examines one subtype of existential clause, which he calls inverselocational predication. In this type of clause, there is an episodic spatial relationships involving two concrete entities: a figure that has the ability to move, and a ground occupying a fixed position in space, and the clause is “perspectivized” from ground to figure. There is a cat in the tree. Inverse-locational clauses contrast with plain-locational clauses, where the perspectivization is from figure to ground (e.g. The cat is in the tree. Creissels (2019: 41-42) limits the term inverse-locational to constructions which are “specialized” in the sense that they cannot be derived from predlocative constructions by some generally applicable device such as word order or marking for definiteness or topicality. In other words, Creissels’ term inverse-locational refers to a specific strategy (in Croft’s 2022 and Haspelmath’s 2025b sense) to express the locational relationship in question. Thus, Creissels would not classify an English sentence such as A BIRD is on the roof as inverse-locational, and he notes that in some languages, there are sentences which can have both interpretations, e.g. (57) Mandinka (Mande) Wùlôo bé yíròo kótò. dog.DET LCOP tree.DET under ‘The dog is under the tree.’ OR: ‘There is a dog under the tree.’ (Creissels 2019: 51) A large number of languages (probably more than half of the world’s languages) lack a (dedicated) inverse-locational construction. Creissels does not require the locatum in inverse-locational clauses to be indefinite, citing French sentences like Tiens, il y a Jean! ‘Hey, there’s Jean!’ 9 Creissels (2019: §2.4) rightly criticizes Koch (2012) for equating the contrast between predlocative and existential clauses with the contrast between a thematic/topical locatum and a rhematic/focal locatum. We can have predlocative sentences with a focal locatum (THE DOG is on the bed), and (59)-(60) are existential sentences whose existent is topicalized. (59) Russian [Я искал кефир.] Кефира в магазине не было. [Ja iskal kefir.] Kefir-a v magazine ne byl-o. I.NOM sought kefir.ACC kefir-GEN in store NEG was-N.SG ‘[I was looking for kefir.] There wasn’t any kefir in the store.’ (Partee & Borschev 2007: 155) (60) French Des femmes, il y en avait plusieurs à la réunion. INDF women it there of.them had several at the meeting (lit.) ‘Women, there were several of them at the meeting.’ (Creissels 2019: 49) References Abdoulaye, Mahamane L. 2006. Existential and possessive predications in Hausa. De Gruyter Mouton 44(6). 1121–1164. (doi:10.1515/LING.2006.037) Bentley, Delia. 2017. Copular and existential constructions. In Dufter, Andreas & Stark, Elisabeth (eds.), Manual of Romance morphosyntax and syntax, 332–366. Berlin: De Gruyter. (doi 10.1515/9783110377088-009) (Accessed September 13, 2021.) Bentley, Delia & Ciconte, Francesco Maria & Cruschina, Silvio. 2015. Existentials and locatives in Romance dialects of Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Benveniste, Émile. 1960. «Etre» et «avoir» dans leurs fonctions linguistiques. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 55. (Also in: Problèmes de linguistique générale 1, 187-207. Paris: Gallimard, 1966) Bertinetto, Pier Marco & Ciucci, Luca & Farina, Margherita. 2019. Two types of morphologically expressed non-verbal predication. Studies in Language. John Benjamins 43(1). 120–194. (doi:10.1075/sl.17013.ber) Bickerton, Derek. 1981. Roots of language. Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers [Republished in 2016 by Language Science Press: https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/91]. Borsley, Robert D & Tallerman, Maggie & Willis, David. 2007. The syntax of Welsh. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chappell, Hilary & Lü, Shanshan. 2022. A semantic typology of location, existence, possession and copular verbs: Areal patterns of polysemy in Mainland East and Southeast Asia. Linguistics 60(1). 1–82. (doi:10.1515/ling-2021-0219) Clark, Eve V. 1978. Locationals: Existential, locative, and possessive constructions. In Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.), Universals of human language, Vol. 4: Syntax, 85–126. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Creissels, Denis. 2013. Control and the evolution of possessive and existential constructions. In van Gelderen, Elly & Cennamo, Michela (eds.), Argument Structure in Flux: the Naples-Capri papers, 461–476. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Creissels, Denis. 2019. Inverse-locational predication in typological perspective. Italian Journal of Linguistics 31(2). 37– 106. Creissels, Denis. 2020. La prédication existentielle et les constructions transpossessives. In Bottineau, Tatiana (ed.), La prédication existentielle dans les langues naturelles : Valeurs et repérages, structures et modalités, 17–41. Paris: Presses de l’Inalco. Creissels, Denis & Bertinetto, Pier Marco & Ciucci, Luca. 2025. Non-verbal predication in the world’s languages: An overview. In: Oxford handbook of non-verbal predication (to appear). Croft, William. 2022. Morphosyntax: Constructions of the world’s languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (http://www.unm.edu/~wcroft/WACpubs.html) Curnow, Timothy Jowan. 2000. Towards a cross-linguistic typology of copula constructions. In Henderson, John (ed.), Proceedings of the 1999 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society, 1–9. (http://www.als.asn.au) Declerck, Renaat. 1983. ‘It is Mr. Y’ or ‘he is Mr. Y’? Lingua 59(2). 209–246. (doi:10.1016/0024-3841(83)90064-5) Declerck, Renaat. 1988. Studies on copular sentences, clefts and pseudo-clefts. Leuven: Leuven University Press & Foris. 4 (In the definition, there is a strange formulation “without the additional devices that are necessary for underived lexemes belonging to other morphosyntactic classes” – but which are the “other classes”? It seems that we can know this only if we already know what an adjective is.) Creissels et al. refer to the most recent handbook article about adjectives, Beck (2023), who defines “adjective” as follows: “The term ‘adjective’ will be used to describe a lexical–syntactic class of word that contains primarily expressions of property concepts and whose syntactic distribution can be distinguished from that of other word classes in that it shows a specialization for adnominal modification.” (Beck 2023: 366) Here the term “specialization” may refer to the absence of a “special adnominal device” (i.e. an absence of a relativizer, as in Russian, Japanese and Haitian Creole), but it could perhaps also refer to special devices that do not occur with adnominal nouns or verbs. Perhaps the gender-agreement suffixes in Indo-European languages can be regarded as showing such “specialization”? For example, Modern Greek has mikr-ó spiti ‘small house’ mikr-í póli ‘small town’ because spíti is neuter and póli is feminine. But what about, say, German, which has very similar gender suffixes (klein-es Haus ‘small house’, klein-e Stadt ‘small town’), but in addition has agreeing participles (e.g. spiel-end-es Kind ‘playing child’, lach-end-e Frau ‘laughing woman’)? Should we say that in German, property-concept words do not show a specialization for adnominal modification, because verbs can be used in this way, too? Thus: it is not easy at all to define the term “adjective” formally in such a way that the criteria can be applied to all languages. For this reason, I have proposed that adjective (as well as verb and noun) are defined notionally for comparative purposes (Haspelmath 2023). “Adjectival predication” is best defined in functional terms, as predication of a property concept, not as a formally defined type of strategy (I use the term “attributional clause”, adopted from Dixon 2010). 5 Admittedly, this goes against the most common view in the literature, which is reflected in statements such as the following: “When a language has no adjectives or only a small closed class of adjectives, property concepts are encoded either as verbs, as in Chinese and Korean, or nouns, as in Quechua and Hausa (see Stassen 1997 for an overview).” (Nikolaeva & Spencer 2020: 7) It is an extremely widerspread view among linguists that some languages have a special adjective class, while others do not. However, if “adjective” is defined notionally, then all languages have such a class, because all languages can express notions such as ‘big’, ‘small’, ‘old’, ‘good’ by simple roots. Creissels et al. (2026: 10) also take this widespread view: “Recognizing*adjectival*predication*as*a*particular*type*of*non-verbal*predication*makes* only*sense*for*languages*with*a*class*of*adjectives*whose*predicative*behavior*is*distinct* from*that*of*verbs.”