Grammatical Universals

Usage-based explanation of universal coding asymmetries in grammar (2015-2020)

This project (officially called “Form-frequency correspondences in grammar”, or FormGram), headed by Martin Haspelmath, received funding from the ERC (European Research Council) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no 670985), from 2015 through 2020.

For an overview of the project goals and participants, see the page Grammatical Universals Project. On this page, we list conference talks and publications in connection with the project.

Conference talks and invited talks

(for Leipzig seminar talks, see “Seminar“)

September 2020

September 25: Harvard Linguistics Circle Colloquium: Martin Haspelmath: Ambiguity avoidance vs. expectation sensitivity in ditransitive differential argument marking

August 2020

SLE Online Conference: Susanne Maria Michaelis: Interrogative constructions in creoles and sign languages

July 2020

UK Cognitive Linguistics Conference Online: Jingting Ye: The conceptual space of property words: a semantic map approach

June 2020

June 12: Abralin ao Vivo talk by Martin Haspelmath: How evolutionary adaptation explains language structures (available on Youtube)

May 2020

May 28: Nijmegen Grammar and Cognition Group Zoom talk by Martin Haspelmath: Asymmetric grammatical coding in various domains of grammar: Efficiency vs. form-meaning correspondence

March 2020

March 3-5: DGfS Annual Conference Hamburg: Workshop organized by Martin Haspelmath: Empirical consequences of universal claims in grammatical theorizing

Talk by Martin Haspelmath: Testable universals, the natural-kinds programme, and presupposed universals in grammatical theorizing (there is also a corresponding blogpost)

Talk by Jingting Ye: Differential coding in property words: A typological study 

Talk by Natalia Levshina: Corpora and language universals: Opportunities and challenges 

Talk by Ilja A. Seržant: Typology meets efficiency research: Evolution of bound person-number indexes 

February 2020

February 28th: Language and Society: Symposium to Honour Peter Harder, talk by Martin Haspelmath: Grammaticalization and the efficiency theory of asymmetric coding

January 2020

January 2-5: LSA Annual Meeting New Orleans, talk by Martin Haspelmath: Some universals of reflexive construction markers and a possible efficiency-based explanation

January 2-5: SSILA Annual Meeting New Orleans, talk by Martin Haspelmath: The polycategoriality parameter: Noun-verb similarities in Wakashan, Salishan, Eskimoan and Mayan

January 10: University at Buffalo, Workshop on the occasion of the retirement of Matthew Dryer and Robert D. Van Valin, Jr.; talk by Martin Haspelmath: Languages are more than grammars

January 24: Humboldt University, Berlin: Susanne Maria Michaelis: French-based creoles in a typological perspective

November 2019

November 23-24: Universität Bremen, NWLK. Susanne Maria Michaelis: Functional adaptedness in creole languages

October 2019

October 3-5: The many facets of Agreement, Zürich (Schweiz), talk by Ilja A. Seržant: Generalized partitives in the A/S slot

October 7-8: Workshop on cross-linguistic semantics of reciprocals, Utrecht (Niederlande): Talk by Martin Haspelmath: Reflexive and reciprocal constructions: Comparisons and explanations without true analysis

October 16-18: Moscow Conference Typology of Morphosyntactic Parameters: Invited talk by Martin Haspelmath: Ergativity and depth of analysis (published text) (related blogpost)

October 28: University of Seychelles talk: Susanne Maria Michaelis: African traces in Seychelles Creole

September 2019

September 4-6: Association for Linguistic Typology 2019, Pavia (Italy):

Martin Haspelmath: “Anti marking” in the world’s languages and its functional-adaptive explanation

Susanne Maria Michaelis: Differential place marking in creole languages

Ilja A. Seržant: Evolutionary typology of bound verbal person-number indexes

Natalia Levshina: Towards a corpus-based semantic typology: A new perspective on ‘loose fit’ and ‘tight fit’ languages

Katarzyna Janic: The crosslinguistic investigation of grammatical coding asymmetry in the benefactive domain

September 9-12: Lake Como Summerschool (“Language Universals and Language Diversity in an Evolutionary Perspective”) Martin Haspelmath’s lectures: Some universals of grammar with particular reference to coding asymmetries

September 25-28: BICLE 2019, Bamberg. Natalia Levshina: English grammatical alternations and communicative efficiency:An information-theoretic approach based on Generalized Additive Models

August 2019

August 10: International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Nishinomiya (Japan), Natalia Levshina: Causatives of the world, unite! How efficiency can explain cross-linguistic generalizations

August 19-21: Symposium on Representations, Usage and Social Embedding in Language Change, Manchester, Ilja A. Seržant: Evolutionary typology of bound verbal person-number indexes

August 21-24: Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Leipzig University (co-hosted by members of the project)

SLE Workshop (Leipzig) organized by Katarzyna Janic & Nicoletta Puddu: A comprehensive perspective on reflexive constructions.

