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31
Native North American
Languages
Marianne Mithun
The languages indigenous to North America provide an especially fruitful
arena for investigating circumstances underlying areal phenomena.
Nearly 300 different languages are known to have been spoken over this
vast geographical region before the arrival of Europeans, and there were
surely many more. They comprise well over 50 distinct genetic groups,
some spread over great distances. There are recognized culture areas, but
not all correspond to linguistic areas, raising questions about the geogra-
phical, social and linguistic factors behind the discrepancies. Intriguingly,
most North American linguistic areas constitute exceptions to classical
expectations about relative borrowability, the notion that vocabulary is
copied first, then sounds, speech habits, sentence structure, and finally
deeper grammar. In fact the strongest North American linguistic areas
show surprisingly few loanwords, but often extensive parallelisms in
grammatical categories and structures. Here social circumstances are
described that can foster the emergence of such areas, and cognitive and
communicative processes by which they might develop.
31.1 Contact Areas in North America
There are ten commonly recognized culture areas in North America, as
shown in Map 31.1.
Culture areas of North America (Sturtevant 1988: ix)
– Arctic
– Subarctic
– Northwest Coast
– Plateau
– Great Basin
I am grateful to Wallace Chafe, Danny Hieber, Robert Rankin and David Rood for sharing their g reat expertise on various
languages discussed here.
Native North American Languages. The Cambridge Handbook of
Areal Linguistics. Raymond Hickey, ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press. 878-933.
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– California
– Southwest
– Great Plains
– Northeast
– Southeast
Both culture and linguistic areas result from interactions among peoples.
But most cultural traits can be transferred more easily than linguistic ones.
One can adopt pottery styles, for example, with less intense contact than
auxiliaries. Intensity of contact is related to both the nature of interaction
and its duration.
31.1.1 The Nature of the Contact
The intensity of contact varies widely over North American culture areas.
Where communities were large and population density light, as in the
Northeast, speakers often had relatively little contact with outsiders.
Where density was greater and communities were small, as in Northern
Map 31.1 Culture areas of North America (Sturtevant 1988: ix)
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California, exogamy and multilingualism were often the norm. In some
areas there were differences in prestige, as in the Northwest and
Southeast, but in others not, as in California and the Northeast. In some,
language played a strong role in identity, as in the Southwest. In some
areas contact is ancient, as along the Northwest Coast, while in others it is
relatively recent, as on the Plains. The Southeast has long traditions of
trade with neighbours, often via a lingua franca, either a pidgin such as
Mobilian Jargon, or one of the languages spoken there, such as Creek in the
Creek Confederacy. Still, there is much we cannot know about the social
nature of prehistoric contacts, including patterns of language mainte-
nance and shift.
31.1.2 Linguistic Profiles
The culture areas also vary in their linguistic heterogeneity. The Arctic
was occupied by speakers of a single language family, Eskimo-Aleut.
On the Plains, several large families are represented: Athabaskan,
Algonquian, Siouan, Uto-Aztecan, Kiowa-Tanoan, Caddoan and the iso-
late Tonkawa, but most of the shared linguistic traits there are inher-
ited. The Northwest Coast is home to languages from a dozen distinct
genetic units, many of which vary in their structures, but they share
numerous features. In California, twenty-two different families are
represented, but, as in the Northwest, numerous traits cross genetic
lines.
31.1.3 Areal Boundaries
Early large-scale investigation of North American linguistic areas was
undertaken by Sherzer (1968, 1973, 1976). Observing that linguistic areas
are rarely sharply delineated, he distinguished four trait types.
Areal traits (Sherzer 1973: 759)
Whole areal trait Found in most languages of a given culture area.
Central areal trait Found in most languages of an area
with locus of distribution in the centre of this area.
Regional areal trait With a continuous or almost continuous distribution
within one region of a given culture area.
Family trait In language X retained from proto-language A.
The first three pertain to the complexity of contact situations. In the
simplest situations, a linguistic area is delineated on all sides by borders
which might hinder contact among groups, such as oceans, rivers or
mountain ranges. Languages on the Northwest Coast and in California
have the Pacific Ocean to their west. Languages in the Southeast have the
Atlantic Ocean to their east and the Gulf of Mexico to their south. But
people do travel by water.
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Even with strong borders, contact is rarely homogeneous within an area,
and features seldom pass through all languages uniformly. They might
flow from a core outward, a central trait. The Southeast core cultural and
linguistic areas contain the entire Muskogean family and isolates Atakapa,
Chitimacha, Natchez and Tunica. As one moves outward, shared traits
become progressively sparser. Ofo and Biloxi share many traits with the
core; Dhegiha, Cherokee, Tutelo, Catawba and Caddo some; Nottoway,
Shawnee and Timucua a few.
Traits may spread from several points, complicating the identification of
basic-level areas. The Northwest Coast, stretching from the Subarctic to
California, is a strong linguistic area, but some traits extend only over sub-
areas. One is the Northern Northwest Coast, with Eyak and Tlingit, Haida
(isolate), Tsimshianic, some Wakashan (Haisla, Heiltsuk, Kwak’wala), and
some Salishan (Nuxalk = Bella Coola, Comox). Another extends from the
Nass River in British Columbia to the Columbia between Washington and
Oregon. Still others are the South Central Coast and Central Oregon. Many
overlap, and some are included within others. California also contains iden-
tifiable sub-areas, such as Northwestern California (Wiyot, Yurok, Karuk),
Clear Lake or Central California (Pomoan, Yuki, Lake Miwok, Wappo,
Patwin), the South Coast Range (Esselen, Salinan, Chumashan), and perhaps
Southern California–Western Arizona (Yuman, Takic Uto-Aztecan).
The distribution of traits is not necessarily continuous over even a well-
defined area. Populations can move around, establishing relationships
with different groups at different times, like the Apacheans (Athabaskan)
in the Southwest. And the likelihood of transfer of a given trait depends on
numerous other factors such as prestige, group identity, cultural practices
and language structures.
Sherzer’s final type, the family trait, plays a crucial role in the study of
contact: traits shared by two languages but inherited from a common
parent are not considered strong evidence of contact effects. To distin-
guish common inheritances, it is helpful if the languages within an area
have relatives outside. A number of linguistic areas in North America
present this situation. The Algic languages Wiyot and Yurok of
Northwestern California have Algonquian relatives all across the conti-
nent, from Montana (Blackfoot, Cheyenne) to the Atlantic (Micmac,
Maliseet, Passamaqoddy). The Pacific Athabaskan languages of Oregon
and California have relatives in the Southwest, western Canada, and
Alaska. The Siouan languages in the Southeast have relatives on the Plains.
31.1.4 Inheritance versus Contact
Genetic classification necessarily depends on the criteria admitted for
evidence of relatedness. During the twentieth century, some remote rela-
tionships among families in North America were hypothesized on
the assumption that structural similarities alone can be diagnostic of
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common origin. On the Northwest Coast, a ‘Mosan’ stock was proposed
consisting of the Wakashan, Salishan and Chimakuan families. Various
‘Hokan’ proposals have grouped families and isolates from Northern
California south into Mesoamerica and even South America, and from
Baja California on the Pacific, into south Texas: Karuk, Chimariko,
Shastan, Paliahnihan, Yana, Washo, Pomoan, Esselen, Salinan, Yuman,
Cochimı
´, Seri, Tequistlatecan, Coahuiltecan, Jicaque, Subtiaba-Tlappanec,
Coahuilteco, Comecrudan and Quechua. Some of these families may be
very remotely related (perhaps at time depths greater than Indo-
European), but many have been spoken in contiguous areas for so long
that it is difficult to separate shared inheritances from ancient contact
effects. The ‘Penutian’ hypothesis presents a similar picture, merging
recognized families in California (Wintun, Maidun, Yokuts, Utian),
Oregon (Takelma, Coosan, Siuslawan, Alsean, Kalapuyan, Chinookan),
the Plateau of eastern Oregon, Washington and Idaho (Klamath-Modoc,
Cayuse-Molala, Sahaptian), British Columbia (Tsimshianic), and Mexico
(Mixe-Zoque, Huave). Again, some of these families may be very remotely
related, but many observed similarities are likely the result of long-stand-
ing intensive contact. In the Southeast, a ‘Gulf’ stock was once proposed,
uniting the Muskogean family and isolates Natchez, Tunica, Chitimacha
and Atakapa. In the Southwest, an ‘Aztec-Tanoan’ stock was proposed
uniting the Uto-Aztecan and Kiowa-Tanoan families. Further details on
these proposals are in Campbell (1997) and Mithun (1999). As more has
been learned about the kinds of structures that can emerge from contact,
these hypotheses have been reconsidered.
Of course, related languages are not immune to areal effects (Epps et al.
2013). They tend to be typologically similar, facilitating bilingualism and
convergence. It is easier to transfer substance when lexical, morphological
and syntactic categories are similar (Mithun 2013). Learners often reana-
lyse structures in a second language on the model of counterparts in their
first where possible. And bilinguals often extend the functions of elements
and constructions within one language on the model of the other.
31.1.5 Linguistic Areas in North America
Not all of the culture areas listed in Section 31.1 (see also Map 31.1) are
considered strong linguistic areas, for the kinds of reasons discussed above.
The Arctic contains just one language family, Eskimo-Aleut. The Subarctic
contains single branches of just two, Athabaskan and central Algonquian.
The Plateau shows some genetic diversity, but most if its shared linguistic
traits are also found on the Northwest Coast. The Great Basin contains just
two genetic units: the Numic branch of Uto-Aztecan and the isolate Washo;
most common traits are also shared with adjacent California languages. The
Plains culture area was constituted recently, within the last several hundred
years. Furthermore, the area was sparsely populated, so speakers of
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different languages were not generally in close contact. The Northeast
contained branches of just three families: Siouan, Iroquoian and
Algonquian. This area too was relatively sparsely populated, and so far
there is little evidence of significant contact across family lines. Most shared
traits can be reconstructed for their respective parent languages.
