Is there a universal hierarchy of the senses, such that some senses (e.g., vision) are more accessible to consciousness and linguistic description than others (e.g., smell)? The long-standing presumption in Western thought has been that vision and audition are more objective than the other senses, serving as the basis of knowledge and understanding, whereas touch, taste, and smell are crude and of little value. This predicts that humans ought to be better at communicating about sight and hearing than the other senses, and decades of work based on English and related languages certainly suggests this is true. However, how well does this reflect the diversity of languages and communities worldwide? To test whether there is a universal hierarchy of the senses, stimuli from the five basic senses were used to elicit descriptions in 20 diverse languages, including 3 unrelated sign languages. We found that languages differ fundamentally in which sensory domains they linguistically code systematically, and how they do so. The tendency for better coding in some domains can be explained in part by cultural preoccupations. Although languages seem free to elaborate specific sensory domains, some general tendencies emerge: for example, with some exceptions, smell is poorly coded. The surprise is that, despite the gradual phylogenetic accumulation of the senses, and the imbalances in the neural tissue dedicated to them, no single hierarchy of the senses imposes itself upon language.

Some languages have both gender and classifiers, contrary to what was once believed possible. We use these interesting languages as a unique window onto nominal classification. They provide the impetus for a new typology, based on the degree of orthogonality of the semantic systems and the degree of difference of the forms realizing them. This nine-way typology integrates traditional gender, traditional classifiers and -importantly -the many recently attested phenomena lying between. Besides progress specifically in understanding nominal classification, our approach provides clarity on the wider theoretical issue of single versus concurrent featural systems.

The present volume is the heavily revised version of my doctoral dissertation "A grammar of Mian, a Papuan language of New Guinea". It is wider in scope and also tries to get rid of the rough edges of the dissertation. Since my days as a Ph.D. student I have been back to the field for two more months expanding the corpus and tying up loose ends in the analysis. This larger corpus, the critical and helpful comments of the external reviewers, as well as two years of turning over various issues of Mian grammar in my mind, helped me to develop a clearer view of many of these issues. I would like to sincerely thank the following people and institutions for providing help and support during my Ph.D. and while revising the material and preparing it for publication. All mistakes are, of course, my own.A great debt of gratitude is owed to the people of the Mianmin communities in Mianmin and Yapsiei for sharing their language, culture and lives with me during my stay in Papua New Guinea. In particular, thanks to the whole Milimab family, especially to Kasening Milimab, for great patience and interest in this project and for taking me in as one of the family.Special thanks go to my language consultants: Kasening Milimab, who had an immense knowledge and was very concerned that I learn Mian properly, Asuneng Amit, who had the gift of telling wonderful stories and the patience for paradigm elicitation, Liden Milimab, whose superb command of English was helpful in many ways, and Raymond Davai, who taught me basic Mian tonology by indicating pitch movements with hand gestures, after it had turned out that the method of having speakers whistle the tones failed. Thanks also to Beitab Fenobi and Ibalim Soubgena, from whom I was able to record historical accounts and descriptions of traditional Mianmin initiation rituals and to