* In this sentence, they say that the “predicative behaviour” should be “distinct”, in contrast to the earlier characterization of “adjectives” with respect to their adnominal function. And what exactly is “distinct”? Verb-like adjectives often lack the full range of tense-aspect forms that can occur with action verbs, but the occurrence of tense-aspect forms typically depends on actionality characteristic (for example, progressives do not occur with stative verbs such as ‘know’ – does this make them “adjectives”?). Thus, according to the view that I presented in Haspelmath (2025a), a clause such as (4a) (where wouj ‘red’ occurs with the past-tense prefix té-, like verbs), is attributional, and counts as non-verbal, in contrast with the verbal clause in (4b). (4) Haitian Creole: a. Flè sa a té-wouj. [flower that DEF PST-red] ‘This flower was red.’ b. Chen sa a té-ale lakay. [dog that def pst-go home] ‘This dog had gone home.’ The term nonverbal clause construction is interpreted in functional terms: It refers to clause constructions in which there is no action or process root (= no verb, in the comparative-concept sense). 6 From a comparative sense, a copula or a ‘have’ verb in predpossessive constructions is not a “verb”, though from language-particular perspectives, such elements are of course often labeled in this way. Creissels et al. (2026), by contrast, want to exclude clauses with propertyconcept roots that are are too similar to action and process roots, though they are not very specific (would they even exclude Japanese, where property-concept words such as akai ‘red’ are fairly verb-like?). They also want to exclude clauses with ‘have’ expressions that are called “verbs” in the language, but again, they are not very specific (how verb-like does the ‘have’ word have to be? Is English have sufficiently verb-like, even though it lacks an imperative and a passive construction?). It may be that they are doing this because they are not fully aware of the distinction between construction-functions and construction-strategies (Haspelmath 2025b): Their notion of “nonverbal predication” is a kind of mixture of the two. 2. Word classes: definitions vs. universals (Haspelmath 2023) • the study of cross-linguistic word class variability and its limits needs to be based on clear comparative concepts because languages have different grammatical structures. • the notions of (i) function indicators and (ii) semantic root classes give us a way of formulating universals and of distinguishing cross-linguistic macro-classes in a rigorous way. • the root classes are action, property, and object; function indicators are markers that signal an unusual propositional act function (e.g. a copula signals predicative use of an object root, and a relativizer signals modifying use of an action root). • we must distinguish clearly between comparison and language-particular analysis, because analysis must be based on language-particular constructions and is thus a rather different enterprise than the search for language universals. 3. Three word class universals Word class universals are not particularly well-known, although many comparative linguists are aware of them and will not be surprised by the Universals 1-3 below. Much of the comparative literature on word classes asks to what extent the distinction between nouns, verbs and adjectives is universal (e.g. Sasse 1993; Evans 2000; Baker 2003; Dixon 2010: Ch. 11). This question (which I refer to as the “distinctness question”) has no clear answer. 7 Universals 1-3 (due to Croft 1991: Ch. 3) are about the occurrence of function indicators, i.e. copulas, attributivizers, and termifiers, in three different propositional act functions: predication, modification, and reference, with three different semantic root classes: action roots, property roots, and object roots. Universal 1 If a language has a copula, i.e. a special form that indicates predicative function, it is used with object roots and/or property roots. Universal 2 If a language has an attributivizer, i.e. a special form that indicates modifying function, it is used with action roots and/or object roots. Universal 3 If a language has a termifier (= nominalizer or substantivizer), i.e. a special form that indicates referential function, it is used with property roots and/or action roots. The reason the universals are formulated in terms of roots, not in terms of “words”, is that there is no general cross-linguistic understanding of what a “word” is (other than as defined by the conventional orthographic representation; Haspelmath 2011). But in many or most languages, many roots can be words (especially nouns like dog and adjectives like big), and whenever a root cannot occur on its own without an affix (e.g. when tense affixes or person indexes are obligatory in verbs), these obligatory elements are not immediately relevant to Universals 1-3. Thus, formulating the universals in this way makes them generally applicable and we do not need to worry about “words”. The construction types that the three universals make claims about are summarized in Table 1, where the boldfaced elements in the examples are the function indicators. reference: marked by termifiers modification: marked by attributivizers predication: marked by copulas objects – genitive flag (4a: the rent of the house) object-word copula (1a: is a student) properties substantivizer (5a: the new one) – property copula (2a: is big) actions nominalizer (6a: the open-ing) relativizer (3a: the work that they did) – Table 1. Three propositional act functions and three semantic root classes 8 What the function indicators have in common is that they indicate an unusual (unexpected, surprising) propositional act function: A genitive flag indicates that an object root (unexpectedly, surprisingly) has modifying function, a property copula indicates that a property root has predicating function, a nominalizer indicates that an action root (unusually) has referential function, and so on. 4. The copula universal Universal 1 If a language has a copula, i.e. a special form that indicates predicative function, it is used with object roots or property roots. So we find many languages which require a copula with object-word predicates as in (1a), though not all languages have them (1b). Likewise, many languages require a copula with property predicates (2a), but some have no copula here (2b). (1) a. Italian (copula è) Michele è studente. Michele is student ‘Michele is a student.’ b. Russian (no copula) Миша – студент. Miša student. Misha student ‘Misha is a student.’ (2) a. English (copula is) Our dog is big. b. Mandarin Chinese (no copula) 我們的狗很大 Wǒmen de gǒu hěn dà. we GEN dog very big ‘Our dog is big.’ While a function indicator is commonly used for predicating object or property roots, it is not always necessary, so Universal 1 must be formulated as an implicational universal. But crucially, action roots generally do not require a form that indicates predicative function (in fact, they probably never do, as I do not now of a single example). 5. The attributivizer universal Universal 2 If a language has an attributivizer, i.e. a special form that indicates modifying function, it is used with action roots or object roots. The two main types of attributivizers are relativizers (relative markers, including participial affixes) and genitive flags (affixes or adpositions). So we find many languages which require a relativizer with action modifiers (= relative clauses) as in (3a), though not 9 all languages have them (3b). Likewise, many languages require a genitive flag with object-word modifiers (4a), but some have no marker here (4b). (3) a. Lezgian (relativizer -j) awu-nwa-j k’walax-ar [do-PRF-REL] work-PL ‘the work that had been done’ (Haspelmath 1993: 344) b. Japanese (no relativizer) 私がした仕事 watashi ga shi-ta shigoto [I NOM do-PST] work ‘the work I did’ (4) a. Cape Verdean Creole (genitive flag di+) kel renda di kaza the rent of house ‘the rent of the house’ (Baptista 2013) b. Seychelles Creole lakaz sa zonm house that man ‘that man’s house’ (Michaelis & Rosalie 2013) So again, the function indicators do not occur universally, but property words are the least likely to require an attributivizer. References Abdoulaye, Mahamane L. 2006. Existential and possessive predications in Hausa. De Gruyter Mouton 44(6). 