This chapter surveys the semantic motivations of ‘split’ case marking of intransitive subjects in several genetically unrelated languages in terms of Dowty's proto-role entailments. It is argued that it is not the overall balance of entailments but a single entailment grammaticalized in a given language which determines case marking.

This paper presents the results of an areal-typological study of prefixal perfectivization in Slavic, Baltic, Yiddish, Hungarian, Ossetic and Kartvelian languages based on a uniform set of morphological and functional-semantic parameters. It is shown that there are two clusters of prefixal perfectivization, i.e., Slavic and Kartvelian, while other languages display significant degrees of difference both from each other and from the two clusters. It is further argued on the basis of existing evidence that the development and distribution of the current "landscape" of preverb-based aspectual systems in the languages of Central and Eastern Europe and the Caucasus have been shaped by a complex interplay of genetic, typological and contact factors.

We provide a critical review of the distinction between “comparative concepts” and “descriptive categories”, showing that in current typological practice the former are usually dependent on the latter and are often vague, being organized around prototypes rather than having sharp boundaries. We also propose a classification of comparative concepts, arguing that their definitions can be based on similarities between languages or on differences between languages or can also be “blind” to language-particular facts. We conclude that, first, comparative concepts and descriptive categories are ontologically not as distinct as some typologists would like to have it, and, second, that attempts at a “non-aprioristic” approach to linguistic description and language typology are more of an illusion than reality or even a desideratum.