This paper investigates the origins of sortal numeral classifiers in the Indo-Iranian languages. While these are often assumed to result from contact with non-Indo-European languages, an alternative possibility is that classifiers developed as a response to the rise of optional plural marking. This alternative is in line with the so-called Greenberg-Sanches-Slobin (henceforth GSS) generalization. The GSS generalization holds that the presence of sortal numeral classifiers across languages is negatively correlated with obligatory plural marking on nouns. We assess the extent to which Indo-Iranian classifier development is influenced by loosening of restrictions on plural marking using a sample of 65 languages and a Bayesian phylogenetic model, inferring posterior distributions over evolutionary transition rates between typological states and using these rates to reconstruct the history of classifiers and number marking throughout Indo-Iranian, constrained by historically attested states. We find broad support for a diachronically oriented construal of the GSS generalization, but find no evidence for a strong bias against the synchronic co-occurrence of classifiers and obligatory plural marking. Inspection of the most likely diachronic trajectories in individual lineages in the tree shows a stronger effect of the GSS among Iranian languages than Indo-Aryan languages. Taken as a whole, these findings suggest that the association of classifiers and optional number marking in Indo-Iranian is neither solely the effect of universal mechanisms nor of the contingency of local contact histories.

Para-Mongolic is a technical term that designates languages that were related to the Mongolic languages, but which split off from this lineage before Proto-Mongolic times. One source of knowledge for Para-Mongolic comes from loanwords in surrounding languages, of which borrowed numerals in the Tungusic language Jurchen are a wellknown example. The paper presents new evidence found in Tungusic languages that were previously almost unknown in the West and briefl y sketches the place of those languages within the Tungusic family.

Negation seems to be a universal linguistic category, yet languages differ vastly in how they express it. Tungusic languages show several interesting and typologically rare phenomena. The paper offers a typological description of negation within the whole language family from an onomasiological perspective. But some remarks on the etymology of certain negators are made as well. There are three main patterns of “standard negation”. The historically oldest type (A) employs a negative verb similar to the Uralic languages, the second pattern (B) is a grammaticalized version of the first (possibly influenced by Nivkh) and the third type (C) is an innovation influenced by Mongolian, in which the negative existential replaced the negative verb. Some preliminary proposals are made for the development of a “conceptual space”, which also includes non-standard negation such as negative copulas, negative existentials, and prohibitives. The discussion contains examples from more than 35 languages.

No abstract

No abstract