While global patterns of human genetic diversity are increasingly well characterized, the diversity of human languages remains less systematically described. Here, we outline the Grambank database. With over 400,000 data points and 2400 languages, Grambank is the largest comparative grammatical database available. The comprehensiveness of Grambank allows us to quantify the relative effects of genealogical inheritance and geographic proximity on the structural diversity of the world’s languages, evaluate constraints on linguistic diversity, and identify the world’s most unusual languages. An analysis of the consequences of language loss reveals that the reduction in diversity will be strikingly uneven across the major linguistic regions of the world. Without sustained efforts to document and revitalize endangered languages, our linguistic window into human history, cognition, and culture will be seriously fragmented.

While global patterns of human genetic diversity are increasingly well characterized, the diversity of human languages remains less systematically described. Here we outline the Grambank database. With over 400,000 data points and 2,400 languages, Grambank is the largest comparative grammatical database available. The comprehensiveness of Grambank allows us to quantify the relative effects of genealogical inheritance and geographic proximity on the structural diversity of the world's languages, evaluate constraints on linguistic diversity, and identify the world's most unusual languages. An analysis of the consequences of language loss reveals that the reduction in diversity will be strikingly uneven across the major linguistic regions of the world. Without sustained efforts to document and revitalize endangered languages, our linguistic window into human history, cognition and culture will be seriously fragmented.

This paper presents the first corpus-based study of DOI in Maltese. In this pilot study, the potential triggering factors were tested as predictors in a descriptive model. The results show that the strongest predictor for object indexing in Maltese is word order, but when taking only semantic referential features into account, the analyses reveal that DOI seems to be strongly predictable by definiteness, as well as by the part of speech of the head of the NP. Our study therefore supports observations from previous investigations, both on Maltese and typological; furthermore, the analysis gives insight into the combined effects of the relevant factors.

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Differential indexing has often been associated with features such as animacy and identifiability, but also with the discourse categories topic and focus. This study presents a cross-linguistic survey of differential indexing phenomena which have been ascribed to topicality or focus, showing that although there are similarities with regard to the discourse-structural effects that the addition or omission of indexes might have in different languages, differential indexing has language-specific, often compositional causes and effects. These are demonstrated by two case studies, on Ruuli (Bantu) and Maltese (Semitic). In both languages, differential indexing of the P argument could be ascribed to the topicality of the referent, but it will be shown that this would not do justice to the multifactorial reality of the phenomenon, as in both languages, differential indexing is triggered by a complex interplay of different factors.