Some culture areas, however, are also strong linguistic areas, particularly
the Northwest, California and the Southeast. All were densely populated
before contact by small groups speaking a variety of genetically unrelated
languages, a situation conducive to multilingualism. Contact was both
intense and enduring. But none of the areas is crisply delineated or homo-
geneous. There are core areas and peripheral areas. There are sub-areas of
varying strengths. And a number of traits extend beyond their outer bound-
aries. A fourth area, the Southwest, also exhibits some shared traits presum-
ably due to contact, but fewer than the others and of slightly different types.
31.1.5.1 Northwest
The Northwest linguistic area stretches from the Subarctic to California,
and, with the inclusion of the Plateau, east to the Rockies (Maps 31.2
and 31.3). Generally considered one of the strongest areas in the world, it
is home to 20 genetic groups, 21 with Pacific Yupik. The most thorough
descriptions are in Thompson and Kinkade (1990) for the Northwest Coast,
and Kinkade, Elmendorf, Rigsby and Aoki (1998) for the Plateau.
Intensive contact including intermarriage extends back millennia
throughout the Northwest. Suttles reports that ‘There is evidence for
gene flow throughout the area and beyond’ (1990b: 1). ‘The Tlingit,
Haida, Tsimshian, and Haisla shared a system of matrilineal lineages ...
that could be equated for purposes of intergroup marriage’ (1990b: 12).
Texts from Boas (1921: 836–1277) indicate ‘a network of intermarriage and
ceremonial relations extending from the Oowekeno to the Comox
(Northern Coast Salish)’ (1990b: 13). Evidence from early explorers indi-
cates that ‘marriages, visiting, shared access to resources, and trade in food
linked tribes on the coast from the Makah to the Alsea with the upriver
Chinookans, Southwestern Coast Salish Cowlitz, and Tualatin’ (1990b: 12,
citing Hajda 1984: 123–132). There were similar networks in the adjacent
Plateau, as noted by Kinkade et al.:
Contacts and mutual inter-influences among the languages and language
families of the Plateau are of long standing. It is clear that the majority of
them participated in a common linguistic area. Plateau ethnographic
studies have demonstrated mechanisms of group interaction that, pro-
jected into the past, would have produced these linguistic results. In this
area intermarriage, trade, and joint participation in economic and ritual
activities set up social relationships that frequently crossed linguistic
boundaries ...These patterns of bilingualism in certain parts of the region
obscured linguistic boundaries, and at times led to language replacement.
(Kinkade et al. 1998: 69–70)
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60°
63°
144°
141°
57°
Eyak
138°
Tlingit
0
0 20406080100
50 100 150
Nishga
Gitksan
Haida
135°
54°
132°
Haihais129° 126°
Haisla
Tsimshian
Haisha
Bella
Bella
Bella
Coola
Haihais
51°
Tsimshian
Oowekeeno
Kwakiutl
Northern
Coast
Salish
Central Coast Salish
Nootkans
Makah
Quileute
Chemakum
Kwalhioqua
Chinookans
Clatskanie
Tillamook
Alseans
Siuslawans
Coosans
Takelma
Athapaskans
Kalapuyans
Salish
Coast
Southwestern
Salish
Coast
Southern
54°
48°
45°
126°
42°
123° 120°
129°
Map 31.2 Northwest Coast (Suttles 1990b: ix)
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Three families, Wakashan, Chimakuan and Salishan, constitute the core
of the area. There is relatively little lexical borrowing, but contact is so
ancient that many structural traits, otherwise rare cross-linguistically,
can be reconstructed for the respective parent languages. There are large
consonant inventories, contrasting plain and ejective obstruents and
often resonants, velars and uvulars, multiple laterals, rounded and
unrounded back obstruents, and distinctive glottal stops. Most of the
languages have only three or four distinctive vowels but contrastive
length. Consonant clusters can be complex, sometimes with four or
more consonants; words in some languages can consist uniquely of
Map 31.3 Plateau (Walker 1998: iii)
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consonants. There is extensive reduplication. Many languages have
numeral classifiers, and many deictic systems distinguish visible and
invisible referents. The languages are generally polysynthetic and pri-
marily suffixing. Constituent order is basically predicate-initial.
Particularly in the core languages, the noun/verb distinction is weak:
most content words can be used to predicate.
31.1.5.2 Northern California
Northern California is home to a large number of typologically diverse
languages (Map 31.4), generally spoken in small communities. Detailed
discussions can be found in Jacobs (1954), Haas (1967, 1976), Conathan
(2004), O’Neill (2008), Jany (2009) and Mithun (2012a).
Active trade, intermarriage and multilingualism were typical over at
least a millennium. Languages differed little in prestige. There was no
lingua franca or code-switching: it was polite to speak the language of
the community one was in at the moment. Bilinguals thus exerted con-
scious efforts to keep their languages separate. O’Neil notes:
Map 31.4 Northern and Central California (Heizer 1978: ix)
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Intermarriage was common (see Waterman and Kroeber 1934), so growing
up around speakers of several languages was not unusual if one’s parents
came from faraway places, as they often did. Generally, the wife moved to
her husband’s village after marriage, so females were often especially
multilingual. As a consequence, children often grew up in the presence
of bilingual mothers, often being exposed to a number of unrelated lan-
guages even from their earliest days. (O’Neil 2008: 290)
There would have thus been both language maintenance and language
shift.
Within California and even within subareas, there is considerable typo-
logical diversity. Some languages are quite polysynthetic, many are mildly
synthetic, and some more analytic. Some are basically predicate-initial and
others predicate-final. Some are head marking and others dependent
marking. There are nominative/accusative, agent/patient and hierarchical
alignment patterns. Numerous shared features have been observed, how-
ever. Many extend over just a small subarea, while others extend even
beyond California. Among the traits noted are uvular stops, voiceless
laterals, back apical or retroflex stops, a distinct voiced stop series,
sound symbolism, pronominal dual, inclusive/exclusive first persons,
nominal case, alienable/inalienable possession, verbal reduplication for
distribution or repetition, means/manner prefixes, locative/directional
suffixes, evidentials, and classificatory numeral systems.
31.1.5.3 The Southeast
The Southeast (Map 31.5) is home to all Muskogean languages (Choctaw,
Chickasaw, Alabama, Koasati, Hitchiti, Mikasuki, Creek, Apalachee),
some Siouan languages (Dhegiha, Biloxi, Ofo), isolates Natchez,
Tunica, Chitimacha and Atakapa, and more peripherally Cherokee
(Iroquoian), Shawnee (Algonquian) Yuchi, Tutelo (Siouan), Catawba
(related to Siouan), Timucua and Caddo (Caddoan). Surveys are in Haas
(1971, 1973, 1979), Crawford (1975), Booker (1991) and Martin (2004).
Contact especially among the core groups has been intimate and long-
standing.
Long-distance trade networks extended throughout the Southeast from
late prehistoric to early historic times (Waselkov 2004: 686). Muskogean
groups also maintained alliances and ‘mechanisms for incorporating
autonomous local groups into intricate political structures capable of
concerted action’ (Walker 2004: 375), but there was economic, political
and social inequality (Brown 2004: 677). The Creek were particularly
numerous and powerful: ‘The larger, more powerful Muskogee [Creek]
incorporated members from other groups, such as the Yuchi, Alabama,
Hitchiti and Shawnee, during their tenure in the Southeast’ (Innes 2004:
393). In the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, the Creek
Confederacy was formed, which included speakers not only of Creek, but
also Alabama, Koasati, Apalachee, Natchez, Yuchi, Shawnee and probably
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more. Creek was used as a lingua franca. The Alabama and Koasati were
closely linked, residing near each other over a long period and ‘at various
times, near the Choctaw, Pakana, Biloxi, Caddo, Pascagoula, Tunica, and
Ofo’ (May 2004: 413). There was also a Choctaw Confederacy, which ‘may
have included speakers of Natchez, Alabama, and other languages’
(Galloway and Kidwell 2004: 499). Louisiana settlements composed of
Choctaw, Tunica and Biloxi are described by Brain, Roth and de Reuse
(2004: 589). The Natchez were also connected to the Tunica, having taken
in a number as refugees, and with the Chitimacha through intermarriage
(Galloway and Jackson 2004: 500). After their defeat by the French in 1731,
the few Natchez survivors settled among the Creeks and Cherokees and
intermarried (Kimball 2005: 385). The last speakers were trilingual in
Natchez, Creek and Cherokee. The Cherokee also incorporated speakers
of other languages into their communities via capture and intermarriage,
and ‘multilingualism was common and valued’ (Fogelson 2004a: 337).
The languages of the Southeast are typologically more similar to each
other than those of California. Most at the core are mildly synthetic, with
basic SOV order and postpositions. Most contain pronominal affixes on
verbs with agent/patient alignment. Among the linguistic traits listed in
the literature for Southeastern languages are labial fricatives, voiceless
laterals, retroflex sibilants, sound symbolism, independent possessive
pronouns, alienable/inalienable possession, agent/patient pronominal
affixes, pronominal duals and plurals, inclusive/exclusive first person,
Map 31.5 The Southeast of North America, sixteenth to eighteenth centuries (Fogelson
2004a: ix)
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diminutive noun suffixes, verb reduplication for distribution or repetition,
locative/directional verbal prefixes, tense/aspect verbal suffixes, pervasive
postural distinctions, auxiliary constructions and quinary counting sys-
tems (Campbell 1997; Martin 2004; Sherzer 1973).
31.1.5.4 The Southwest
The Southwest (Map 31.6) is a strong culture area with some shared
linguistic traits. Bereznak (1995) provides detailed discussion of these.