1121–1164. (doi:10.1515/LING.2006.037) Beck, David. 2023. Adjectives. In van Lier, Eva (ed.), The Oxford handbook of word classes, 365–382. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bentley, Delia & Ciconte, Francesco Maria & Cruschina, Silvio. 2015. Existentials and locatives in Romance dialects of Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bentley, Delia. 2017. Copular and existential constructions. In Dufter, Andreas & Stark, Elisabeth (eds.), Manual of Romance morphosyntax and syntax, 332–366. Berlin: De Gruyter. (doi 10.1515/9783110377088-009) (Accessed September 13, 2021.) Benveniste, Émile. 1960. «Etre» et «avoir» dans leurs fonctions linguistiques. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 55. (Also in: Problèmes de linguistique générale 1, 187-207. Paris: Gallimard, 1966) Bertinetto, Pier Marco & Ciucci, Luca & Creissels, Denis (eds.). 2026. Non-verbal predication in the world’s languages: A typological survey (Volumes 1-2). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. (https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110730982-001/html) Bertinetto, Pier Marco & Ciucci, Luca & Farina, Margherita. 2019. Two types of morphologically expressed non-verbal predication. Studies in Language. John Benjamins 43(1). 120–194. (doi:10.1075/sl.17013.ber) Bickerton, Derek. 1981. Roots of language. Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers [Republished in 2016 by Language Science Press: https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/91]. Borsley, Robert D & Tallerman, Maggie & Willis, David. 2007. The syntax of Welsh. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chappell, Hilary & Lü, Shanshan. 2022. A semantic typology of location, existence, possession and copular verbs: Areal patterns of polysemy in Mainland East and Southeast Asia. Linguistics 60(1). 1–82. (doi:10.1515/ling-2021-0219) Clark, Eve V. 1978. Locationals: Existential, locative, and possessive constructions. In Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.), Universals of human language, Vol. 4: Syntax, 85–126. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 10 Creissels, Denis & Bertinetto, Pier Marco & Ciucci, Luca. 2025. Non-verbal predication in the world’s languages: An overview. In: Oxford handbook of non-verbal predication (to appear). Creissels, Denis & Bertinetto, Pier Marco & Ciucci, Luca. 2026. Non-verbal predication: An analytical framework. In Bertinetto, Pier Marco & Ciucci, Luca & Creissels, Denis (eds.), Non-verbal predication in the world’s languages: A typological survey (Volume 1), 1–56. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. (https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110730982-001/html) Creissels, Denis. 2013. Control and the evolution of possessive and existential constructions. In van Gelderen, Elly & Cennamo, Michela (eds.), Argument Structure in Flux: the Naples-Capri papers, 461–476. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Creissels, Denis. 2019. Inverse-locational predication in typological perspective. Italian Journal of Linguistics 31(2). 37– 106. Creissels, Denis. 2020. La prédication existentielle et les constructions transpossessives. In Bottineau, Tatiana (ed.), La prédication existentielle dans les langues naturelles : Valeurs et repérages, structures et modalités, 17–41. Paris: Presses de l’Inalco. Croft, William. 2022. Morphosyntax: Constructions of the world’s languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (http://www.unm.edu/~wcroft/WACpubs.html) Curnow, Timothy Jowan. 2000. Towards a cross-linguistic typology of copula constructions. In Henderson, John (ed.), Proceedings of the 1999 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society, 1–9. (http://www.als.asn.au) Declerck, Renaat. 1983. ‘It is Mr. Y’ or ‘he is Mr. Y’? Lingua 59(2). 209–246. (doi:10.1016/0024-3841(83)90064-5) Declerck, Renaat. 1988. Studies on copular sentences, clefts and pseudo-clefts. Leuven: Leuven University Press & Foris. den Dikken, Marcel & O’Neill, Teresa. 2017. Copular constructions in syntax. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.137) Diessel, Holger. 1997. Predicative demonstratives. Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 23(1). 72–82. Diessel, Holger. 1999. Demonstratives: Form, function, and grammaticalization. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Dik, Simon C. 1997. The theory of Functional Grammar: 2 volumes. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Dixon, R. M. W. 2010. Basic linguistic theory: Volume 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dixon, R. M. W. 2010. Basic linguistic theory: Volume 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dryer, Matthew S. 2007. Clause types. In Shopen, Timothy (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, Vol. 1, 224–275. Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eid, Mushira. 1991. Verbless sentences in Arabic and Hebrew. In Comrie, Bernard & Eid, Mushira (eds.), Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics III: Papers from the Third Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, 31–61. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Evans, Nicholas & Levinson, Stephen C. 2009. The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32(5). 429–448. (doi:10.1017/S0140525X0999094X) Falk, Yehuda N. 2006. Subjects and Universal Grammar: An explanatory theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Farquharson, Joseph T. 2013. Jamaican structure dataset. In Michaelis, Susanne Maria & Maurer, Philippe & Haspelmath, Martin & Huber, Magnus (eds.), Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (https://apics-online.info/contributions/8) Foley, William A. & Van Valin, Robert D. 1977. On the viability of the notion of “subject” in universal grammar. Berkeley Linguistics Society 3. 293–320. Forker, Diana. 2013. A grammar of Hinuq. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Francis, Elaine J. & Matthews, Stephen. 2005. A multi-dimensional approach to the category ‘verb’ in Cantonese. Journal of Linguistics 41(2). 269–305. (doi:10.1017/S0022226705003270) Freeze, Ray. 2001. Existential constructions. In Haspelmath, Martin & König, Ekkehard & Oesterreicher, Wulf & Raible, Wolfgang (eds.), Language typology and language universals: An international handbook, 941–953. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Geist, Ljudmila. 2007. Predication and equation in copular sentences: Russian vs. English. In Comorovski, Ileana & von Heusinger, Klaus (eds.), Existence: Semantics and syntax, 79–105. Dordrecht: Springer. Gibson, Hannah & Guérois, Rozenn & Marten, Lutz. 2019. Variation in Bantu copula constructions. In Arche, María J. & Fábregas, Antonio & Marín, Rafael (eds.), The grammar of copulas across languages, 213–242. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Grimm, Nadine. 2021. A grammar of Gyeli (Comprehensive Grammar Library 2). Berlin: Language Science Press. Hamari, Arja. 2022. The negative existential cycle in Moksha Mordvin: From a negative existential into a negative auxiliary. In Veselinova, Ljuba & Hamari, Arja (eds.), The Negative Existential Cycle, 325-356. Berlin: Language Science Press. (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7353613) Haspelmath, Martin & Buchholz, Oda. 1998. Equative and similative constructions in the language of Europe. In Auwera, van der (ed.), Adverbial constructions in the languages of Europe (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology/EUROTYP, 20-3), 277–334. Berlin. Haspelmath, Martin. 1993. A grammar of Lezgian (Mouton Grammar Library 9). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Haspelmath, Martin. 2011. On S, A, P, T, and R as comparative concepts for alignment typology. Linguistic Typology 15(3). 535–567. 11 Haspelmath, Martin. 2017. Explaining alienability contrasts in adpossessive constructions: Predictability vs. iconicity. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 36(2). 193–231. (doi:10.1515/zfs-2017-0009) Haspelmath, Martin. 2018. How comparative concepts and descriptive linguistic categories are different. In Van Olmen, Daniël & Mortelmans, Tanja & Brisard, Frank (eds.), Aspects of linguistic variation: Studies in honor of Johan van der Auwera, 83–113. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. (https://zenodo.org/record/3519206) Haspelmath, Martin. 2020a. The structural uniqueness of languages and the value of comparison for description. Asian Languages and Linguistics 1(2). 