SLE talk by Martin Haspelmath: Comparative concepts for reflexive constructions as a basis for testable universal claims

SLE talk by Susanne Maria Michaelis: Differential place marking in creole languages

SLE talk by Natalia Levshina: Word order variability: a quantitative usage-based approach

SLE talk by Katarzyna Janic & Ilja A. Seržant: Towards a typology of antipassive markers in ergative languages

August 26: SyntaxFest 2019 Paris. Natalia Levshina: Universal Dependencies in a galaxy far, far away… What makes Yoda’s English truly alien

July 2019

July 1-5: International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Canberra (Australia): Talk by Katarzyna Janic & Charlotte Hemmings: A distributional markedness approach to alignment change

July 5: talk by Martin Haspelmath: Weltweite Sprachenvielfalt: Beobachten, vergleichen und verstehen. (SAW, Karl-Tauchnitz-Straße 1, 10:30h)

July 12-13: Symposium on sociolinguistic variation in signed and spoken languages of the Asia-Pacific region, University of Central Lancaster, Preston (UK): Plenary talk by  Susanne Maria Michaelis: Variation across Asian and Pacific creoles

June 2019

June 17-19: The 19th Annual Conference of the Association of Portuguese and Spanish-Lexified Creoles & the Summer Conference of the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, University of Lisbon: Talk by Susanne Maria Michaelis: Differential place marking in creole languages

June 13: Lecture in the habilitation procedure of Natalia Levshina: Quite diverse: Gradadverbien in Variatäten des Englischen. (Beethovenstr 15, H4 4.15 – 14:00h)

May 2019

May 29-31: DISROM 6, University of Bergamo: Plenary talk by  Susanne Maria Michaelis: Focus constructions in pidgin and creole languages

March 2019

March 6-8: DGfS Annual Conference, University of Bremen: Talk by Martin Haspelmath & Susanne Maria Michaelis: Differential place-name marking: An explanation in terms of predictability and coding efficiency

March 1-2: Workshop “Whither reanalysis?” at Humboldt University Berlin: Talk by Martin Haspelmath: What is easier to understand, mechanisms or results of linguistic changes?

February 2019

February 13-14: Conference on Explanation and Prediction in Linguistics, University of Heidelberg: Plenary talk by Martin Haspelmath: Forget “formalism/functionalism”: How to resolve the tension between naturalist and culturalist explanations in linguistics AND: Talk by Katarzyna Janic (at the same conference): A functional explanation of the contrast in coding self- benefactive and other-benefactive events

February 2: De Grote Taaldag, Utrecht: Plenary talk by Martin Haspelmath: Towards an IPA for morphosyntax

January 2019

January 3-6: SPCL Winter Meeting, New York City: Talk by Susanne Maria Michaelis: Asymmetry in tense-aspect coding: creole data support a universal trend

October 2018

October 22-24: Typology of Morphosyntactic Parameters, Moscow: Talk  by Ilja Seržant: Evolution of bound person indexes: the dynamic-typology approach

September 2018

September 3-5: Syntax of the World’s Languages, Paris:

Talk by Martin Haspelmath: How passives and dative alternations are related to split (or differential) object marking

Talk by Susanne Maria Michaelis: Avertive constructions in Seychelles Creole and beyond

Talk by Karsten Schmidtke-Bode: Syntactic determinants of the development of articles: A cross- linguistic investigation

Talk by Jingting Ye: Post-nominal classifier as definite article in Southwest Mandarin Chinese

August 2018

August 29 – September 1st: SLE Conference Tallinn:

Talk by Martin Haspelmath & Susanne Maria Michaelis: Differential coding in grammar: Split and partitioned coding as special cases

Talk by Katarzyna Janic: Markedness reversal as a diachronic process of alignment change in Inuktitut

Talk by Natalia Levshina & Alena Witzlack-Makarevich (University of Kiel): Explaining scale effects in differential argument case marking: Evidence from dialogue corpora

Talk by Susanne Maria Michaelis: Asymmetry in tense-aspect coding: Creole data support a universal trend

Talk by Ilja Seržant: Evolution of bound person indexes: the dynamic-typology approach

July 2018

July 16-18: Talk talk by Natalia Levshina at the 10th International Conference on Construction Grammar, Paris: Collostructional predictability and communicative efficiency: A new perspective on English near-synonymous constructions

July 13: Workshop “Historical and comparative linguistics in Jena” (MPI-SHH Jena)

Talk by Martin Haspelmath: Cross-linguistic evidence for functional-adaptive constraints and change: The case of coding asymmetries

Talk by Susanne Maria Michaelis: Support from creole languages for functional adaptation in grammar

Talk by Karsten Schmidtke-Bode: Signal management in clause combinations: Towards a typological systematization

June 2018

June 27-28 June : Invited talk by Natalia Levshina at the workshop “Semantic maps: Where do we stand and where are we going?“, Liège (Belgium) : Semantic maps of causative constructions: Data types and methods in contrast”

Mai 2018

Mai 3: lecture by Natalia Levshina at the University at Jena

Mai 11: lecture by Natalia Levshina at the Max-Planck-Institute for Human History

April 2018

Apr 02-15: lecture and conference talks by Ilja A. Seržant  at the University of Latvia, Riga: A corpus and usage-based approach to Ancient Greek: from the Archaic period until the Koiné

Apr 11-14 talk by Martin Haspelmath at Stockholm University: Toward a new conceptual framework for comparing gender systems and some so-called classifier systems; (plus dissertation defense: Pernilla Hallonsten Halling)