Five genetic units are represented: Tanoan languages, Keresan languages,
Hopi (Uto-Aztecan), Zuni (an isolate) and Apachean Athabaskan languages,
particularly Navajo. The Pueblo communities have been neighbours for a
long time, but the Apacheans are more recent arrivals. Population density
was high, and groups were linked by trade relations, particularly in pre-
historic times. There was later active trade between the Pueblos and the
Navajo, in which Navajo was used as a trade language, spoken by many
Arizona Tewas, Hopis and Zunis (Ford 1983: 720; Kroskrity 1982).
Intermarriage among Pueblo groups (Hopi, Zuni, Keresan, Tanoan, shaded
Map 31.6 The Southwest culture area: Ortiz (1983: ix)
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in Map 31.6) and between them and Navajos was common, as was bilingu-
alism (Parsons 1939, cited in Bereznak 1995: 77). Bereznak notes that
‘marriage partners from other villages introduced new songs, dances,
and societies ...Ceremonial dancers and ritualists commonly participated
in ceremonies in other villages.’ (1995: 60)
Bereznak identifies 28 traits shared among various Southwestern lan-
guages, but considers just four to be reasonable areal indicators: glotta-
lized consonants, tones, final devoicing and pronominal duals. Not
surprisingly, more features are shared among Pueblo languages than
with the more recent Apachean arrivals. These include distinctive voiced
stops, an s/s
ˇopposition, labio-velars, alienable/inalienable possessive noun
prefixes, plural and locative noun suffixes, tense/aspect verbal suffixes,
noun incorporation, a three-way demonstrative system, classificatory
verbs, distinctions in the kinship system, and some actual morphemes,
including the evidential ʔas, directional marker -mi, and passive -ti. Many
shared traits extend beyond the Pueblo area westward to Yuman lan-
guages, north to Great Basin languages, and eastward to Tonkawa and
Caddo (Bereznak 1995: 159, 166).
Sherzer explains the fact that this strong culture area is not matched by
an equally robust linguistic area in terms of attitudes:
In other areas with dense populations (Northwest Coast, Plateau,
California), many linguistic traits were found to have continuous distribu-
tions cutting across genetic linguistic boundaries. In the Southwest, traits
tend to be more randomly distributed, suggesting that little mutual lin-
guistic influencing has occurred. The explanation of this situation may be
found in a sociolinguistic factor about which we rarely have data – attitude
toward language. The Southwest is one area for which many observers
have reported attitudes towards one’s own language and that of others,
perhaps because these attitudes are often quite explicit. Southwest
Indians are very conservative with respect to language, taking pride in
their own language and often refusing to learn that of others. When they
do learn other languages, they seem consciously to avoid allowing alien
linguistic traits to penetrate their own linguistic system.
(Sherzer 1973: 785–786)
31.2 Evaluating Shared Linguistic Traits
Sherzer (1973, 1976) provides lists of shared traits for all of the culture
areas. As he realizes, not all contribute equally to areal strength.
31.2.1 Feature Strength
An important consideration is the cross-linguistic frequency of the trait.
The SOV order shared by Southeastern languages, for example, could be
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the result of contact: word order patterns spread easily. At the same time, it
is characteristic of a majority of the languages of the world, so it could be
due to internal development. A second consideration is the relationship
among traits. Many Southeastern languages contain postpositions. But
postpositions often develop out of SOV structures, so the two traits are
not necessarily independent.
Conspicuous absence of a trait is sometimes cited as an areal feature.
The significance of the absence also depends on its cross-linguistic
frequency and its source. Among the features cited by Sherzer (1973:
768) as characteristic of the Northwest Coast and the adjacent Plateau
are ‘lack of one-stop-series languages’. But many languages in the world
have multiple stop series. Sherzer also reports that languages of the
Subarctic lack nominal reduplication, nominal case, and instrumental
markers in verbs (1973: 765). Those of the Plains lack uvular q, labio-
velar kʷ, and nasals other than mand n. These traits do distinguish the
languages from those in other areas, but all are inherited from their
respective parent languages. In a sense they are a testament to the lack
of areal effects. Still, in some cases gaps are significant. A group of
neighbouring languages along the Northwest Coast lack n: Nitinaht and
Makah (Wakashan), Quileute (Chimakuan), and Twana and marginally
Island Comox and Upriver Halkomelem (Salishan). This gap can be
traced to shifts of original nasals to prenasalized stops which ulti-
mately lost their nasalization (*n >
n
d > d), habits of pronunciation
transferred across genetic lines (Thompson 1972). Related languages
outside the area still contain the nasals.
31.2.2 Levels of Structure
Different domains of language are known to show different propensities
for replication in contact situations. A commonly cited scale is shown in
Figure 31.1.
Interestingly, the strongest linguistic areas of North America do not
show this pattern at all. Loanwords are strikingly rare, while structural
parallelisms are often extensive. The distributions reflect both social cir-
cumstances and cognition.
The ranking in Figure 31.1 corresponds to decreasing degrees of con-
sciousness and control on the part of speakers. Vocabulary is highly acces-
sible to consciousness: speakers can easily incorporate foreign lexical
items into their own speech if they wish, even with little mastery of the
donor language. They can also consciously avoid doing so.
1
Morphological
structure, by contrast, is routinized, generally below the level of conscious-
ness and more difficult to manipulate intentionally.
1
This is true of the lexicon as an open class. A similar influence on grammar but not vocabulary can be seen in Old English
from Brythonic (forms of Celtic in Britain): see the discussion in Hickey (2012).
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The speech of second language speakers can reflect the hierarchy in
reverse. Learners usually focus on using new vocabulary, but they may retain
speech habits (a foreign accent) and syntactic patterns from their first lan-
guage. They may also carry over more subtle features, such as the relative
frequency of certain stylistic choices (passivization, topicalization) or atten-
tion to particular semantic distinctions (location, direction, manner of
motion, shape).
But shift is not the whole story. Even more balanced bilinguals making a
conscious effort to speak a particular language tend to be more conscious
of vocabulary. Where their two languages contain comparable construc-
tions, they might transfer the relative frequencies of semantic and stylistic
choices. The longer intimate contact persists, the more deeply it can shape
language structure, as such choices become entrenched and routinized. In
what follows, some of the mechanisms behind this shaping are described
and illustrated.
31.3 Lexicon
Because chance similarity is rarer between vocabulary items than abstract
structures, it can be easier for analysts to identify loanwords than copied
grammar. But lexical borrowing is strikingly rare in North America,
though not completely unknown, and some undoubtedly remains undis-
covered. The rarity of loanwords in the Northwest is often remarked on,
though Kinkade (1991, cited in Beck 2000: 169) notes certain vocabulary in
the Salishan language Nuxalk pertaining to maritime culture and certain
flora and fauna, adopted from coastal Wakashan languages. For Northern
California, Bright (1959) remarks on the paucity of loanwords, but notes
terms for ‘pelican’, ‘quail’, ‘white man, ‘Wiyot Indian’, ‘dog’, ‘cow’, ‘dog’,
‘cherry’ and ‘hello’. For the Southeast, Rankin (1988: 643) notes the
Levels most affected
Vocabulary (loanwords, phrases)
Sounds (present in loanwords)
Speech habits (general pronunciation, suprasegmentals [stress, intonation])
Sentence structure, word-order
Grammar (morphology: inflections)
Levels least affected
Figure 31.1 Borrowability
2
2
This scale is based on the relative openness of levels of language. The most open is most prone to code copying
(borrowing). However, because open classes show a high degree of consciousness for speakers, they may well have
the lowest degree of code copying if the speakers of the receiving community wish to distance themselves from the
donor community (see Epps and Michael, Chapter 32, this volume) or if the former occupies a lower position than the
latter within a society (see e.g. Hickey 2012).
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conspicuous scarcity of loans between Dhegiha and Muskogean languages,
though Martin (1994) discusses some loanwords among Southeastern lan-
guages, including ‘money’, ‘black person’, ‘oyster’, ‘interpreter’, ‘peach’,
‘buzzard’, ‘turtle’ and ‘cedar’. Kimball observes that ‘Natchez seems to
have been extraordinarily resistant to borrowing from European lan-
guages and from other American Indian languages. Most of the borrowings
are personal and tribal names.’ (2005: 436–437). He notes loans ‘hackberry’
and ‘vulture’ from Chitimacha, ‘corn’ and ‘wild goose’, from Tunica, and
‘Creek Indian’ and ‘Alabama Indian’ from Creek. For the Southwest,
Kroskrity (1982) notes the general dearth of loanwords, though Bereznak
(1995) mentions borrowed ceremonial vocabulary among the Pueblos in
the Southwest, not surprising given that ceremonies, with songs and
prayers, were diffused.
31.4 Phonology
Sounds and sound patterns are usually ranked immediately after voca-
bulary in borrowability, because they often ride into a language on
loanwords, though often the sounds which appear in borrowed words
already are incipiently present in the borrowing languages. If lexical
borrowing is rare, we might expect fewer phonological areal traits as
well.
31.4.1 Sounds
Sounds do show areality in North America. Overall, consonant inventories
are more elaborate in the West than the East. Ejectives are common in the
West, from the Western Subarctic, through the Northwest Coast and
Plateau, California, the Southwest, and into the Plains, but they are gen-
erally absent in the East. The Algic language Yurok, for example, spoken in
Northern California, has ejectives, while its Algonquian relatives to the
East do not. In some cases, new sounds can be seen to have entered a
language in loanwords. Lake Miwok, spoken in the Clear Lake area of
California, contains plain, aspirated and ejective stops, while related lan-
guages, spoken elsewhere, contain just a plain series. These did enter the
language via loanwords then spread to native forms (Callaghan 1964: 47;
1987; 1991: 52). This is not the only possible route for transfer, however.