346–366. Haspelmath, Martin. 2020b. The morph as a minimal linguistic form. Morphology 30(2). 117–134. (doi:10.1007/s11525020-09355-5) Haspelmath, Martin. 2023. Word class universals and language-particular analysis. In van Lier, Eva (ed.), The Oxford handbook of word classes, 15-40. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Haspelmath, Martin. 2024. Construction-functions and construction-strategies. To appear. Haspelmath, Martin. 2025a. Construction-functions and construction-strategies. In Däbritz, Chris Lasse & Budzisch, Josefine & Basile, Rodolfo (eds.), Locative and existential predication: On forms, functions and neighboring domains, 9–44. Berlin: Language Science Press. (doi: 10.5281/zenodo.16838056) Haspelmath, Martin. 2025b. Nonverbal clause constructions. Language and Linguistics Compass 19(2). e70007. (doi:10.1111/lnc3.70007) Hedberg, Nancy & Potter, David. 2010. Equative and predicational copulas in Thai. Berkeley Linguistics Society 36(1). 144–157. (doi:10.3765/bls.v36i1.3908) Heine, Bernd. 1997. Possession: Cognitive sources, forces, and grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hengeveld, Kees. 1992. Non-verbal predication: Theory, typology, diachrony. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Heycock, Caroline & Kroch, Anthony. 1999. Pseudocleft connectedness: Implications for the LF Interface Level. Linguistic Inquiry 30(3). 365–397. (doi:10.1162/002438999554110) Heycock, Caroline. 2012. Specification, equation, and agreement in copular sentences. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique. Cambridge University Press 57(2). 209–240. (doi:10.1017/S0008413100004758) Higgins, F. R. 1973. The pseudo-cleft construction in English. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation. (https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/12988) Higgins, F. R. 1979. The pseudo-cleft construction in English. New York: Garland. Huddleston, Rodney & Pullum, Geoffrey K. (eds.). 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Izre’el, Shlomo. 2023. The syntax of presentative constructions: The view from colloquial Israeli Hebrew. In T.I. Davidjuk, I.I. Isaev, Ju.V. Mazurova, S. G. Tatevosov & O.I. Fedorova (eds.), Jazyk kak on est’: Sbornik statej k 60-letiju Andreja Aleksandroviča Kibrika, 121–128. Moscow: Buki Vedi. Jespersen, Otto. 1924. The philosophy of grammar. London: Allen & Unwin. Killian, Don. 2021. Towards a typology of predicative demonstratives. Linguistic Typology. (doi:10.1515/lingty-20212078) Kim, Jong-Bok. 2016. Copular constructions and asymmetries in the specificational pseudocleft constructions in Korean. Language and Linguistics. SAGE Publications Ltd 17(1). 89–112. (doi:10.1177/1606822X15586672) Koch, Peter. 2012. Location, existence, and possession: A constructional-typological exploration. Linguistics 50(3). 533– 603. (doi:10.1515/ling-2012-0018) Kornfilt, Jaklin. 1997. Turkish. London: Routledge. Kuno, Susumu & Wongkhomthong, Preya. 1981. Characterizational and Identificational Sentences in Thai. Studies in Language 5(1). 65–109. (doi:10.1075/sl.5.1.04kun) Lefebvre, Claire & Brousseau, Anne-Marie. 2002. A grammar of Fongbe. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Locker, Ernst. 1954. Etre et avoir: Leurs expressions dans les langues. Anthropos 49(3/4). 481–510. Lyons, John. 1967. A note on possessive, existential and locative sentences. Foundations of Language 3(4). 390–396. Lyons, John. 1968. Introduction to theoretical linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maslova, Elena. 2003. A grammar of Kolyma Yukaghir (Mouton Grammar Library 27). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Matthews, Stephen & Yip, Virginia. 2011. Cantonese: A comprehensive grammar. London: Routledge. McGregor, William B. 2001. Non-verbal predicative possession in Nyulnyulan languages. In Simpson, Jane & Nash, David & Laughren, Mary & Austin, Peter & Alpher, Barry (eds.), Forty years on: Ken Hale and Australian languages, 337–352. Canberra: Australian National University. (Accessed September 13, 2021.) McNally, Louise. 2016. Existential sentences crosslinguistically: Variations in form and meaning. Annual Review of Linguistics 2(1). 211–231. (doi:10.1146/annurev-linguistics-011415-040837) Meillet, Antoine. 1906. La phrase nominale en indo-européen. Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 14. 1– 26. Michaelis, Susanne Maria & Rosalie, Marcel. 2013. Seychelles Creole structure dataset. In Michaelis, Susanne Maria & Maurer, Philippe & Haspelmath, Martin & Huber, Magnus (eds.), Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (https://apics-online.info/contributions/56) 12 Mikkelsen, Line. 2005. Copular clauses: Specification, predication and equation. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Mikkelsen, Line. 2007. On so-called truncated clefts. In Geist, Ljudmila & Rothstein, Björn (eds.), Kopulaverben und Kopulasätze: Intersprachliche und intrasprachliche Aspekte, 47–68. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Mikkelsen, Line. 2011. Copular clauses. In Maienborn, Claudia & von Heusinger, Klaus & Portner, Paul (eds.), Semantics: An international handbook of natural language meaning, volume 2, 1805–1829. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Milsark, Gary L. 1977. Toward an explanation of certain peculiarities of the existential construction in English. Linguistic Analysis 3(2). 1–29. Mizuno, Shogo. 2024. Noun juxtaposition for predication, possession, and conjunction: Beyond ambiguity avoidance. Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 4(2). 220–272. (doi:10.6092/issn.2785-0943/18271) Moro, Andrea. 1997. The raising of predicates: Predicative noun phrases and the theory of clause structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moro, Andrea. 2006. Existential sentences and expletive there. In Everaert, Martin & van Riemsdijk, Henk (eds.), The Blackwell companion to syntax, volume II, 210–236. Oxford: Blackwell. Myler, Neil. 2016. Building and interpreting possession sentences. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Nikolaeva, Irina & Spencer, Andrew. 2020. Mixed categories: The morphosyntax of noun modification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nordlinger, Rachel & Sadler, Louisa. 2007. Verbless clauses: Revealing the structure within. In Zaenen, Annie E & Simpson, Jane & King, Tracy Holloway & Grimshaw, Jane & Maling, Joan & Manning, Chris (eds.), Architectures, rules, and preferences: Variations on themes by Joan W. Bresnan, 139–160. Stanford: CSLI Publications. Nordlinger, Rachel. 1998. A grammar of Wambaya, Northern Australia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. (http://dx.doi.org/10.15144/PL-C140) Overall, Simon E. & Vallejos, Rosa & Gildea, Spike (eds.). 2018. Nonverbal predication in Amazonian languages. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Overall, Simon E. 2018. Nonverbal predicates and copula constructions in Aguaruna (Chicham). In Overall, Simon E. & Vallejos, Rosa & Gildea, Spike (eds.), Nonverbal predication in Amazonian languages, 135–161. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Padučeva, Elena V. 1985. Vyskazyvanie i ego sootnesennost’ s dejstvitel’nost’ju: Referencial’nye aspekty semantiki mestoimenij. Moskva: Nauka. Paducheva, Elena V. 2008. Locative and existential meaning of Russian быть. Russian Linguistics 32(3). 147–158. Panagiotidis, Phoevos. 2015. Categorial features: A generative theory of word class categories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Partee, Barbara H. & Borschev, Vladimir. 2007. Existential sentences, BE, and the genitive of negation in Russian. In Comorovski, Ileana & von Heusinger, Klaus (eds.), Existence: Semantics and syntax, 147–190. Dordrecht: Springer. Partee, Barbara H. 2010. Specificational Copular Sentences in Russian and English. Oslo Studies in Language 2(1). (doi:10.5617/osla.127) (https://journals.uio.no/osla/article/view/127) (Accessed July 19, 2021.) Payne, Thomas. 1997. Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Petrollino, Sara. 2019. Existential predication in Hamar. Nordic Journal of African Studies 28(4). 27–27. Pustet, Regina. 2003. Copulas: Universals in the categorization of the lexicon. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rehg, Kenneth L. & Sohl, Damian G. 1981. Ponapean reference grammar. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Rennison, John R. 1997. Koromfe (Descriptive Grammar Series). London: Routledge. Rothstein, Susan. 1995. Small clauses and copular constructions. In Cardinaletti, Anna (ed.), Small clauses, 27–48. New York: Academic Press. (doi:10.1163/9780585492209_003) Roy, Isabelle. 2013. Nonverbal predication: Copular sentences at the syntax-semantics interface. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sabbagh, Joseph. 2009. Existential sentences in Tagalog. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 27(4). 675–719. (doi:10.1007/s11049-009-9083-3) Sebeok, Thomas A. 1943. The equational sentence in Hungarian. Language 19(4). 320–327. (doi:10.2307/409935) Stassen, Leon. 1997. Intransitive predication. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stassen, Leon. 1997. Intransitive predication. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stassen, Leon. 2005. Predicative possession. In Haspelmath, Martin & Dryer, Matthew S. & Gil, David & Comrie, Bernard (eds.), The world atlas of language structure, 474–477. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ((http://wals.info/chapter/117)) Stassen, Leon. 2009. Predicative possession. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stolz, Thomas & Levkovych, Nataliya. 2019. On belonging: Preliminary thoughts on the typology of belongconstructions. In Johanson, Lars & Mazzitelli, Lidia Federica & Nevskaya, Irina (eds.), Possession in languages of Europe and North and Central Asia, 313–363. Amsterdam: Benjamins. (https://benjamins.com/catalog/slcs.206) Stolz, Thomas. 2001. To be with X is to have X: Comitatives, instrumentals, locative, and predicative possession. Linguistics 39(2). 321–350. (doi:10.1515/ling.2001.013) 13 Tham, Shiao Wei. 2013. Possession as non-verbal predication. Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, vol. 39, 302–316. Turunen, Rigina. 2010. Nonverbal predication in Erzya: Studies on morphosyntactic variation and part of speech distinctions. Helsinki: University of Helsinki. (Ph.D. dissertation.) (https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/19652) (Accessed September 13, 2021.) Vallejos, Rosa. 2016. A grammar of Kukama-Kukamiria: A language from the Amazon. Leiden: Brill. van Gijn, Erik. 2006. A grammar of Yurakaré. Nijmegen: Radboud University. (Ph.D. dissertation.) (http://webdoc.ubn.ru.nl/mono/g/gijn_e_van/gramofyu.pdf) Van Valin, Robert D., Jr. 2005. Exploring the syntax-semantics interface. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Verhaar, John W. M. (ed.). 1967-1972. The verb “be” and its synonyms: Philosophical and grammatical studies (5 volumes, 1967-1972). Dordrecht: Reidel. Veselinova, Ljuba & Hamari, Arja (eds.). 2022. The Negative Existential Cycle (Research on Comparative Grammar). Language Science Press (Research on Comparative Grammar). Berlin: Language Science Press. (Accessed September 13, 2021.) Veselinova, Ljuba. 2013. Negative existentials: A cross-linguistic study. Rivista di Linguistica 25(1). 107–145. Ye, Jingting. 2020. Independent and dependent possessive person forms: Three universals. Studies in Language 44(2). 363–406. (doi:10.1075/sl.19020.ye) Ye, Jingting. 2021. Property words and adjective subclasses in the world’s languages. Leipzig: Leipzig University. (Ph D dissertation.) 7 Shibatani (2016) still uses the old terminology: The new terminology (noncausal vs. causal) has been widely adopted since 2016. However, especially in works on European languages, causal-noncausal alternations are often called “causative-anticausative alternations” (e.g. Alexiadou et al. 2006). (See Haspelmath et al. (2014: 590) for some discussion of the terminological issues; the term anticausative was originally introduced by Nedjalkov & Sil’nickij 1969.) The marking of the causal-noncausal contrast can occur on the causal member (e.g. make so. laugh), or on the noncausal member (e.g. be wash-ed), or there is no marking at all (break/break) – this means that this is a situation of differential coding: the same meaning is coded differently under different conditions (somewhat similar to differential object marking) 4. Anticausatives are paradoxical Mel’čuk (1967) first pointed out that anticausatives violate a general principle of meaning-form correspondence. causative ‘x MAKE (y BECOME open)’ ak-e(ru) ‘y BECOME open’ ak(u) anticausative ‘y BECOME open’ hirak-e(ru) ‘x MAKE (y BECOME open)’ hirak(u) In anticausatives, there is an extra formal element for a meaning that lacks an extra meaning element – this is the opposite of what one might expect. This seems to violate a general functional principle of iconicity: “more meaning corresponds to more form” (e.g. Haiman 1983, Givón 1991) 8 In Haspelmath (1993), I noted this problem, but did not have a good solution – I did not want to abandon the iconicity principle, because I believed in it. It was only much later that I realized that this principle was wrong (see also this blogpost: https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2873). In general, linguistic expressions are longer when they convey rarely expressed meanings, not when they express “complex meanings”. This also applies to word length, e.g. mouse vs. crocodile star vs. planet phone vs. computer This is because languages have a tendency to exhibit efficiency of coding (or communicative efficiency, e.g. Levshina 2023). 5. Universals of causative and anticausative verb formation are probably explained by frequency of use Some data from English: (from the BNC; boldface percentages from Wright 2001:127-28): causative noncausative agent-requiring cut 100% undergo cutting 0% costly break (tr.) open (tr.) split (tr.) 90% 80% 78% break (intr.) open (intr.) split (intr.) 10% 20% 22% (intermediate) burn (tr.) 76% burn (intr.) 24% automatic melt (tr.) freeze (tr.) dry (tr.) sink (tr.) 72% 62% 61% 58% melt (intr.) freeze (intr.) dry (intr.) sink (intr.) 28% 38% 39% 42% (internally caused) sprout (tr.) rot (tr.) rust (tr.) 33% 14% 5% sprout (intr.) rot (intr.) rust (intr.) 67% 86% 95% agentive intransitive make laugh make cry make jump make vomit make dance make weep make sing make wait 20.8% 6.0% 5.6% 2.6% 1.8% 1.1% 0.4% 0.4% laugh cry jump vomit dance weep sing wait ... transitive make throw make buy make accept make avoid make hit make destroy make teach 0.13% 0.11% 0.05% 0.05% 0.01% 0.00% 0.00% throw buy accept avoid hit destroy teach 100% 100% Table 3. 9 Shibatani (2016): in some verb pairs, the causal is more frequent, while in others, the noncausal is more frequent However, these figures cannot serve as an immediate explanation of the asymmetric coding in Japanese: – the usage frequency cannot directly cause the coding – there are exceptions, as noted by Shibatani, e.g. Frequency of use is a soft causal force – overall, language systems tend to be efficient, i.e. more frequently occurring meanings are expressed by shorter forms. But this need not be manifested in every single instance. There are many local inefficiencies. The trend is most clearly visible when we examine many languages from around the world (as I did in 1993), and when we look at corpus frquencies from six different languages: 10 6. A biocognitive explanation of the universal about labile unergatives: Hale (2000) Universal 2 No language has labile causal-noncausal verb pairs with an unergative noncausal verb. (e.g. *The noise cried the baby.) Hale (2000) and Hale & Keyer (2002: §4.4) propose that there are just four different ways in which heads can combine with complements and specifiers. Crucially: – adjectives have a specifier, but nouns lack a specifier – unaccusatives have adjective-like roots, unergatives have noun-like roots (Hale & Keyer 2002: 135) This explanation works only if it is a fixed condition of UG that adjectives and unaccusatives must have a specifier, while nouns and unergatives must lack a specifier. This is possible but unlikely. 11 7. A differential-coding scale for causatives and anticausatives: The spontaneity scale Differential coding can be stated not only in pairs of contexts, but also in terms of implicational scales (Haspelmath 2019): place name ————————— common noun ————————— human noun ⟻ less locative coding more locative coding ⟼ Basque: Gasteiz-en ‘in Gasteiz’ zuhaitz-ean ‘on the tree’ mutila-gan ‘at the boy(‘s)’ Italian: a Roma, a-lla chiesa ‘to Rome, to the church’ da-l poliziotto ‘to the policeman’ French: Ø rue Molière ‘in Rue Molière’ dans le jardin, chez Marie ‘in the garden, at Marie’s’ In a similar way, differential coding for causal and noncausal verb meanings can be stated in a very general way by an implicational scale (Haspelmath 2016): transitive ––—— unergative –——–— automatic ––———— costly –––———— agentful –––––—–––––unaccusative————— ⟻ more causative coding more anticausative coding ⟼ English make buy, make laugh freeze, break be washed French faire acheter, faire rire, faire fondre se casser être lavés Makassarese pi-ball-i ‘make buy’, pa-lari ‘m. run’, pa-battu ‘bring’ Indonesian me-mecah-kan ‘break (tr.)’, me-mandi-kan ‘bathe (tr.)’ Russian kipjat-it’ ‘make boil’ rasplavit’-sja ‘melt’, otkryt’-sja ‘open’, myt’-sja ‘be washed’ 12 Where does the distinction between the automatic (‘freeze’) and costly (‘break’) types come from? It was inferred from cross-linguistic data (Haspelmath 1993a): Haspelmath (1993a) was inspired by Mel’čuk (1967), but at the time, I found my findings puzzling. Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995) took them up, but were puzzled, too. Explaining the scale generalizations in terms of frequency of use: The proposal here is that the coding tendencies in the world’s languages are explained by usage tendencies: The base verb meanings to the left on the scale are least likely to occur with a causal meaning, while the likelihood of a causal meaning increases gradually as we go to the right of the scale. 13 References Akkuş, Faruk. 2021. Argument introduction, Voice and causatives. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. (PhD dissertation.) Bahrt, Nicklas N. 2021. Voice syncretism. Berlin: Language Science Press. (https://langscipress.org/catalog/view/315/3359/2373-1) Bhatt, Rajesh & Embick, David. 2017. Causative derivations in Hindi-Urdu. Indian Linguistics 78(1– 2). 93–151. Cobbinah, Alexander & Lüpke, Friederike. 2012. Not cut to fit: Zero coded passives in African languages. In Brenzinger, Matthias & Fehn, Anne-Maria (eds.), Proceedings of the 6th World Congress of African Linguistics, 153–165. Cologne: Köppe. Comrie, Bernard. 1988. Passive and voice. In Shibatani, Masayoshi (ed.), Passive and voice, vol. 1, 9–23. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Cristofaro, Sonia. 2010. Semantic maps and mental representation. Linguistic Discovery 8(1). 35–52. (doi:10.1349/PS1.1537-0852.A.345) Croft, William & Shyldkrot, Hava Bat-Zeev & Kemmer, Suzanne. 1987. Diachronic semantic processes in the middle voice. In Giacalone Ramat, Anna & Carruba, Onofrio & Bernini, Giuliano (eds.), Papers from the 7th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Georgakopoulos, Thanasis & Polis, Stéphane. 2018. The semantic map model: State of the art and future avenues for linguistic research. Language and Linguistics Compass 12(2). e12270. (doi:10.1111/lnc3.12270) Hale, Kenneth L. & Keyser, Samuel Jay. 2002. Prolegomenon to a theory of argument structure (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. (http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/toc/fy037/2002024420.html) (Accessed July 6, 2023.) Hale, Kenneth L. 2000. A Uto-Aztecan ('O’odham) reflection of a general limit on predicate argument structure. In Casad, Eugene H. & Willett, Thomas L. (eds.), Uto-Aztecan: Structural, temporal and geographic perspectives: Papers in memory of Wick R. Miller by the friends of UtoAztecan, 155–169. Hermosillo: Universidad de Sonora. Haspelmath, Martin. 1987. Transitivity alternations of the anticausative type (Arbeitspapiere Des Instituts Für Sprachwissenschaft N.F. Nr. 4). Cologne: Universität zu Köln. (http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.225196) Haspelmath, Martin. 1990. The grammaticization of passive morphology. Studies in Language 14(1). 25–72. Haspelmath, Martin. 1993. A grammar of Lezgian (Mouton Grammar Library 9). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Haspelmath, Martin. 2003. The geometry of grammatical meaning: Semantic maps and crosslinguistic comparison. In Tomasello, Michael (ed.), The New Psychology of Language, vol. 2, 211–243. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum. (10.5281/zenodo.831410) Haspelmath, Martin. 2010. Comparative concepts and descriptive categories in crosslinguistic studies. Language 86(3). 663–687. (doi:10.1353/lan.2010.0021) Haspelmath, Martin. 2011. On S, A, P, T, and R as comparative concepts for alignment typology. Linguistic Typology 15(3). 535–567. Haspelmath, Martin. 2016. Universals of causative and anticausative verb formation and the spontaneity scale. Lingua Posnaniensis 58(2). 33–63. (doi:10.1515/linpo-2016-0009) Haspelmath, Martin. 2018. How comparative concepts and descriptive linguistic categories are different. In Van Olmen, Daniël & Mortelmans, Tanja & Brisard, Frank (eds.), Aspects of linguistic variation: Studies in honor of Johan van der Auwera, 83–113. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. (https://zenodo.org/record/3519206) Haspelmath, Martin. 2021. Role-reference associations and the explanation of argument coding splits. Linguistics 59(1). 123–174. (doi:10.1515/ling-2020-0252) Haspelmath, Martin. 2022. Valency and voice constructions. Leipzig, MPI-EVA, ms. (https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005941) 14 Haspelmath, Martin. 2023. Coexpression and synexpression patterns across languages: Comparative concepts and possible explanations. Frontiers in Psychology (to appear). (https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/007402) Haspelmath, Martin. 2023a. Inflection and derivation are merely ways of speaking. (to appear). Jukes, Anthony. 2019. A grammar of Makasar: A language of South Sulawesi, Indonesia (Grammars and Sketches of the World’s Languages). Boston: BRILL. Keenan, Edward L. & Dryer, Matthew S. 2007. Passives in the world’s languages. Language Typology and Syntactic Description. Vol. I: Clause Structure, 325–361. Legate, Julie Anne & Akkuş, Faruk & Šereikaitė, Milena & Ringe, Don. 2020. On passives of passives. Language 96(4). 771–818. (doi:10.1353/lan.2020.0062) Legate, Julie Anne. 2021. Noncanonical passives: A typology of voices in an impoverished Universal Grammar. Annual Review of Linguistics 7(1). (doi:10.1146/annurev-linguistics-031920114459) Levin, Beth & Rappaport Hovav, Malka. 1995. Unaccusativity: At the syntax-lexical semantics interface. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mel’čuk, Igor. 1967. K ponjatiju slovoobrazovanija. Izvestija AN SSSR: Serija literatury i jazyka 26(4). 352–362. Neu, Eva. 2023. Against a low subject analysis of causatives of unergatives. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 8(1). 5527. (doi:10.3765/plsa.v8i1.5527) Perlmutter, David M. & Postal, Paul M. 1977. Toward a universal characterization of passivization. Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, vol. 3, 394–417. Siewierska, Anna & Bakker, Dik. 2013. Passive agents: Prototypical vs. canonical passives. In Brown, Dunstan & Chumakina, Marina & Corbett, Greville G. (eds.), Canonical morphology and syntax, 151–189. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Siewierska, Anna. 1984. The passive: A contrastive linguistic analysis. London: Croom Helm. Siewierska, Anna. 2005. Passive constructions. In Haspelmath, Martin & Dryer, Matthew S. & Gil, David & Comrie, Bernard (eds.), The world atlas of language structures, 434–437. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Simpson, Adrian P. 1999. Fundamental problems in comparative phonetics and phonology: Does UPSID help to solve them. Proceedings of the 14th international congress of phonetic sciences, vol. 1, 349–352. Tollan, Rebecca. 2018. Unergatives are different: Two types of transitivity in Samoan. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 3(1). (doi:10.5334/gjgl.223) (https://www.glossajournal.org/article/id/5003/) (Accessed July 6, 2023.) Tsunoda, Tasaku. 2011. A grammar of Warrongo. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. (https://nbnresolving.org/urn:nbn:de:101:1-201611304711) Wichmann, Søren. 2009. Case relations in a head-marking language: Verb-marked cases in Tlapanec. In Malchukov, Andrej & Spencer, Andrew (eds.), The Oxford handbook of case, 797–807. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wright, Saundra K. 2001. Internally caused and externally caused change of state verbs. Northwestern University. (Ph.D. dissertation.) Nagoya 2024 1. Overview • many languages have causative verbs (transitive), such as Japanese yom-ase(-ru) ‘make someone read’ (§2) • some languages also have anticausative verbs (intransitive), such as Russian otkryt’-sja ‘(become) open’ (compare otkryt’ ‘(make) open’) (§3) 15 • transitivity pairs may also be expressed by labile verbs, e.g. English to open (the door opened – we opened the door) (§4) • it often seems arbitrary which coding type a language chooses – but we can try to find some general patterns (Nedjalkov & Sil’nickij 1969; Shibatani (ed.) 1976; Haspelmath 1993; 2016) • two competing hypotheses: – iconicity (meaning-form correspondence; Haspelmath 1993) – efficiency of coding (form-frequency correspondence; Haspelmath 2016) • the cross-linguistic evidence favours the efficiency hypothesis, and more generally, a social-functional theory of language structures 2. Causative verb formation Some examples from Japanese (from Shibatani 2016: 479): Some examples from other languages (cited from Haspelmath 2016: 41): 16 3. Anticausative verb formation Some examples from Japanese (from Shibatani 2016: 484): Some examples from other languages (cited from Haspelmath 2016: 41): 3 But what exactly is a passive construction? Four proposed definitions: A. Keenan (1975; 1985), in a modern version: “Here I adopt the definition in Keenan (1985: 273) and define passive constructions as subject-backgrounding operations that derive n-place predicates from n+1 place predicates.“ (Cabredo Hofherr 2023) B. Comrie (1988: 12) “I will not attempt to set up necessary-and-sufficient conditions to delimit [the passive], for the simple reason that I do not believe that such conditions are viable – while they can be established by fiat, there is no reason to suppose that any such definition will be linguistically significant.” C. Haspelmath (1990: 27) “A construction is called passive if (i) the active subject corresponds either to a non-obligatory oblique phrase or to nothing; and (ii) the active direct object (if any) corresponds to the subject of the passive; and (iii) the construction is somehow restricted vis-à-vis another unrestricted construction (the active), e.g. less frequent, functionally specialized, not fully productive.” D. Siewierska (2005: 434) “A construction has been classified as passive if it displays the following five properties: – it contrasts with another construction, the active; – the subject of the active corresponds to a non-obligatory oblique phrase of the passive or is not overtly expressed; – the subject of the passive, if there is one, corresponds to the direct object of the active; – the construction is pragmatically restricted relative to the active; – the construction displays some special morphological marking of the verb.” Similarly in Grambank: “Is there a morphological passive marked on the lexical verb?” (GB147, Skirgård et al. 2023) Three questions: – should the definition of “passive” make reference to “operations”? – should it include the condition of morphological marking? – should it be “prototype”-based (or perhaps “canonical”), sharply delineated? 4 Passives in the Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures (APiCS) 76 creole, pidgin and mixed languages (Michaelis et al. (eds) 2013); Haspelmath & APiCS Consortium (2013): Feature value 1: typical passive construction (= by Siewierska’s definition) Feature value 2: passive without verbal coding (= oblique-agent construction) In addition to “typical passive constructions”, quite a few Creole languages have uncoded passive-like constructions, e.g. Principense (Portuguese-based) Virgin Islands Dutch Creole (19th century) Haitian Creole (French-based) 5 4. Four possible passive universals The following are some of the universals that have been proposed in the literature: Universal 1 If a language has passives of intransitive verbs then it has passives of transitive verbs. (Keenan 1985) Universal 2 In a passive construction, the verb always has a passive marker. (Haspelmath 1990). Universal 3 If a passive marker can additionally have reflexive function, then it can also have anticausative function (e.g. Haspelmath 1987: 35). Universal 4 If active and passive constructions differ with respect to topicality of agent and patient, then the patient is more topical in the passive, or the agent is less topical, or both. (cf. Haspelmath 2021: 155; Haspelmath 2025) If we want to test these universals, we need – a clear definition of “passive” with sharp boundaries – a definition that can be applied uniformly, i.e. a comparative concept – this means that we cannot define passive in terms of an “operation” (because the evidence for transformations is language-particular) This rules out the Keenan definition (which relies on an “operation”) and the Comrie approach (which is content with unclear boundaries). 5. Passive defined as a comparative concept for general linguistics Following Haspelmath (2026), I now use the following definitions (which are actually very similar to Siewierska’s 2005): (3) a. passive voice alternation In a passive voice alternation, the uncoded alternant is transitive (with A and P), and in the coded alternant, the basic A is downgraded, and the basic P is promoted to S. b. passive voice construction A passive voice construction is the coded alternant in a passive voice alternation. Voice alternations (= pairs of sister constructions with affixal coding on the verb) are best illustrated by vertical correspondence diagrams (Haspelmath 2026): 6 But they can also be represented in a different, linear notation: (4) a. passive 〈V, AX, PY〉 ≈ 〈V-PASS, {obl}X, SY〉 ‘(X) acts on Y’ b. antipassive 〈V, AX, PY〉 ≈ 〈V-ANTP, SX, {obl}Y〉 ‘X acts (on Y)’ c. causative 〈V, SX〉 ‘X acts’ ≈ 〈V-CAUS, AZ, PX〉 ‘Z makes X act’ d. anticausative 〈V, AX, PY〉 ‘X causes Y to change’ ≈ 〈V-ANTC, SY〉 ‘Y changes’ These definitions have the advantage that they can be applied to all languages using the same criteria: • They do not make use of a notion of “subject”, which is notoriously nonuniversal, but instead use S, A and P (Haspelmath 2011). • They do not make use of the notion of “inflection”, which cannot be defined clearly in such a way as to distinguish “inflectional voice categories” reliably from “derivational valency-changing constructions” (Haspelmath 2023). • Note also that they do not make reference to “active voice”, but that they treat antipassive voice constructions, causative voice constructions and anticausative voice constructions in a parallel way. A passive construction is a construction with a verbal affix and argument frame “S/oblique” that alternates with a non-affixed construction with argument frame “A/P”. This is exactly parallel to antipassive (which always includes a verbal affix), as well as causative and anticausative. 7 Some people talk about “uncoded antipassives”: The hunter shot the bear – The hunter shot at the bear. or “uncoded causatives”: The bear died. – The hunter killed the bear. or “uncoded anticausatives”: They broke the window. – The window broke. However, all these terms originally referred to constructions with special coding, i.e. to strategies, not to functionally defined constructions (see Croft 2022; Haspelmath 2025 on (construction-)strategies versus construction(-function)s). Thus, for terminological transparency (and continuity with the tradition), it is best not to extend the definition of “passive” to constructions where there is no coding on the verb. 6. What does this mean for the four passive universals? A seemingly an unfortunate result of the decision to define “passive” in this way: Universals 1 and 2 are no longer universals, because they are definitional: Universal 1 If a language has passives of intransitive verbs then it has passives of transitive verbs. (Keenan 1985) – passives must correspond to transitive verbs! Universal 2 In a passive construction, the verb always has a passive marker. (Haspelmath 1990) – passives must have a passive marker! But “passives of intransitives” would not be called passives anyway, e.g. Russian on spit [he sleeps] ‘he sleeps’ emu spit-sja [to.him sleeps-REFL] ‘he feels sleepy’ And Universal 2 is not true anyway, because many uncoded passive-like constructions have been found in the meantime (Holm 1997; Cobbinah & Lüpke 2012; Arkadiev 2024). Instead of “uncoded passives”, I now talk about “passive-like constructions”. 8 7. Subjects versus topics Another issue: How do we distinguish between P-arguments that are simply topics, and P-arguments that are in “subject” position (= that have become S-arguments)? Consider the “passive-like construction” in Lezgian (a Nakh-Dagestanian language of the Caucasus): (11) Lezgian (Haspelmath 1991: 8) a. Farida ktab qaču-na. Farid(ERG) book(ABS) take-AOR ‘Farid bought the book.’ b. Ktab qaču-na. book(ABS) take-AOR ‘The book was bought / One bought the book.’ Here we would not say that the P-argument has been shifted into S-argument position – a simpler view is that the A-argument has simply be omitted here (“withheld”, Haspelmath 2026). But some authors have provided extensive argumentation, FOR or AGAINST subject status of the preverbal patient nominal in passive-like constructions. FOR subject status: Donohue (2005) on Palu’e (Austronesian): The arguments are sometimes very subtle, e.g. involving a special type of quantifier floating (Donohue 2005: 71): 9 For Mauritian Creole, Syea (2024) argues AGAINST subject status, for example by noting that preverbal patient nominals cannot be indefinite: I take this as another argument for restricting the well-established term passive to constructions with verbal marking. 8. Universals 3 and 4 Universals 3 and 4 are still testable, and quite possibly true generalizations: Universal 3 If a passive marker can additionally have reflexive function, then it can also have anticausative function (e.g. Haspelmath 1987: 35). Universal 4 If active and passive constructions differ with respect to topicality of agent and patient, then the patient is more topical in the passive, or the agent is less topical, or both. (cf. Haspelmath 2021: 155; Haspelmath 2025) 8.1. Universal 3: Reflexive–anticausative–passive coexpression (“polysemy”) (15) Russian a. Mal’čik moet-sja. boy washes-REFL ‘The boy washes (himself).’ b. Palka lomaet-sja. stick breaks-ANTC ‘The stick breaks (intr).’ c. Dom stroit-sja. house builds-PASS ‘The house is being built.’ Since Haspelmath (1987) and Croft et al. (1987), linguists have made coexpression maps about reflexive–passive “polysemy” (called “semantic maps”; Haspelmath 2003; Georgakopoulos & Polis 2018). 10 Haspelmath (1987: 35) Croft et al. (1987: 187): It may well be that the explanation for these coexpression maps lies in diachronic regularities (Cristofaro 2010) – reflexive markers always pass through an anticausative phase before they extend to passive uses (see also Bahrt 2021 on coexpression or “syncretism” patterns in voice constructions). 8.3. Universal 4: Deviations from usual associations between role rank and referential prominence Usually, agents are more topical, and patients less topical. When this is reversed, languages tend to use extra coding, e.g. verb coding and oblique coding. Universal 4 is actually a special case of the much more general Universal 5: Universal 4 If active and passive constructions differ with respect to topicality of agent and patient, then the patient is more topical in the passive, or the agent is less topical, or both. 11 See Haspelmath (2021a) for the role-reference universal: Universal 5: The role-reference association universal Deviations from usual associations of role rank and referential prominence tend to be coded by longer grammatical forms if the coding is asymmetric. Role rank: A > P (and R > T in ditransitives) Referential prominence: topical > nontopical animate > inanimate human > nonhuman definite > indefinite ... Another prominent instantiation of this universal: differential object flagging References APiCS: Michaelis, Susanne Maria, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.). (2013). Atlas of pidgin and creole language structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bahrt, Nicklas N. 2021. Voice syncretism. Berlin: Language Science Press. (https://langscipress.org/catalog/view/315/3359/2373-1) Cabredo Hofherr, Patricia Cabredo. 2023. Morphology of passives. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Morphology. Wiley. (doi:10.1002/9781119693604.morphcom049) Cobbinah, Alexander & Friederike Lüpke 2012. Not cut to fit: Zero coded passives in African languages. In Matthias Brenzinger & Anne-Maria Fehn (eds.), Proceedings of the 6th World Congress of African Linguistics, 153–165. Cologne: Köppe. Comrie, Bernard. 1988. Passive and voice. In Shibatani, Masayoshi (ed.), Passive and voice, vol. 1, 9– 23. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Creissels, Denis. 2024. Transitivity, valency and voice. Oxford: Oxford University Press (to appear). Croft, William. 2022. Morphosyntax: Constructions of the world’s languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Donohue, Mark. 2005. The Palu’e passive: From pragmatic construction to grammatical device. In Arka, I. Wayan & Ross, Malcolm (eds.), The many faces of Austronesian voice systems: Some new empirical studies, 59–86. Canberra: Australian National University. Haspelmath, Martin. 1987. Transitivity alternations of the anticausative type (Arbeitspapiere Des Instituts Für Sprachwissenschaft N.F. Nr. 4). Cologne: Universität zu Köln. (http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.225196) Haspelmath, Martin. 1990. The grammaticization of passive morphology. Studies in Language 14(1). 25–72. Haspelmath, Martin. 1991. On the question of deep ergativity: The evidence from Lezgian. Papiere zur Linguistik 44/45(1–2). 5–27. (doi:10.5281/zenodo.225289) Haspelmath, Martin. 2021. Role-reference associations and the explanation of argument coding splits. Linguistics 59(1). 123–174. (doi:10.1515/ling-2020-0252) Haspelmath, Martin. 2022. Valency and voice constructions. Leipzig, MPI-EVA, ms. https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005941. Haspelmath, Martin. 2024. Construction-functions and construction-strategies. In Däbritz, Chris Lasse & Budzisch, Josefine & Basile, Rodolfo (eds.), Existential and locative constructions. Berlin: Language Science Press (to appear). (https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/007897) Haspelmath, Martin. 2025. Passive constructions: Universals and language description. To appear. (https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/008340) Holm, John. 1997. Passive-like constructions in English-based and other creoles. In Edgar Werner Schneider (ed.), Englishes around the world (Volume 1: General studies, British Isles, North America). Amsterdam: Benjamins. 12 Keenan, Edward L. 1975. Some universals of passive in Relational Grammar. In Grossman, R. & San, L.J. & Vance, T. (eds.), Proceedings of the Eleventh Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 340–352. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Keenan, Edward L. 1985. Passive in the world’s languages. In Shopen, Timothy (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description (Volume I), 243–281. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kouwenberg, Silvia. 2023. The creole passive. In Patricia Cabredo Hofherr, Herby Glaude & Elena Soare (eds.), Grammar is a moveable feast: A webschrift for Anne Zribi-Hertz, 239–249. Paris: Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8055461. Kulikov, Leonid I. 2011. Voice typology. In Song, Jae Jung (ed.), The Oxford handbook of linguistic typology, 368–398. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mel’čuk, Igor A. & Xolodovič, Aleksandr A. 1970. K teorii grammatičeskogo zaloga. Narody Azii i Afriki 1970(4). 111–124. Michaelis, Susanne Maria & Maurer, Philippe & Haspelmath, Martin & Huber, Magnus (eds.). 2013. Atlas of pidgin and creole language structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Perlmutter, David M. & Postal, Paul M. 1977. Toward a universal characterization of passivization. Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, vol. 3, 394–417. Siewierska, Anna. 1984. The passive: A contrastive linguistic analysis. London: Croom Helm. Siewierska, Anna. 2005/2013. Passive constructions. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds.), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: MPI-EVA. https://wals.info/chapter/107. Skirgård, Hedvig & Haynie, Hannah J. & Blasi, Damián E. & Hammarström, Harald & Collins, Jeremy & Latarche, Jay J. & Lesage, Jakob et al. 2023. Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss. Science Advances 9(16). eadg6175. (doi:10.1126/sciadv.adg6175) Syea, Anand. 2024. Absence of syntactic passive in creoles: Evidence from French-based Mauritian Creole. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 1–29. (doi:10.1017/cnj.2024.13) von der Gabelentz, Hans Conon. 1861. Über das Passivum: Eine sprachvergleichende Abhandlung. Abhandlungen der Philologisch-historischen Classe der Königlich sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften 3. 449–546. Winford, Donald. 1993. Predication in Caribbean English creoles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Zúñiga, Fernando & Seppo Kittilä. 2019. Grammatical voice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.