March 2018

Mar 5-11: lecture by Natalia Levshina at the Course for postdoctoral and advanced Master students at Tallinn University: Statistics for linguists with R

March 7-9: DGfS Annual Conference Stuttgart: Ilja A. Seržant, workshop organizer (Workshop on Possessive relations)

March 8: Martin Haspelmath, workshop talk (Workshop Referential and relational approaches to syntactic asymmetries): Universals of argument marking in scenario splits and universals of reflexive marking in a functional-adaptive theory of syntax

February 2018

Feb 15-16: Invited talk by Martin Haspelmath, at the University of Oslo, NoSLiP (3rd Norwegian Graduate Student Conference in Linguistics and Philology)

Feb 22-23: Keynote talk by Natalia Levshina at the workshop “Parallel text analysis in diachronic research”, University of Marburg: Grammaticalization and parallel corpora: how to make semantic change visible

January 2018

Jan 10: Invited talk by Susanne Maria Michaelis, at the Freie Universität Berlin, Forschungskolloquium der romanistischen Sprachwissenschaft: Typology of creole languages.

Jan 8-12: talk by Natalia Levshina at the Practical course for postdoctoral and advanced Master students at the LOT Winter School, Free University of Amsterdam: Statistical Models of Language Variation with R

Jan 17-19: talk by Natalia Levshina at the workshop “Typology of zero-marking”, University of Bremen: Stay (at) home and komm (am) Montag: an information-theoretic account of language variation

Jan 17-19: talk by Martin Haspelmath at the workshop “Typology of zero-marking”, University of Bremen: Nullkodierung in der Sprachbeschreibung und in der Sprachtypologie

Jan 17-19: talk by Susanne Maria Michaelis at the workshop “Typology of zero-marking”, University of Bremen: Nullkodierung in Tempus – Aspekt – Systemen von Kreolsprache

Jan 17-19: talk by Karsten Schmidtke-Bode at the workshop “Typology of zero-marking”, University of Bremen: Signalreduktion und Nullkodierung in der Satzverbindung

Jan 17-19: talk by Ilja A. Seržant at the workshop “Typology of zero-marking”, University of Bremen: Coding asymmetries in verbal bound person – number indexes

Jan 17-19: talk by Darja Dermaku-Appelganz at the workshop “Typology of zero-marking”, University of Bremen: Zero coding in Flagbase

December 2017

Dec 4-7: Conference talk by Martin Haspelmath, Australian Linguistic Society conference, Sydney: On the scope of the grammatical form-frequency correspondence hypothesis

Dec 12-15: Association for Linguistic Typology conference, Canberra, Workshop on typological databases coorganized by Martin Haspelmath; conference poster “Explaining form-frequency correspondences in grammar: Mutational constraints vs. functional-adaptive constraints”

November 2017

Nov 16:  Conference talk by Ilja A. Seržant, at INaLCO (Paris): The diachronic typology of differential object marking. Workshop “Diachrony of Differential Object Marking”, November 16-17, 2017. URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/CfP_DOM.Diachrony_Paris.2017_final.pdf

Nov 28: guest lecture given by Natalia Levshina at the University of Jena: What can corpora tell us about linguistic universals?

October 2017

Oct 11: talk given by Ilja A. Seržant at the XLANS conference on “Triggers of Language Change”, October 11-13, 2017, Lyon: Evolution of bound person indexes: the dynamic-typology approach

Oct 16: talk given by Natalia Levshina at the the ConCorT conference, organized by the Higher School of Economics, Moscow: What can corpora tell us about linguistic universals?

September 2017

Sep 2-6: Summer school lectures by Martin Haspelmath on grammatical universals, at Moscow (Voronovo) summer school “Typology and Lexicon“.

Sep 8: Plenary talk by Susanne Maria Michaelis, at the Summer School of the SLE, University of Neuchâtel: Principled hybridization in creole languages.

Sept 9: conference talk given by Ilja A. Seržant at the International Conference on Greek Linguistics (ICGL 13), 7-9 September 2017, University of Westminster: Tracing the development of prepositional phrases.

Sep 8-9: Summer school lectures by Karsten Schmidtke-Bode at the SLE Summer School (University of Neuchâtel): Usage-based linguistics and language typology.

Sept 10: Conference talk by Ilja A. Seržant, at University of Zürich: Differential object markers and datives. 50th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea. 10–13 September 2017.

Sep 10: Conference talk by Susanne Maria Michaelis, at University of Zürich: Asymmetry in path coding: Creole data support a universal trend . 50th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea. 10–13 September 2017.

Sept 13: talk given by Natalia Levshina at the 50th SLE meeting, University of Zurich: T/V forms in European languages: A quantitative study based on a parallel corpus of film subtitles.

Sep 18-22: Conference talk by Ilja A. Seržant, at University of Jena: The development of verbal person indexes in Indo-European languages  als Vortrag in der Sektion Indogermanistik auf dem 33. Deutschen Orientalistentag (DOT) 2017.

Sept 30.09.: talk given by Natalia Levshina at the 7th Biennial International Conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary English, Universidade de Vigo: Why go Bayesian? A corpus linguist’s perspective.

July 2017

Jul 12: Workshop talk by Susanne Maria Michaelis, at Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena: Explaining the features of creole languages: Language shift and the division of labor between substrates and lexifiers. DLCE Workshop “Language shift and substratum interference in (pre)history”

Jul 13: .: talk given by Natalia Levshina at the International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Tartu University: No alarms when no surprises: The principle of economy and constructions with the bare and to-infinitive in English.

Jul 2017: Conference talk by Karsten Schmidtke-Bode at the 3rd Usage-Based Linguistics Conference (Jerusalem): Processing typology and cross-linguistic variation in NP structure: An assessment of Hawkins’ efficiency predictions

Jul 13: Workshop talk by Martin Haspelmath, at the Workshop “Markedness: Perspectives in Morphology and Phonology“, University of Frankfurt/Main: Architects vs. engineers: Making markedness function

Jul 25: talk given by Natalia Levshina at the Corpus Lingustics Conference, University of Birmingham: Bringing together corpus linguisics and typology: Frequency, informativity and grammatical asymmetries

June 2017

Jun 3-30: Guest lectures by Susanne Maria Michaelis on creole languages, Chaire Internationale Labex-EFL (Paris, INALCO)

Jun 8-11: Workshop talk by Martin Haspelmath: The DNA and evolution of languages. Workshop on “Variation and universals in language”, Crecchio (Abruzzo)

Jun 19: Workshop talk by Susanne Maria Michaelis, at University of Tampere: Asymmetry in path coding: Creole data support a universal trend. Annual Summer Conference of the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, 19-22 June 2017.

Jun 19: Workshop talk by Martin Haspelmath: Language typology: The Humboldtian and the Greenbergian traditions. FU Berlin workshop on the occasion of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s 250th birthday, Berlin.

Mai 2017

May 22: talk given by Natalia Levshina at the NoDaLiDa Workshop on Universal Dependencies (UDW 2017, the University of Gothenburg): Syntactic Communicative efficiency and syntactic predictability: A cross-linguistic study based on the Universal Dependencies corpora.

April 2017

Apr 7: Invited talk by Ilja A. Seržant, at University of Zürich: The dynamics of Greek prepositions (with the main focus on perì ‘about’): corpus-based approach. URL: http://www.agenda.uzh.ch/record.php?id=33510&group=82;public

March 2017

Mar 02: Workshop talk (Journée créole) by Susanne Maria Michaelis, at Regensburg University: Asymmetric coding of allatives and ablatives in creole languages

Mar 8-10: Workshop (AG) on coding asymmetries and usage frequency at DGfS Annual Meeting Saarbrücken, with talks by Martin Haspelmath, Natalia Levshina, Karsten Schmidtke-Bode, Ilja Seržant

Mar 09: Conference talk by Karsten Schmidtke-Bode at the DGfS Annual Meeting (University of Saarbrücken): Signal reduction at clause boundaries: Towards a typological systematization.

Mar 10: Conference talk by Ilja A. Seržant at University of Saarland. Towards functional motivation for the reduced third person indexing. 39. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft. URL: http://dgfs2017.uni-saarland.de/wordpress/arbeitsgruppen/ag-5/

Mar 14: talk given by Natalia Levshina at LICTRA 2017 Leipzig International Conference on Translation & Interpretation Studies, Leipzig University: Translation of ‘you’ in online film subtitles: A quantitative cross-linguistic study.

Mar 16: Keynote presentation by Susanne Maria Michaelis, at the Fourth International Conference on Language Contact in Times of Globalization (LCTG4), at Greifswald University: Explaining the features of creole languages: Language shift and the division of labor between substrates and lexifers

Mar 24: Workshop talk by Susanne Maria Michaelis, at the Eleventh Creolistics Workshop at Gießen University: Independent possessive person-forms are longer: Creole data support a universal trend

Mar 28: Conference talk by Karsten Schmidtke-Bode at the Vielfaltslinguistikkonferenz (Leipzig University and Nikolai-Lab): Seeking patterns in diversity: On the use of intragenealogical samples in typological research.

Mar 28: Workshop talk by Susanne Maria Michaelis, at the Vielfaltskonferenz (Leipzig University & Nikolai-Lab) : Asymmetry in path coding: Creole data support a universal trend

Mar 28: Conference talk by Ilja A. Seržant at University of Leipzig: Differential object and subject marking from clefts. Presented at the conference “Vielfaltslinguistik in Leipzig. Konferenz für Typologie und Feldforschung. URL: http://research.uni-leipzig.de/unicodas/vielfaltslinguistik-in-leipzig/

Mar 28: conference talk given by Natalia Levshina at at Vielfalslinguistik in Leipzig conference, Leipzig University: Economy, iconicity or productivity? A typological study of causative constructions

January 2017

Jan 6: Plenary conference talk by Martin Haspelmath, at ConSOLE 25 (Leipzig University): Do aliens have UG? On efficiency of grammatical coding as an explanation for grammatical universals

Jan 12: Seminar talk by Ilja Seržant: Two developmental paths of Differential Object Marking

Jan 18: Invited talk by Natalia Levshina, at Gießen University: Permutation and recursive partitioning: word order, semantic complexity, politeness and the art of tea-tasting. URL: http://www.natalialevshina.com/Documents/Permutation.pdf

Jan 26: Seminar talk by Natalia Levshina: Economy, iconicity and productivity: A typological study of causative constructions (Diversity Linguistics Seminar)

December 2016

Dec 16: Invited talk by Martin Haspelmath, at Leiden University: Universal constraints on syntactic argument coding: Functional-adaptive, mutational and representational

November 2016

Nov 12: Conference talk by Susanne Maria Michaelis (& Martin Haspelmath), at conference “Inferences in Interaction and Language Change” (FRIAS Freiburg): Why independent possessive person-forms are longer: Diverse sources conspiring toward a uniform result

Nov 24 : Invited talk by Natalia Levshina, at Kiel University: Parallel corpora, conditional inference trees and random forests: How to compare constraints cross-linguistically. URL: http://www.natalialevshina.com/Documents/Levshina_Kiel2016.pdf

October 2016

Oct 26: Guest talk by Susanne Maria Michaelis at Afrikakolloquium (HU Berlin): Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures

September 2016

September 1-2: Workshop on Functional Motivations and Diachronic Explanation in Typology at the Annual Meeting of the SLE, with talks by Martin Haspelmath, Susanne Maria Michaelis, Natalia Levshina, Karsten Schmidtke-Bode and Ilja Seržant

Sept 16: Workshop talk by Martin Haspelmath, at University of Jena: Can we distinguish between mutational constraints and functional-adaptive constraints in explaining typological generalizations?

Sept 15 : Workshop talk by Natalia Levshina, at the 46th Poznań Linguistic Meeting, Adam Mickiewicz University. What causes causatives? A multifactorial study based on a parallel corpus. URL: http://www.natalialevshina.com/Documents/Levshina_PLM2016.pdf

August 2016

August 11: Seminar talk by Karsten Schmidtke-Bode: Complement clauses and complementation systems in cross-linguistic perspective.

June 2016

June 8: Seminar talk by Ilja Seržant: Towards the diachronic typology of differential P and S marking.

June 13: Guest talk by Ilja Seržant at the University of Cologne: Towards the diachronic typology of differential argument marking.

June 15: Conference talk by Natalia Levshina, at the 2nd Usage-Based Linguistics Conference, Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv: Frequency, predictability and grammatical asymmetries: Evidence from Google n-grams. URL: http://www.natalialevshina.com/Documents/Levshina_TelAviv2016.pdf

June 11: Conference talk by Natalia Levshina, at the Olomouc Linguistics Colloquium (Olinco), Olomouc University: A pilot study of T/V-forms in European languages based on a parallel corpus of film subtitles. URL: http://www.natalialevshina.com/Documents/Levshina_OLinCo2016.pdf

May 2016

May 19: Conference talk Ilja Seržant, at the conference “Sanskrit and the Linguistic Revolution – 200 years of Indo-European Studies” Jena: A new category in Tocharian: the Inagentive.

April 2016

April 4: Invited talk by Natalia Levshina, at the workshop “Probabilistic variation across dialects and varieties”, University of Leuven: Help + (to) Infinitive in twenty geographic varieties of web-based English: A Bayesian mixed-model approach. URL: http://www.natalialevshina.com/Documents/Levshina_Leuven2016.pdf

April 22: Workshop talk by Ilja Seržant, at the Working Meeting devoted to Differential Argument Marking. Moscow, Institute of Linguistics: Symmetric DOM: The case of Latvian.

Publications

• To appear

Haspelmath, Martin. 2021. Comparing reflexive constructions in the world’s languages. To appear in Janic et al. 2021 [Academia.edu]

Haspelmath, Martin. 2021. General linguistics must be based on universals (or nonconventional aspects of language), to appear in Theoretical Linguistics [lingbuzz] [Academia.edu]

Haspelmath, Martin. 2021. Towards standardization of morphosyntactic terminology for general linguistics. In: Linguistic categories, language description and linguistic typology, edited by Luca Alfieri, Giorgio Francesco Arcodia, and Paolo Ramat. Amsterdam: Benjamins, to appear [Academia.edu]

Janic, Katarzyna & Charlotte Hemmings. 2021. Alignment shift as functional markedness reversal. Journal of Historical Linguistics

Janic, Katarzyna & Puddu, Nicoletta & Haspelmath, Martin (eds). 2021. Reflexive constructions in the world’s languages. Berlin: Language Science Press, to appear.

Janic, Katarzyna.& Nicoletta Puddu. 2021. Crosslinguistic generalizations of form and function in reflexive constructions. To appear in: Janic et al.

Janic, Katarzyna. 2021. Reflexive constructions in Polish. To appear in: Janic et al.

Levshina, Natalia. 2021. Comparing Bayesian and frequentist models of language variation: The case of help + (to) Infinitive. Submitted to: Ole Schützler and Julia Schlüter (eds.), Data and methods in corpus linguistics: Comparative approaches. Draft available on Academia.edu.

Levshina, Natalia. 2021. Semantic maps of causation: What different data types and methods can (and cannot) tell us. Submitted to: Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft. Draft available on Academia.edu.

Puddu, Nicoletta & Janic, Katarzyna. 2021. Introducing reflexive constructions. To appear in: Janic et al.

Seržant, Ilja A. & Dariya Rafiyenko. 2021. Diachronic evidence against the source-oriented explanation in typology: Evolution of prepositional phrases in Ancient Greek. Language Dynamics and Change

Seržant, Ilja A. Typology of partitive expressions. Linguistics (under review)

Seržant, Ilja A. The dynamics of Slavic morphosyntax is primarily determined by the geographic location and contact configuration. Scando-Slavica (under review)

• Published

2021

Seržant, Ilja A., Katarzyna Janic, Darja Dermaku & Oneg Ben Dror. 2021.Typology of coding patterns and frequency effects of antipassives. Studies in Language (online first) https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.20049.ser

Haspelmath, Martin. 2021. Explaining grammatical coding asymmetries: Form-frequency correspondencies and predictability. Journal of Linguistics  doi: 10.1017/S0022226720000535 [lingbuzz]

Haspelmath, Martin. 2021. Role-reference associations and the explanation of argument coding splits. Linguistics 59(1). 123-174. doi: 10.1515/ling-2020-0252 [OA] [lingbuzz]

Haspelmath, Martin. 2021. Bound forms, welded forms, and affixes: Basic concepts for morphological comparison. Voprosy Jazykoznanija 2021(1). 7-28. doi: 10.31857/0373-658X.2021.1.7-28 [lingbuzz][Academia.edu]

Janic, Katarzyna Maria & Witzlack-Makarevich, Alena (eds.) 2021. Antipassive: Typology, diachrony and related constructions. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Janic, Katarzyna Maria & Witzlack-Makarevich, Alena. 2021. The multifaceted nature of antipassive constructions. In: Janic & Witzlack-Makarevich (eds), 1-39.

Janic, Katarzyna Maria. 2021. Variation in the verbal marking of antipassive constructions. In: Janic & Witzlack-Makarevich (eds.), 249-291.

2020

Berdicevskis, Aleksandrs, Karsten Schmidtke-Bode & Ilja A. Seržant 2020. Subjects tend to be coded only once: Corpus-based and grammar-based evidence for an efficiency-driven trade-off. Proceedings of 19th International Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories (TLT 2020).

Haspelmath, Martin. 2020. The morph as a minimal linguistic form. Morphology 30. 117-134. doi: 10.1007/s11525-020-09355-5 [OA] [lingbuzz] [Academia.edu]

Haspelmath, Martin. 2020. The structural uniqueness of languages and the value of comparison for description.  Asian Languages and Linguistics 2 [Academia.edu]

Haspelmath, Martin. 2020. Human linguisticality and the building blocks of languages. Frontiers in Psychology 10(3056). 1-10. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.03056 [OA] [zenodo]

Levshina, Natalia. 2020. Token-based typology and word order entropy: A study based on Universal Dependencies. Linguistic Typology.

Levshina, Natalia. 2020. Conditional inference trees and random forests. To appear in Magali Paquot & Stefan Th. Gries (eds.). Practical handbook of corpus linguistics. Berlin & New York: Springer.

Michaelis, Susanne Maria. 2020. Avoiding bias in comparative creole studies: Stratification by lexifier and substrate. Isogloss: Open Journal of Romance Linguistics 6/8. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/isogloss.100

Michaelis, Susanne Maria & Haspelmath, Martin. 2020. Grammaticalization in creole languages: Accelerated functionalization and semantic imitation. In: Bisang, Walter & Malchukov, Andrej (eds.), Grammaticalization scenarios: Cross-linguistic variation and universal tendencies, vol. 2, Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 1109-1128. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110712735-013 [Academia.edu]

Seržant, Ilja A. 2020. More on Perfect and Resultative in Tocharian. Robert Crellin & Thomas Jügel (eds.). Perfects in Indo-European languages and beyond, 216-244. (CILT, 352). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Ye, Jingting. 2020. Independent and dependent possessive person forms: Three universals. Studies in Language 44(2). 363 – 406 https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.19020.ye

Ye, Jingting. 2020. Property words and adjective subclasses in the world’s languages. Ph.D. dissertation, Leipzig University.

2019

Haspelmath, Martin. 2019. Indexing and flagging, and head and dependent marking. Te Reo 62(1). 93-115 [OA] [zenodo]

Haspelmath, Martin. 2019. Differential place marking and differential object marking. Language Typology and Universals (STUF) 72(3). 313-334. doi:10.1515/stuf-2019-0013 [publisher] [Academia.edu]

Bradford, Anastasia & Michaelis, Susanne & Zeshan, Ulrike. Stabilisation of the lexicon in an emerging jargon: The development of signs to express animate referents in a sign language contact situation. In: Zeshan, Ulrike & Webster, Jennifer (eds.). Sign Multilingualism. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton & Ishara Press, 127-70.

Michaelis, Susanne Maria. 2019. World-wide comparative evidence for calquing valency patterns in creoles. Journal of Language Contact 11.3 (special issue edited by Eitan Grossman, Ilja Seržant & Alena Witzlack-Makarevich).

Schmidtke-Bode, Karsten, Natalia Levshina, Susanne Maria Michaelis & Ilja A. Seržant (eds.) 2019. Explanation in typology: Diachronic sources, functional motivations and the nature of the evidence. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2583788 

  • Schmidtke-Bode, Karsten. Introduction. In: Explanation in typology: Diachronic sources, functional motivations and the nature of the evidence, eds. Karsten Schmidtke-Bode, Natalia Levshina, Susanne Maria Michaelis and Ilja A. Seržant. Berlin: Language Science Press. iii-xii.
  • Haspelmath, Martin. Can cross-lunguistic regularities be explained by constraints on change? In: Explanation in typology: Diachronic sources, functional motivations and the nature of the evidence, eds. Karsten Schmidtke-Bode, Natalia Levshina, Susanne Maria Michaelis and Ilja A. Seržant. Berlin: Language Science Press. 1-25.
  • Schmidtke-Bode, Karsten. Attractor states and diachronic change in Hawkin’s “Processing Typology”. In: Explanation in typology: Diachronic sources, functional motivations and the nature of the evidence, eds. Karsten Schmidtke-Bode, Natalia Levshina, Susanne Maria Michaelis and Ilja A. Seržant. Berlin: Language Science Press. 123-149.
  • Seržant, Ilja A. Weak universal forces: The discriminatory function of case in DOM and the problem of weak universals. In: Explanation in typology: Diachronic sources, functional motivations and the nature of the evidence, eds. Karsten Schmidtke-Bode, Natalia Levshina, Susanne Maria Michaelis and Ilja A. Seržant. Berlin: Language Science Press. 149-179.
  • Michaelis, Susanne Maria. Support from creole languages for functional adaptation in grammar: Dependent and independent possessive person-forms. In: Explanation in typology: Diachronic sources, functional motivations and the nature of the evidence, eds. Karsten Schmidtke-Bode, Natalia Levshina, Susanne Maria Michaelis and Ilja A. Seržant. Berlin: Language Science Press. 179-203.
  • Levshina, Natalia. Linguistic Frankenstein, or How to test universal constraints without real languages. In: Explanation in typology: Diachronic sources, functional motivations and the nature of the evidence, eds. Karsten Schmidtke-Bode, Natalia Levshina, Susanne Maria Michaelis and Ilja A. Seržant. Berlin: Language Science Press. 203-223.
  • Schmidtke-Bode, Karsten & Grossmann, Eitan: Diachronic sources, functional motivations and the nature of the evidence: A synthesis. In: Explanation in typology: Diachronic sources, functional motivations and the nature of the evidence, eds. Karsten Schmidtke-Bode, Natalia Levshina, Susanne Maria Michaelis and Ilja A. Seržant. Berlin: Language Science Press. 223-243.

Levshina, Natalia. 2019. Universal Dependencies in a galaxy far, far away…What makes Yoda’s English truly alien. Proceedings of SyntaxFest, August 26-30 2019, Paris.  https://syntaxfest.github.io/syntaxfest19/proceedings/papers/paper_21.pdf 

2018

Schmidtke-Bode, Karsten & Gregor Kachel. 2018. Exploring the motivational antecedents of Nepalese learners of L2 English. To appear in International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching. DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1515/iral-2017-0037

Zeshan, Ulrike & Bradford, Anastasia & Michaelis, Susanne Maria. 2018. Stabilisation of the lexicon in an emerging jargon: The development of signs to express animate beings in a sign language contact situation. In:  Zeshan, Ulrike & Webster, Jennifer (eds.). Sign multilingualism. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton & Ishara Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2016-1031

Haspelmath, Martin. 2018. How comparative concepts and descriptive linguistic categories are different. In: Van Olmen, Daniël & Mortelmans, Tanja & Brisard, Frank (eds.) 2018. Aspects of linguistic variation, 83-114. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton [OA]  [zenodo]

Haspelmath, Martin. 2018. The last word on polysynthesis: A review article on The Oxford handbook of polysynthesis, ed. by N. Evans, M. Fortescue, M. Mithun (2017). To appear in Linguistic Typology [Academia.edu]

Haspelmath, Martin. 2018. A critical review of Mark Baker’s Case (2015). Studies in Language 42(2). 474-486. DOI:10.1075/sl.16059.has [Academia.edu]

Alena, Witzlack-Makarevich & Ilja A. Seržant. 2018. Differential argument marking: Patterns of variation. In Seržant, I. A. & A. Witzlack-Makarevich (eds.), Diachrony of differential argument marking. [Studies in Diversity Linguistics]. Berlin: Language Science Press. http://langsci-press.org/.

Schmidtke-Bode, Karsten & Natalia Levshina. 2018. Reassessing 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. Berlin: Language Science Press.

Seržant, I. A. & A. Witzlack-Makarevich (eds.), 2018. Diachrony of differential argument marking. [Studies in Diversity Linguistics 19], Language Science Press.

Levshina, Natalia. 2018. Probabilistic grammar and constructional predictability: Bayesian generalized additive models of help + (to) Infinitive in varieties of web-based English. Glossa 3(1). 55.1-22. DOI: 10.5334/gjgl.294/

Levshina, Natalia. 2018. Online film subtitles as a corpus: An n-gram approach. Corpora 12(3): 311-338. DOI: 10.3366/cor.2017.0123

Levshina, Natalia. 2018. Finding the best fit for direct and indirect causation: a typological study. Lingua Posnaniensis 58(2).  65-83. DOI:  10.1515/linpo-2016-0010

Levshina, Natalia. 2018. Anybody (at) home? Communicative efficiency knocking on the Construction Grammar door. Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association 6: 71-90. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3369486

Haspelmath, Martin. 2016[2018]. Universals of causative and anticausative verb formation and the spontaneity scale. Lingua Posnaniensis 58(2). 33-63. DOI: 10.1515/linpo-2016-0009 [zenodo]

Levshina, Natalia. 2018. Towards a Theory of Communicative Efficiency in Human Languages. Habilitation thesis, Leipzig University. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1542857

2017

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 [zenodo]

Levshina, Natalia. 2017. Measuring iconicity: A quantitative study of analytic and lexical causatives in British English. Functions of Language 24(3). 319 –347. DOI: 10.1075/fol.15013.lev

Levshina, Natalia. 2017. Communicative efficiency and syntactic predictability: A crosslinguistic study based on the Universal Dependencies corpora. Proceedings of the NoDaLiDa 2017 Workshop on Universal Dependencies (UDW 2017), Gothenburg, Sweden, 22 May 2017, 72–78. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.582325

Seržant, Ilja A. & Björn Wiemer. 2017. Diachrony and typology of Slavic aspect: What does morphology tell us? In Bisang, Walter & Andrej Malchukov (eds.), Unity and diversity in grammaticalization scenarios, 239-307. (Studies in Diversity Linguistics 16). Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.823246

Seržant, Ilja A. 2017. Lexikalisierte Reduplikationsbildungen im Tocharischen. In Hajnal, Ivo, Daniel Kölligan & Katharina Zipser (eds.), Miscellanea Indogermanica. Festschrift für José Luis García Ramón zum 65. Geburtstag, 779-785. (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft). Innsbruck: Universität Innsbruck.

Blasi, Damián E. & Michaelis, Susanne Maria & Haspelmath, Martin. 2017. Grammars are robustly transmitted even during the emergence of creole languages. Nature Human Behaviour DOI: 10.1038/s41562-017-0192-4.

Haspelmath, Martin & Karjus, Andres. 2017. Explaining asymmetries in number marking: Singulatives, pluratives and usage frequency. Linguistics 55(6). DOI: 10.1515/ling-2017-0026

Levshina, Natalia. 2017. A multivariate study of T/V forms in European languages based on a parallel corpus of film subtitles. Research in Language 15(2). 153-172. DOI: 10.1515/rela-2017-0010.

Haspelmath, Martin & the Leipzig Equative Constructions Team. 2017. Equative constructions in world-wide perspective. In: Treis, Yvonne & Vanhove, Martine (eds.) Similative and equative constructions: A cross-linguistic perspective. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Haspelmath, Martin & Michaelis, Susanne Maria. 2017. Analytic and synthetic: Typological change in varieties of European languages. In: Buchstaller, Isabelle & Siebenhaar, Beat (eds.) 2017. Language Variation – European Perspectives VI: Selected papers from the 8th International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 8), Leipzig 2015. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Levshina, Natalia & Degand, Liesbeth. 2017. Just because: In search of objective criteria of subjectivity expressed by causal connectives. Dialogue & Discourse 8(1): 132-150. URL (open access): http://dad.uni-bielefeld.de/index.php/dad/article/view/3699

Schmidtke-Bode, Karsten and Holger Diessel. 2017. Cross-linguistic patterns in the structure, function and position of (object) complement clauses. Linguistics 55.1: 1-38.

2016

Haspelmath, Martin. 2016. The serial verb construction: Comparative concept and cross-linguistic generalizations. Language and Linguistics 17(3). 291–319. DOI: 10.1177/2397002215626895

Haspelmath, Martin. 2016. The challenge of making language description and comparison mutually beneficial. Linguistic Typology 20(2). 299-301. [Academia]

Divjak, Dagmar, Levshina, Natalia & Klavan, Jane. 2016. Cognitive Linguistics: Looking back, looking forward. Cognitive Linguistics 27(4). 447-464. URL: https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/cogl.2016.27.issue-4/issue-files/cogl.2016.27.issue-4.xml

Levshina, Natalia. 2016. When variables align: A Bayesian multinomial mixed-effects model of English permissive constructions. Cognitive Linguistics 27(2). 235-268.  DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2015-0054 [zenodo]

Levshina, Natalia. 2016. Why we need a token-based typology: A case study of analytic and lexical causatives in fifteen European languages. Folia Linguistica 50(2). 507-542. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/flin-2016-0019

Levshina, Natalia. 2016: Verbs of letting in Germanic and Romance languages: A quantitative investigation based on a parallel corpus of film subtitles. Languages in Contrast 16(1). 84-117. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.16.1.04lev [zenodo]

Ilja A. Seržant. 2016. The Perfect/Resultative in Tocharian. In: T. Maisak, V. A. Plungian, & K. Semenova (eds.), The typology of the perfect: Investigations into the theory of grammar. (Issue VII. Acta Linguistica Petropolitana). St.-Petersburg: Nauka. 237-288.