Two areal traits often cited for the Southeast are a voiceless labial fricative
and voiceless lateral. Each tells a different story.
Labial fricatives are present in all Muskogean languages, in the isolates
Atakapa, Tunica and Chitimacha, in the Siouan Ofo and Biloxi (margin-
ally), in Yuchi, and in Timucua, but they are rare elsewhere in North
America. One is reconstructed for Proto-Muskogean (Booker 2005: 254),
where it was bilabial, though now in many languages it has become a labio-
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dental f. In the isolates, labial fricatives occur in only a few loanwords, such
as Tunica ka
´fi ‘coffee’ (< French cafe
´) (Haas 1941: 18) and Chitimacha dotriv
‘(Lake) D’Autre-Rive’ (< French) (Swadesh 1939: 19–30), reflecting the
expected pattern. In the Siouan language Ofo, however, fis pervasive,
even in basic vocabulary. Robert Rankin (personal communication)
reports that Ofo fis the result of a regular sound change: Proto-Siouan
*s > Ofo fh. Compare, for example, Biloxi i˛su, Ofo ı
´fha ‘tooth’; Biloxi su, Ofo
ı
´fhu ‘seed’; Biloxi sa˛, Ofo afha
´
˛‘white’; Biloxi sindi, Ofo fxı
´
˛te ‘tail’ (Dorsey and
Swanton 1912). Cognates in other branches of the family show sor s
ˇ:
Lakhota si˛te
´‘tail’. The fwas apparently not brought in via loanwords, but
might have been heard as a prestigious variant of sby Ofo speakers, who
then replicated it in their own language.
The voiceless lateral fricative łappears in most Muskogean languages
and is reconstructed for Proto-Muskogean (Booker 2005: 252). Voiceless
laterals also occur in the neighbouring Cherokee (but not its Northern
Iroquoian relatives), as well as in the isolates Natchez, Tunica and Atakapa.
Scancarelli (2005: 360) explains their source in Cherokee. Cherokee reso-
nants n, l, y and ware voiceless adjacent to h(as throughout Iroquoian).
There is also metathesis of lh to hl; hl sequences are pronounced as voiceless
lateral fricatives. The effects of both processes can be seen in the following
example.
(1) Cherokee
ya:nahlsde:hldohda
y-ani:-ahlsde:l-hdohd-a
ctrf-3pl.agt-help-inst.inf-indic
‘it would be a benefit to them’ Scancarelli (2005: 358)
The voiceless lateral developed within the language by a familiar pro-
cess, assimilation of voicelessness adjacent to h. Phonetic spirantization
to łmay have been stimulated by contact. Mid-sixteenth century
explorers encountered Muskogean speakers in the Little Tennessee
River area, but by the eighteenth century this was Cherokee territory
(Fogelson 2004a: 338). Many Cherokee town names are earlier
Muskogean forms (Booker, Hudson and Rankin 1992: 432). In the eight-
eenth and early nineteenth centuries Cherokee populations expanded
into northern Georgia and northeastern Alabama, ‘replacing, displacing,
or assimilating previous populations’ (Fogelson 2004a: 338). Muskogean
speakers shifting to Cherokee could easily have substituted their native
voiceless fricative lateral łfor the Cherokee lateral that was already
voiceless, a minor pronunciation variant. Loanwords were not necessa-
rily involved.
For Natchez, Kimball posits a series of voiceless resonants /M/, /N/, /L/, /W/
and /Y/, but he also notes that syllable-final, morpheme-final resonants are
automatically devoiced before a consonant: ʔeL-pa:-taN-ni-l-a˛ ‘May you two
look at me!’ (2005: 399). M, W and Ywere later lenited to h. The Natchez
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voiceless Lis actually not fricative, however. For Tunica, Haas (1941: 18)
explains that n, l and rare automatically devoiced before voiceless con-
sonants (except ʔ) and phrase-finally. She is careful to note that the Tunica
voiceless lateral is also not fricative.
The voiceless lateral cited as an areal trait of the Southeast is thus more
interesting than it first appears. It has varying phonetic status across the
languages: a fricative in some, a simple voiceless liquid in others. It has
varying phonemic status as well: a distinctive consonant in some, a pre-
dictable variant in others. Importantly, it did not enter the languages via
loanwords. The devoicing of laterals adjacent to voiceless consonants
could have occurred independently in each language, or it could have
been stimulated by contact, as bilinguals transferred automatic habits of
pronunciation from one of their languages to the other. Voiceless laterals
are actually widespread in North America, also occurring in the
Northwest, California and the eastern Subarctic. Identification of the
mechanisms by which they may have been transferred adds weight to
their value as an areal feature.
31.4.2 Sound Patterns
Another areal trait sometimes cited for the Southeast is fricative symbo-
lism. Forms vary only in the point of articulation, with increasing backness
corresponding to increasing intensity. Rankin (1987) cites numerous
examples such as those in (2) from the 1915 Byington dictionary of
Choctaw, a Muskogean language with f/s/s
ˇ/c
ˇ/ƚ/h alternations. Forms to the
right are Rankin’s hypothesized roots, in which S represents the ablauting
fricative. (Some of these include additional derivation.) Rankin notes that
the process was productive.
(2) Choctaw
fopa ‘murmur’ Sop-
chopa ‘roar, as water’
hompa ‘whoop, bang’
sihinka ‘to neigh, whinny’ Sin-
shinkachi ‘whiz like musket ball, tingle’
chinka ‘to squeal’
hinha ‘to groan’
ak ‘noise made among dry leaves’ SaS-
chasha ‘to rattle’
haɫa‘stamp, tread’
shana ‘to turn, twist’ San-
chnaha ‘round, coiled’
hana nukichi ‘be dizzy, cause dizziness’
Byington (1915) cited in Rankin (1987)
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Fricative symbolism occurs in other Muskogean languages as well, such
as Koasati wası
´hlin ‘to itch’, wac
ˇı
´plin ‘to feel a stabbing pain’ (Rankin
from Kimball, personal communication) and Creek fı
´:pki: ‘unravelled’,
sı
´:pki: ‘torn, ripped’ (Rankin from Booker, personal communication).
Fricative symbolism also occurs in the unrelated Quapaw, a neighbour-
ing Dhegiha Siouan language: s
ˇo
´tte ‘smoky (air), muddy (water)’, xo
´tte
‘grey’; zi ‘yellow’, z
ˇihı
´‘reddish yellow’ (Rankin 2005: 468–469). Fricative
ablaut is widespread in Siouan languages, where it involves the fricatives s/
s
ˇ/x and z/z
ˇ/γ(Matthews 1970; Rankin 1987).
(3) Dakota
zi ‘yellow’ sota ‘clear’ slec
ˇa‘sliced, of bread’
z
ˇi‘brown’ s
ˇota ‘muddy, smoky’ s
ˇlec
ˇa‘split, of logs’
Γi‘dark brown’ xota ‘grey’ xlec
ˇa‘rent, of fabrics’
Boas and Deloria (1941: 16–17), cited in Rankin (1987)
(4) Winnebago
-sox ‘frying sound’ -zap ‘tear roughly’ -ris
ˇ‘bend wide’
-s
ˇox ‘bubbling sound’ -z
ˇap ‘peel’ -rix ‘coil’
-xox ‘breaking sound’ -γap ‘remove layer’
Adapted from Lipkind (1945: 47–49), cited in Rankin (1987)
(5) Kansa
zi ‘yellow’ sabe ‘black’ leze ‘striped’
z
ˇi‘orange’ s
ˇabe ‘dark’ lez
ˇe‘spotted’
γi‘brown’
Rankin (1987)
It can be reconstructed for Proto-Siouan and was inherited in Quapaw, from
where it apparently spread to Muskogean languages. It was not transferred
via loanwords: the actual fricatives involved are not the same, nor are the
lexical items. The items in which it appears in the various Muskogean
languages are not necessarily cognate. The pattern indicates that bilinguals
can exploit patterns from one of their languages, here Siouan, in creating
new forms in the other, without necessarily copying actual forms.
Another kind of sound symbolism occurs over a wide area of the West.
Diminutive sound symbolism was noted early by Sapir for Wishram
Chinook (1911, 1929), by Haas for Northwestern California (1970) and
by Langdon for Yuman (1971), and surveyed more widely by Nichols
(1971). Sapir cites such examples as i-c
ˇ’iau ‘snake’, i-c’iau ‘small snake’.
Nichols characterizes the process as ‘the alteration, in point or manner of
articulation, of consonants in verb or noun roots −expressing the
diminutive category and, by extension, an attitude of endearment, affec-
tion, pity, or the like’ (1971: 826). In some languages the shifts are
productive, in others unproductive but lexically well preserved, and in
still others vestigial.
Nichols distinguishes three basic types of sound alternation: (i) strength-
ening, (ii) tonality, and (iii) apical resonant shifts. Only some types occur in
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each language. Her strengthening involves shifts from lenis to fortis (s > ts;
ł>λ), continuant to non-continuant (θ>c
ˇ,s>c
ˇ, w > b) and glottalization
(C > C’). The processes may affect all points of articulation or only some.
Her tonality involves such shifts as s
ˇ>s,x>s
ˇand q > k. Dental, alveolar
and palato-alveolar consonants alternate symbolically, as do velar, post-
velar and palato-velar, but there is no interaction between the two groups.
Her apical resonant shifts include l > r, r > n and l > n.
Glottalization is a northern, typically Salish form of shift, concentrated
particularly in the state of Washington and spread at least to neighboring
Wishram. Shifts among dental resonants are centered farther south,
spreading from Mexico to Oregon and central Idaho; the northernmost
example, the Sahaptin and Nez Perce shift of n > l, is reversed in compar-
ison to the more southern shifts, and its peripheral location may be partly
responsible for its anomaly. No overlap in glottalizing and dental resonant
shifts has been found. Tonality, however, is used in shifts throughout the
area, either alone or together with any other shift. (Nichols 1971: 840)
The distribution of the phenomenon is clearly areal, crossing genetic
boundaries. Nichols suggests three possible origins for it. One is dialect
borrowing, which could result in doublets within a language. The alter-
nants could then be given symbolic value (Aoki 1962: 173; Jacobsen
1969: 150–151). This could underlie Sahaptian n > l shifts. A second
source could be morphophonemic alternations of consonants, espe-
cially when the conditioning factor has been lost. This could underlie
Karok r > n shifts (Bright 1957: 39–40). A third source could be vowel
alternations which in turn affected adjacent consonants. Rigsby and
Silverstein (1969: 56) point to Sahaptian k ~ q and s ~ c alternations,
which could have resulted from diminutive affixes, which triggered
vowel harmony and then consonant shifts. Such events would have
occurred in just a few languages, with subsequent extension of the
patterns and spread through contact, as suggested by the geographical
distribution of shift types. Again we find an unusual phonological pat-
tern with a strong areal distribution not transferred via vocabulary.
Bilingual speakers apparently replicated a pattern in one of their lan-
guages for expressive purposes in the other.
31.5 Basic Replication of Grammar
The strongest linguistic areas of North America show shared grammatical
distinctions, categories and structures, but the shared patterns are not
generally attached to similar substance. In some cases, copying could
occur relatively quickly.
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31.5.1 Assembly From Native Components: Inclusive/Exclusive
Many languages in the world distinguish inclusive first person (‘you and I’)
from exclusive (‘he/she/it/they and I’). Jacobsen (1980a) discusses the areal
distribution of the trait and various paths of development. It is sometimes
a family trait, but it often appears in just some members of a family;
it occurs in Choctaw alone in the Muskogean family in the Southeast
(Haas 1969: 5), in Yuki alone in Yuki-Wappo in California, and in
Shuswap alone in Salishan, and in Kwak’wala (Northern Wakashan) but
not Nuuchahnulth (Southern Wakashan) on the Northwest Coast. It also
goes beyond family boundaries. It is present in a continuous area including
all languages of the Great Basin (Washo, the Numic branch of Uto-Aztecan)
and adjacent California (Achumawi, Wintu, Miwok, Yokuts, Yuki), but it is
absent from California languages outside that area, west and south of
Yokuts, and from the Southwest. It is not found in languages in Central
California or Southern Oregon. It recurs, however, on the Oregon Coast
(Coos, Siuslawan and Alsea), and in Chinookan along the Columbia River
and contiguous Sahaptin, but not the related Nez Perce.
Jacobsen points out that the distinction is easily diffused, because it is
not bound to the syntactic structure of a language in the way that, for
example, case might be. He catalogues various structural means exploited
to replicate it. A new exclusive form might be built on a first person plus
third person marker, as in Siuslaw, narrowing the original first person
plural to an inclusive.
(6) Siuslaw
sg du pl
1(excl) -aʷxu
ˆn -nxan (innovation)
(incl) -n -ns -nł
2-nx -ts -tı
ˆ
3-aʷx -nx
Frachtenberg (1922: 468)
A new inclusive form may be based on a second person marker, as in
Yokuts, narrowing the original first person plural to an exclusive.
(7) Yawelmani Yokuts pronouns
sg du pl
1(excl) na’ na’ak’ na’an
1(incl) mak’ may (innovation)
2ma’ ma’ak’ ma’an
3ama’ amak’ Aman
Newman (1944: 231–232)
Other strategies can be found as well.
The inclusive/exclusive distinction is not uncommon cross-linguisti-
cally, but it is often the result of contact, as bilinguals replicate a distinc-
tion using native resources.
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31.5.2 Stimulated Reanalysis: Agent/Patient Systems
Alignment patterns have been hypothesized to be stable over time
(Nichols 1992: 181). Yet even the rarer patterns show areal distributions.
Nichols found that in her sample of 172 languages, 65 per cent showed
nominative/accusative or neutral systems, 19 per cent ergative systems,
14 per cent agent/patient or stative/active systems, and just 3 per cent
hierarchical systems (1992: 187). These last two patterns show strong
areal distributions in North America.
Agent/patient systems distinguish two (or three) core arguments.
Grammatical agents are prototypically those who volitionally instigate
and control events and states. Grammatical patients are those who are not
in control but are significantly affected by the situation. Examples of such a
system can be seen in Creek, a Muskogean language of the Southeast.
(8) Creek (Muskogean)
1sg agent -e
´y- 1sg patient (a)ca-
a:ł-e
´y-s ‘I’m going about’ ca-tkolı
´:s ‘I’m cold’
homp-e
´y-s ‘I’m eating’ ca-nockilı
´:s ‘I’m sleeping’
ta:sk-e
´y-s ‘I’m jumping’ ca-capa
´kki:s ‘I’m mad’
Martin (2004: 138)
This is not an active/stative system: the distinction between events and
states is not the determining factor. Creek grammatical agents occur with
voluntary, controlled states, and grammatical patients with uncontrolled
events.
(9) Creek (Muskogean)
1sg agent -e
´y- 1sg patient (a)ca-
le
ˆyk-ey-s ‘I’m sitting’ ca-late
ˆyks ‘I fell’
Martin (2004: 140, 139)
A few verbs allow either an agent or patient, depending on volitionality:
hosi:l-e
´y-s ‘I (agent) am urinating’, ca-ho
´si:lı
´s‘I (patient) am urinating
(unable to control it)’.
Both agent and patient forms occur in transitives. Third persons are
unmarked.
(10) Creek (Muskogean)
a. Ci-na:fk-e
´y-s
2sg.patient-hit-1sg.agent-indic
‘I (agent) am hitting you (patient).’
b. O
´:wa-n ca-ya
´:c-i:-s.
water-acc 1sg.patient-want-dur-indic
‘I (patient) want water.’
c. O
´:wa-n ca-hos-ı
ˆ:t-t o
´:-s.
water-acc 1sg.patient-want-spont-ss be-indic
‘I (patient) forgot water.’
Martin (2004: 140)
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The system is thus neither ‘split intransitive’ (i.e. limited to intransitives)
nor ergative.
Such systems are widespread across North America. They occur through-
out the Southeast, in the Northeast, across the Plains, in the Southwest, in
California, and along the Northwest Coast. Some are ancient. In the
Southeast, they can be reconstructed for Proto-Muskogean, the ancestor
of Creek. In the Northeast and the Plains they occur throughout three
families, Siouan, Caddoan and Iroquoian, where they are all inherited. In
the Southwest, they can be reconstructed for Proto-Kiowa-Tanoan. But the
systems extend beyond these families. In the Southeast, they occur not
only throughout Muskogean, the Siouan languages Quapaw, Ofo and
Biloxi, the Iroquoian language Cherokee, and the Caddoan language
Caddo, but also in isolates Chitimacha, Natchez, Tunica, Atakapa and
Tonkawa, the western neighbour of Caddo. In Northern California they
occur not only in all of the Pomoan languages, but also the adjacent Yuki,
though not its relative Wappo. On the Northern Northwest Coast they
appear in the isolate Haida and its neighbour Tlingit, but not in its Eyak
and Athabaskan relatives (Mithun 2008). The shapes of the markers in
neighbouring languages are not the same, however.
In the Southeast, the isolate Chitimacha distinguishes agent and patient
pronominal suffixes on verbs. Pronominal suffixes exist only for first
person singular and plural; second and third persons are identified by
independent pronouns where necessary. The grammatical agent suffixes
(1sg -ik(i)) appear with intransitives (ʔus
ˇt’is
ˇ-ik ‘I am eating’, nus
ˇmis
ˇu-k ‘I shall
work’) and transitives (k’et-ik ‘I beat (him)’, ʔam-ik ‘I see (him)’. Grammatical
patient suffixes (1sg -ki) similarly identify the single arguments of intran-
sitives (nu:p-ki-c
ˇu:s
ˇ‘if I die’, t’at’iwa-ki-:k’i ‘I felt cold’) as well as the goals/
recipients of transitives (k’et-ki ‘(He) beat me’). Swadesh states that patient
forms occur with verbs denoting both events and states, with such mean-
ings as ‘die’, ‘forget’, ‘make a hoarse sound in the throat’, ‘get sprained’,
‘shiver’, ‘fall asleep, sleep’, ‘become wearied’, ‘be tired’, ‘be afraid’, ‘be
greedy’, ‘suffer pain’, ‘feel itchy’, ‘be pleased’, ‘want’. This is thus not an
active/stative system. Some verbs occur with either agents or patients
(Swadesh 1939: 94, 119; Hieber, manuscript).
The isolate Atakapa also shows agent/patient pronominal affixes on
verbs. Grammatical agent suffixes appear with intransitives (hı
´s
ˇ-o ‘I
plant’) and transitives (peni-o ‘I have healed him’). They appear with events
(pa
´l-o ‘I break it’) and states (hatpe
´ʔ-o ‘I am ready’). Patient prefixes similarly
appear with intransitives (hi-la
´wet ‘I was burnt’) and transitives (hi-lo
´is
ˇat
‘(he) helped me’). They appear with both events (hi-makaukit ‘I fell’) and
states (hi-lak ‘I am strong’). (Gatschet and Swanton 1932). Second and third
person singular agent affixes are unmarked, but independent pronouns
are not infrequent.
The isolate Tonkawa, spoken immediately to the west of the Southeast
area, also shows agent/patient patterning (Hoijer 1933). Arguments are
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identified by verbal prefixes and suffixes. Suffixes are used for agents. As in
many such systems, third person singulars are unmarked.
(11) Tonkawa
Patients Agents (Imm Present)
1ge- -c’
2– -n’ei
3– –
3pl -nik
yagb-o’-c ‘I hit (him)’
ge-igab-o’ ‘(he) hits me’
Hoijer (1933: 68, 72)
Prefixes are used for both goals/recipients of transitives, as above, and the
non-volitional arguments of intransitives (-o’ = present declarative).
(12) Tonkawa
hedjin-o’-c ‘I lie down’
g-e:djin-o’ ‘I fall down, i.e. I lie down involuntarily, stumble and fall’
m’e:idj-o’-c ‘I urinate’
ge-m’eidj-o’ ‘I urinate involuntarily’
ge-xadjlew-o’ ‘I am angry’
ge-dic’abx-o’ ‘I have been punctured; I bleed to death’
ge-xamdj-o’ ‘I break my arm/legs’
ge-nc’ol-o’ ‘I have sores, blisters’
Hoijer (1933: 70–71)
The isolate Natchez also shows some agent/patient patterning.
Grammatical agents in Natchez appear in both intransitives (ʔe:taku:s
ˇ
a-htik ‘I will go to the house’) and transitives (cop-a-pkuk ‘I will pluck you’).
Grammatical patients also identify the single argument of intransitives
(ʔuNcnus
ˇ-in-u:ʔa: ‘I forget’, laW-ne-u:ʔa: ‘I shiver’, s
ˇihi-ni-wa: ‘I am full of food’)
and the goals/recipients of transitives (ma:pa-ni-s
ˇkʷ‘you will eat me’, ca:-ya i:
Mi-ni-wa ‘I am tired of deer meat’). Third person agents are unmarked.
Kimball notes that verbs with patient forms ‘refer to actions that are not
controlled by their translation subjects. These verbs are uncommon, in
contrast to the adjacent Muskogean languages.’ (2005: 439)
It is easy to see how agent/patient patterns could spread. Muskogean,
Siouan and Caddoan languages in the Southeast, as well as the adjacent
Chitimacha, Atakapa, Tonkawa and Natchez, share several other
characteristics.
i Intransitive and transitive verbs are not distinguished formally.
ii Topical third persons are unmarked.
iii Basic word order is predicate-final.
These features would facilitate reanalysis of a nominative/accusative sys-
tem as an agent/patient system, or vice versa.
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(13) (subject) object transitive verb ‘It scared me (object)’
(it) me scared <>
patient intransitive
verb
‘I (patient) was
scared’
Languages in other linguistic areas with agent/patient patterns show the
same features: the Pomoan languages and adjacent Yuki of California, and
Haida and the adjacent Tlingit in the Northwest. Yuki’s only relative,
Wappo, shows a nominative/accusative system, as do Tlingit’s Eyak and
Athabaskan relatives. We can catch a glimpse of reanalysis in the opposite
direction in the speech of the last Wappo speaker. Her first language was
(nominative/accusative) Wappo but she was bilingual in (agent/patient)
Southern Pomo. When speaking Southern Pomo, she used the agent pro-
nouns as subjects and the patient pronouns as objects.
This reanalysis is not the only mechanism by which agent/patient pat-
terns can spread through contact. Still another Southeast isolate, Tunica,
shows patterning that is quite similar. Documentation of the language
comes from three sources. Gatschet collected vocabulary and texts in 1886.
Swanton collected additional material between 1907 and 1910 and com-
piled a grammatical sketch in 1921 based on all sources. Haas worked with
the last fluent speaker between 1933 and 1939 and published a grammar
(1941), grammatical sketch (1946), text collection (1950) and dictionary
from all sources (1953).
In Tunica, core arguments are identified by pronominal affixes on the
verb or auxiliary. Prefixes identify transitive goals and recipients. Suffixes
(fused with aspect markers) identify transitive and intransitive agents.
(14) Tunica pronominal affixes
a. Ta
´nisarahc
ˇ,sa
´hkun,ʔuhta
´kanʔa
´kihc
ˇ,
ta
´-nı
´sara-hc
ˇisa
´hku ʔuhk-ta
´ka-n-a
´ki-hc
ˇ
det-young.person-f.sg one 3m.sg-chase-caus-3f.sg.
pfv-when
the girl one when she chased him
‘The girl chased one (of the puppies)
ʔuhta
´pʔɛkɛ
́nı
`.
ʔuhk-ta
´pi-ʔa
´ki-a
´ni
3m.sg-catch-3f.sg.pfv-hearsay
she caught him
and caught it.’
b. Ta
´nisarahc
ˇ,ʔa
´kʔamʔɛkɛ
́nı
`.
ta
´-nı
´sara-hc
ˇiʔa
´ka-ʔa
´mi-ʔa
´ki-a
´ni
det-young.person-f.sg enter-disappear-3f.sg.pfv-hearsay
the girl she went in and disappeared, it is said
‘The girl had gone down (into the water) and disappeared.’
Haas (1941: 135)
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Prefixes are also used for the single arguments of intransitive verbs with
meanings ‘be excited/distraught’, ‘belch’, ‘be tired/fatigued’, ‘be lone-
some’, ‘be withered/shrivelled/shrunken’, ‘be named’, ‘lack’, ‘be left or
left over’, ‘be tipsy/slightly intoxicated/half-drunk’, ‘be pitiable/helpless/
unfortunate/miserable’, ‘be angry/irate/enraged/wrathful’, ‘be hungry’, ‘be
happy/glad/pleased/like’, ‘own/possess’, ‘remember/understand/know/
know how’, ‘want/wish/be willing’, ‘feel cold/chilly’, ‘be dry/thirsty’ and
‘be old’.
(15) Tunica pronominal prefix
Tı
´hc
ˇitı
´yas
ˇi.
tı
´hc
ˇi ti-ya
´s
ˇi
she 3f.sg-be.angry
‘She is angry.’
Haas (1941: 60)
The system looks much like the agent/patient systems in the area, but
closer examination shows that it is not exactly the same. All arguments
are overtly marked. Furthermore, the suffixes that identify transitive
and intransitive agents of events also identify participants who are not
in control, in verbs with meanings such as ‘fall’, ‘die’, ‘slip’, ‘yawn’,
‘snore’, ‘groan/moan in pain’, ‘mew/whimper/cry’, ‘cry/weep/bawl’,
‘vomit’, ‘topple over’, ‘break/snap in two (rope)’, ‘topple over’ and
‘start, jerk away as when startled’. The crucial distinction is not control,
but events versus states. This is an active/stative or active/inactive
system.
But there is another layer to the Tunica system, likely a more recent
result of contact with the agent/patient systems in the area. There is a set of
verbs termed by Haas ‘transimpersonal’. These are exactly the kinds of
verbs that appear with patient forms in agent/patient systems: ‘bleed’,
‘wake up’, ‘cough’, ‘gasp for breath, pant (dog)’, ‘(eye) to twitch’, ‘get an
erection’, ‘sneeze’, ‘belch’, ‘sweat/perspire’, ‘become lame/paralysed’,
‘have bad luck’, ‘choke’, ‘stink’, ‘get burned’, ‘get scalded’, ‘get pinched’,
‘get stung (as by a mosquito) or get a bump (from a bite)’, ‘get a cramp’, ‘be
swollen’, ‘be sore’, ‘get a swelling’, ‘be constipated’, ‘get cured/ healed’,
‘get lost’, ‘lose in gambling’, ‘be born’, ‘have a fever’, ‘get hooked/caught/
trapped/snared’, ‘have diarrhoea’ and ‘itch’ (Haas 1953). Arguments of
these verbs, not in control, are identified with the same prefixes as the
goals and recipients of transitives. These verbs also contain a pronominal
suffix ‘referring to a nameless entity which cannot be expressed by a
substantival referee’ (Haas 1941: 105). The same suffix is used in verbs
Haas terms ‘impersonals’, such as s
ˇı
´htuna ya
´-ti-hc
ˇ‘when it became dark’
[dark become-3sg.sml-subordinate 1941: 58], and in inchoatives
based on statives, such as ʔu-ya
´hpa-ti-hc
ˇ‘when he got hungry’ [m.sg-be.
hungry-3sg.sml-subord 1941:61]. This suffix is also used for feminine
singulars.
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Some of the stems used in transimpersonal constructions also occur in
intransitives: le
´transimpersonal ‘lose in gambling’, intransitive ‘disap-
pear’. Some also appear in impersonal constructions: pı
´ra transimpersonal
‘become/turn into/revive/come to life/be born’, impersonal ‘appear’. Some
also appear in basic transitives: pa
´la transimpersonal ‘get hooked/caught/
trapped/snared’, transitive ‘catch/trap/snare’. But other stems appear only
in transimpersonals. Haas notes, for example, that hı
´yu ‘wake up’ never
occurs as a transitive. This suggests that the transimpersonals were not
simply basic transitives, but were developing into a new construction.
More recently, reanalysis was apparently beginning to take them in a
different direction. Haas noted that some of the transimpersonal verbs
recorded by Gatschet in 1886 were inflected as intransitives in the 1930s by
the last speaker: ‘There is evidence that stems denoting involuntary action
(e.g., ‘to breathe’, ‘to cough’) were formerly used as transimpersonals. The
more usual procedure now is to treat such stems as intransitives’
(1941: 59).
(16) Tunica remodelling
Older transimpersonal Newer Intransitive
ʔihkʔo
´wikatı
´ʔo
´wikanı
´
ʔihk-ʔo
´wi-katı
´ʔo
´wi-kanı
´
1sg.pat-sweat-unspecified.agt.pfv sweat-1sg.pfv
‘I am sweating’ or ‘I am sweating’
Haas (1941: 59)
This last speaker, Sesostrie Youchigant, was born around 1870 and
had not spoken the language since 1915 or earlier. He also spoke
French and English, so this later remodelling could have been stimu-
lated by contact with those languages. Heaton (2013) points out that
Sesostrie Youchigant was also apparently remodelling the shapes of
pronominal prefixes. Where all of the verbal prefixes recorded by
Gatschet matched those of alienable possessive prefixes on nouns,
Sesostrie Youchigant used inalienable possessive forms in stative and
transimpersonal constructions.
In any case, Tunica provides an example of likely contact-induced repli-
cation of an agent/patient pattern through a second mechanism, with an
overt unspecified/indefinite agent.
31.6 Gradual Replication of Grammar
We can see how bilinguals might replicate categories from native
material (inclusive/exclusive) or reanalysis (nominative/accusative < >
agent/patient). It is more difficult to imagine how speakers could repli-
cate more abstract, tightly integrated grammatical structure, that at
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the bottom of the hierarchy in Figure 31.1. It is here that the length of
contact can be key. Grammatical patterns need not be transferred in a
single step.
31.6.1 Abstract Grammatical Structure
It is well known that word order spreads easily under contact.
Mechanisms are clear. All languages allow some variation in order,
though the frequency and pragmatic markedness of alternatives var-
ies. Basic clause structure could be predicate-initial or predicate-final,
for example, but constituents might appear before the nuclear clause
in topicalization constructions or after it in antitopic constructions.
Under bilingualism, what may be copied is the relative frequency of
alternatives – Johanson’s (2008) frequential copying. Over time, what
was once a highly marked order can become progressively less marked,
even ultimately a basic order. Many Northwest languages show predi-
cate-initial clause structure: all of those in the core Wakashan,
Chimakuan and Salishan families, the adjacent Tsimshianic and
Chinookan families, and Alsea, Coosan, Siuslaw and Kutenai (strongly
reflecting discourse status in some). Surrounding languages generally
show predicate-final structure, more common cross-linguistically. The
fact that predicate-initial order can be reconstructed for each family
suggests that it spread early. It is also likely that it fostered further
convergence.
31.6.1.1 Negation
Another feature often cited for Northwest languages involves negative
constructions consisting of an initial negative predicate or auxiliary, fol-
lowed by the negated clause. Describing Quileute (Chimakuan), Andrade
says, ‘the negative morphemes wa or e
´:or the two in succession ... func-
tion as the main verb, and the action negated is expressed by a subordinate
verb’ (1933: 268).
(17) Quileute (Chimakuan)
e
´: wa-ɫ-lits
ˇsiya
´’-a
neg neg-intended-2sg see-subord
‘You do not intend to see it’.
Andrade (1933: 269)
For Coeur d’Alene (Salishan), Reichard comments, ‘The negative is almost
certainly a verb, for it has many verbal characteristics ...When used as an
independent stem it means “refuse” ... In the intransitive luta
¨-takes the
possessive affixes with an s- prefix which may be nominal’ (1938: 664–665).
Another nominalizer in Coeur d’Alene is y-.
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(18) Coeur d’Alene (Salishan)
a
¨mts ‘he shared it’
lut
a
¨
-y’-a
¨
´mts ‘he did not share it’
luta
¨-s-xʷa
¨t’is
ˇ‘he did not get up’
Reichard (1938: 665)
Similar constructions appear in neighbouring unrelated languages.
(19) Nuuchahnulth (Wakashan)
Wik’aƛwiinapuƛsaayaa.
wik-’aƛwi:nap-uƛsayaa
not-finite stopping-mom far
‘They didn’t stop for long distances.’
Nakayama (2003: 342)
(20) Nisgha (Tsimshianic)
Niindii Gipt
ni:-nə-ti: kı
´p-t
be.not-1sg.erg-ints eat.sg-3
‘I did not eat it.’
Tarpent (1987: 357)
Complement constructions with an initial negative matrix are to be
expected in predicate-initial languages, and could easily spread because
of their fit within the existing systems. The propensity for spread is
heightened by the fact that negative constructions typically cycle at a
high rate, as speakers strive to restore the force of a crucial distinction
which is especially susceptible to fading due to its frequency.
31.6.1.2 Lexical Suffixes
The languages at the core of the Northwest Coast area share another
notable construction involving suffixes. In many ways the suffixes resem-
ble roots, with their large inventories, often numbering in the hundreds,
and their often concrete meanings. Technically, they are suffixes, how-
ever, never serving on their own as the bases of words. They appear in both
predicates and referring expressions.
(21) Coeur d’Alene (Salishan)
a. Tsan-ts’u
˙l-ts’u
˙lx
˙ʷ-a
´x
˙en-ts
under-rdp-claw-arm-3>3
‘He clawed it under the arms.’
b. ts
ˇu
˙gw-ts
ˇu
˙gw-a
´x
˙ʷe-s
rdp-feather-arm-3sg.poss
‘his wing feathers’
Reichard (1938: 609)
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The meanings of the suffixes seem at first surprisingly concrete and
specific for affixes, but they are often more diffuse and abstract. The
Coeur d’Alene suffix tsin, for example, is translated sometimes ‘mouth’,
sometimes ‘eat’, ‘edge’, ‘shore’, etc.
(22) Coeur d’Alene (Salishan)
a. gwiy’-tsı
´n-ils
ˇ
finish-mouth-3pl
‘They finished eating.’
b. ts
ˇits-pa
¨na
¨’
a
¨
-yaR-tsı
´-stus-ils
ˇ
hither-as.far.as-be.at.edge-mouth-cust-3pl
‘This way they brought it to shore.’
Reichard (1938: 611)
Other Coeur d’Alene suffixes are glossed ‘attachment/handle/connec-
tion’, ‘back/ridge’, ‘billowy’, ‘body’, ‘bottom’, ‘breast’, ‘breath’, ‘bush/
plant/root/tree’, ‘camas’, ‘clothes’, ‘day/sky/atmosphere’, ‘ear’, ‘effort’,
‘end’, ‘eye/face/fire’, ‘feeling’, ‘fire/fuel’, ‘fish’, ‘foot/leg’, ‘food’, ‘fore-
head’, ‘foundation’, ‘ground’, ‘hand’, ‘head/tip/top’, ‘heart/stomach’,
‘hide/skin/mat/covering’, ‘hollow object/abdomen/canoe/wagon’,
‘horn’, ‘horse/stock’, ‘house’, ‘inside/from within’, ‘tree/log/sticklike
object’, ‘mouth interior’, ‘neck’, ‘nose/beak/oral and nasal cavity/seat
of taste’, ‘child/offspring’, ‘person/man’, ‘persons’, ‘pharynx’, ‘prop-
erty’, ‘road’, ‘shoulder’, ‘rock/surface of round object’, ‘throat/nape’,
‘tongue’, ‘tooth’, ‘vegetation’, ‘voice/throat’, ‘water/liquid’, ‘weather’,
‘times’, ‘round object’, ‘source’, and more. For the most part, the
suffixes have no phonological relationships to roots with similar
meanings.
Similar structures can be found in unrelated neighbours.
(23) Quileute (Chimakuan)
Tsix
˙ha
´’t’s
ˇa
´:ƛowa
´’.
tsi
˙x ha’ts
ˇ-a:ɫ-o-wa’
very be.good-weather-linker-away
‘It was very good weather.’
Andrade (1933: 279, 283)
Here too there is a large inventory of such suffixes, with such meanings as
‘colour’, ‘wood’, ‘food’, ‘decorated blanket’, ‘tree/log’, ‘intestines/sinew’,
‘stone arrowhead’, ‘rock’, ‘flounder’, ‘navel’, ‘nose’, ‘point’, ‘beach’, ‘wall’,
‘sky’, ‘basket’, ‘bow/gun/weapon’, ‘plant/bush/tree’, ‘bow’, leg/foot’, ‘fish
tail’, ‘anus (male)’, ‘skin/hide’, ‘hat’, ‘tooth’, ‘forehead’, ‘elbow’, ‘day’,
‘gravel at bottom of sea’, ‘footprints’, ‘dress’, ‘fishing equipment’, ‘food
for journey’, ‘bowstring’, ‘place where something is done’, ‘mind/heart’,
‘dwelling/indoors’, ‘breast/trunk/lungs’, ‘village’, ‘dead whale’, ‘door’,
‘breasts’, ‘eye’, ‘prairie’, ‘place’, ‘sick’, ‘sealing canoe’, ‘fishtrap’, ‘bed’,
‘spouse’, ‘hand/twig/branch’, ‘odor’, ‘tail of quadruped’, ‘head’, ‘shaman’,
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‘vulva’, ‘extreme/end’, ‘eyebrow’, ‘knife’, ‘thigh’, ‘manner’, ‘territory’,
‘wife’, ‘river canoe’, ‘whale’, ‘fire’, ‘size/room/space’, ‘river’, throat’, ‘sal-
mon egg’, ‘body’, ‘heel’, ‘arrow’, ‘kelp’, ‘strand of rope’, ‘canoe/vehicle’,
‘hair’, ‘friend’, ‘canoe-mate’, ‘bunch/handful’, ‘custom’, ‘cave/box inter-
ior’, ‘tool’, ‘place/container/dish’, ‘side of canoe’, ‘sun’, ‘kind’, ‘neck’,
‘mussels’, ‘piece’, ‘hip’, ‘backpack’, ‘fur’, ‘meat/flesh’, ‘box’, ‘roof’, ‘body
of water’, ‘human hair’, ‘load’, ‘guardian spirit’, ‘muscle’, ‘fire’, ‘remain-
der/waste’, ‘feather/wing/gill’, ‘penis’, ‘companion’, ‘language’, ‘occasion/
turn/time’, ‘food’, ‘platform’, ‘shoulder’, ‘testicles’, ‘year’, ‘inside of
mouth’, ‘nape’, ‘blanket/bed covers’, ‘stump’, ‘spear’, ‘trout/smelt/sucker’,
‘packstrap’, ‘water’, ‘rib’, ‘fishing line’, ‘female’, ‘side’, ‘top of bag’, ‘gill-
net’, ‘leaf’, ‘village’, bird egg’, ‘small basket’, ‘bait’, arrowpoint’, ‘nose’,
‘riverbank’, point/peak’, noise’, ‘combustible wood’, ‘coast’, ‘ear’, ‘hill’,
‘face’, ‘grass/hay’, ‘offspring’, ‘cape’, ‘road’, ‘tongue’, ‘magic’, ‘child’,
‘hand’, ‘palm of hand’, ‘soil’, etc. In rare cases there is slight overlap, as
in -tq, -a
´’lotq ‘sealing canoe’, but it is not clear whether the free form
originated as another root plus the same suffix.
The suffixes have free counterparts, but close scrutiny shows that the
suffix is often more generic.
There are several words for the different types of canoes, but -qa may refer
to any of them, as well as to a wagon or an automobile. Also, there are free
morphemes for bow and arrow, as well as for the modern gun ... but all
may be rendered by -pa.(Andrade 1933: 194)
The Wakashan languages show similar large inventories of lexical suf-
fixes. For Kwak’wala, Boas (1947) lists suffixes glossed ‘head’, ‘face’,
‘cheek’, ‘forehead’, ‘ear’, ‘mouth/opening of a bag/vessel’, ‘tooth/sharp
edge’, ‘throat’, ‘shoulder/forearm’, ‘hand’, ‘chest’, ‘back’, ‘front of body’,
‘calf’, ‘shin’, ‘knee’, ‘foot’, ‘mind’, ‘dried meat of’, ‘piece of remains of’,
‘country’, ‘receptacle’, ‘season’, ‘useless part’, ‘woman’, ‘effluvia of
mouth and nose’, ‘fire’, ‘branches/leaves/body hair’, ‘inside hollow
object’, ‘top of surface’, ‘down to beach’, ‘throat/under water’, ‘up from
beach’, ‘out to sea’, ‘downriver/down inlet’, ‘into woods’, ‘on surface of
water’, ‘along riverbank’, ‘on rock’, ‘on ground’, ‘open space/bottom of
sea/world/beach/in body’, ‘canoe’, ‘floor of house’, ‘into house/inlet’,
‘mouth of river’, ‘top of hill/riverbank’, ‘outside front of house’, ‘roof’,
‘crotch of tree’ and ‘bow of canoe’.
Immediately to the north of this core area, the Tsimshianic languages
also show similar suffixes, often with relatively concrete meanings, but
they are fewer in number and more transparently related to independent
roots. Sm’algyax, for example, contains the suffixes -sk, -ks, kwsa, -aks, -u
¨ks
and -iks, which Dunn relates to the word aks ‘water’. The suffixes -gn, -gan,
-xn, he relates to the word gan ‘tree/wood/stick’. The suffixes -gyit and -git he
relates to gyet ‘man’. The suffixes -bn and -n he links to ban ‘belly’. And -mx,
-mk and -xi are possibly related to diilmx ‘respond’.
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(24) Sm’algyax (Tsimshianic)
a. Batsgn
batsk-gan
arrive-tree
‘arrive in a canoe’
b. yel-gan
drill-stick
‘fire drill’
Dunn (1995: 36–37)
For all of the languages, the suffixes are necessarily translated with noun-
like and verb-like English glosses, but the constructions do not specify a
semantic or syntactic role.
The lexical suffix constructions of the Northwest are ancient, recon-
structable for the various proto-languages. The suffix forms were not
copied across family lines. But the constructions, unusual cross-linguisti-
cally, must have developed through contact, probably over an extended
period. Rather than being grammaticalized gradually one at a time, they
apparently originated in highly productive compounding comparable to
the noun–noun and verb–noun (noun incorporation) constructions of
other languages. A very few of the suffixes show resemblances to roots in
the same language or a related one like -aɫqixʷ‘breath/smell’ and qixʷ
‘breathe/smell’ of Coeur d’Alene (Reichard 1938: 633). The initial -aɫof
this suffix actually matches the linker that appears in compounds in the
language. A source in compounding explains the large inventory of suf-
fixes and their relatively concrete and specific meanings: constituents of
compounds are drawn from the full inventory of lexical roots. Like non-
heads of compounds, the lexical suffixes do not serve specific syntactic
roles. The suffixes can serve the same range of functions as incorporated
nouns (Mithun 1997). They are used to create lexemes for nameworthy
concepts, such as the Kwak’wala da:xs ‘take aboard’, with suffix -xs ‘canoe’
(Boas 1947: 239). They are used to manipulate argument structure, as in
’wəs’wəda
˘a
˘’‘have cold ears’, with suffix -ʔa‘ear’, a use which explains the
large inventories of suffixes evoking body parts. They are used to shape the
flow of information, representing established or incidental entities unob-
trusively. Over time, via regular processes of grammaticalization, the
second constituents of compounds apparently eroded into suffixes, some-
times losing phonetic substance, sometimes gaining new or more abstract
meanings as were extended in new formations, like the Kwak’wala -’sto
‘eye > door > round opening’. The grammaticalization of the compound
constructions could have taken place individually in each language, but it
was likely stimulated by ongoing contact.
This shared grammaticalization process is responsible for other areal
features as well, such as numeral classifiers. These consist of lexical
suffixes attached to number roots, as in Kwak’wala okʷ‘human beings’,
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me’lo
´:kʷ‘two persons’; -xsa ‘flat’, q’e
´:xsa ‘many (leaves)’, ’ne
´:mxa ‘one (day)’
(Boas 1947: 240).
31.6.1.3 Means/Manner and Location/Direction
Many languages in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Nevada also
share certain abstract morphological structures: verbal prefixes indicating
means or manner of motion and/or suffixes indicating location or direc-
tion (Mithun 2007a). Atsugewi, a Palaihnihan language of Northern
California, contains prefixes with glosses such as ‘pulling’, ‘pushing’, ‘sit-
ting’, ‘stepping/kicking’, ‘biting’, ‘sucking’, ‘spitting’, ‘bodily’, ‘swinging/
pounding/chopping’, ‘orally’, ‘poking/piercing/impaling’, ‘thrusting/dig-
ging/sewing/leaning/propping’, ‘scraping/ whittling/hugging’, ‘slicing/saw-
ing/ driving/carting/getting run over’, ‘paddling/stirring’, ‘boring’,
‘dragging/suspending’, ‘binding/girding’, ‘cutting with knife edge’, ‘sail-
ing/falling’, ‘blowing’, ‘flowing’, ‘raining’, ‘steady pressure’, ‘steady pull-
ing’, ‘bearing down’, ‘by gravity’, ‘by heat/ fire’, ‘by light shining’,
‘visually’, ‘auditorily’, ‘touching’, ‘smelling’, ‘tasting’. They are actually
semantically more abstract and diffuse than verbal or nominal transla-
tions suggest. Many could be described in terms of instruments (‘with a
pole’, ‘with the buttocks’) just as well as manner of motion (‘poking’,
‘sitting’). They may indicate only vague involvement: ‘with the eye, invol-
ving an eye-shaped object such as a hailstone or button’. Talmy (1972)
provides a detailed description.
(25) Atsugewi affixes
a. C’waswa
´lmic’.
ʔ-w-ca-swal-mic’
3-factual-blowing-limp.material.move-down.onto.ground
‘The clothes blew down from the clothesline.’
b. W’oswalı
´c’ta.
ʔ-w-uh-swal-ic’t-a
3-factual-thrusting-limp.material.move-into.liquid-effective
‘She threw the clothes into the laundry tub.’
Talmy (1972: 432)
The pattern crosses genetic lines between families and even the most
ambitious proposed superstocks. The prefixes occur in the Palaihnihan,
Pomoan and Yuman families, and in Karuk, Yana and Washo, all once
hypothesized to be ‘Hokan’, but not in Shasta, Esselen or Salinan also
grouped as Hokan. They occur in the Maidun and Sahaptian families and
in Klamath and Takelma, once grouped as ‘Penutian’, but not in Wintun,
Utian, Yokuts, Coos, Siuslaw or Alsea, also grouped as Penutian. They occur
in Chumashan and Wappo-Yuki, each agreed to be a distinct family. They
occur in the Numic branch of Uto-Aztecan, spoken throughout the Great
Basin in eastern California, adjacent Oregon, Idaho and into Utah and
Wyoming, but not in Uto-Aztecan languages spoken further away.
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Locative/directional suffixes show a similar but not identical distribu-
tion. They occur in the Palaihnihan and Pomoan families, in Karuk, Shasta
and Yana, all once labelled Hokan, but not in Yuman or Washo, also
included in Hokan. They appear in the Maidun and Sahaptian families
and Klamath, once grouped as Penutian, but they are not mentioned in
descriptions of Wintun, Utian, Yokuts, Takelma, Coos, Siuslaw or Alsea.
They do not appear in Chumashan, Wappo-Yuki or Uto-Aztecan.
The shapes of markers are not similar across family lines. Such tightly
integrated, abstract morphological structures would not seem amenable
to simple replication by bilinguals. Many of the markers are quite small,
often just a consonant and sometimes just preglottalization or preaspira-
tion. It is difficult to imagine an Atsugewi speaker deciding to replicate the
‘thrusting/ digging/sewing/leaning/propping’ prefix in (25b) above in
another language. The affixes are derivational; speakers generally select
full lexical items as they speak rather than assembling them online. Some
languages at the edge of the area provide a clue to the mechanisms behind
this areal distribution.
Both the means/manner and locative/directional constructions appear
to be descended from compounds, as might be expected. We can still see
the kinds of [noun–verb]
verb
and [verb–verb]
verb
compounds that
could give rise to means/manner prefixes at the eastern edge of the area, in
the Numic languages. Tu¨mpisa Shoshone still shows noun–verb com-
pounds in which the noun indicates an instrument, such as ki-kuttih ