Usage-based explanation of universal coding asymmetries in grammar

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

For more information on the project, see this page: Grammatical Universals Project.

Project activities • Upcoming conference talks (for Leipzig seminar talks, see “Seminar“) 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” • Past talks 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 the Stockholm University talk; dissertation defense 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. 2017. The last word on polysynthesis: A review article on The Oxford handbook of polysynthesis, ed. by N. Evans, M. Fortescue, M. Mithun. To appear in Linguistic Typology [Academia.edu] Haspelmath, Martin. 2015. A critical review of Mark Baker’s Case. To appear in Studies in Language [Academia.edu] Levshina, Natalia. 2018. Conditional inference trees and random forests. In Magali Paquot & Stefan Th. Gries (eds.). Practical handbook of corpus linguistics. Berlin & New York: Springer. Serzant, Ilja A. 2018. More on Perfect and Resultative in Tocharian. Submitted to Thomas Jügel & Robert Crellin (eds.), The Indo-European Perfect. CILT. Amsterdamt/New York: John Benjamins. Schmidtke-Bode, Karsten & Gregor Kachel. 2018. Exploring the motivational antecedents of Nepalese learners of L2 English. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching. Haspelmath, Martin. 2018. Universals of causative and anticausative verb formation and the spontaneity scale. Lingua Posnaniensis. [zenodo] Haspelmath, Martin. 2018. Explaining alienability contrasts in adpossessive constructions: Predictability vs. iconicity. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft. [zenodo] 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) 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. • Drafts Haspelmath, Martin. How comparative concepts and descriptive linguistic categories are different. [zenodo] Seržant, Ilja A. The Discriminatory Function of Case in DOM and the Problem of Weak Universals. In Schmidtke-Bode, Karsten, Natalia Levshina, Susanne Maria Michaelis & Ilja A. Seržant (eds.), Typology, functional motivations and diachrony. [Conceptual Foundations of Language]. Berlin: Language Science Press. Michaelis, Susanne Maria. Support from creole languages for functional adaptation in grammar: Dependent and independent possessive person-forms. In Schmidtke-Bode, Karsten, Natalia Levshina, Susanne Maria Michaelis & Ilja A. Seržant (eds.), Typology, functional motivations and diachrony. [Conceptual Foundations of Language]. Berlin: Language Science Press. • Published 2018 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.), Diachronic Typology 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. https://www.glossa-journal.org/articles/10.5334/gjgl.294/ Levshina, Natalia. 2018. Online film subtitles as a corpus: An n-gram approach. Corpora 12(3): 311-338. https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/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. https://doi.org/10.1515/linpo-2016-0010 Haspelmath, Martin & Karjus, Andres. 2018. Explaining asymmetries in number marking: Singulatives, pluratives and usage frequency. Linguistics. 2017 Levshina, Natalia. 2017. Measuring iconicity: A quantitative study of analytic and lexical causatives in British English. Functions of Language 24(3): 319 –347. 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. [Studies in diversity linguistics 16] Berlin: Language Science Press. 239-307. 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. [Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft]. Innsbruck. 779-785. 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. 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. http://doi.org/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.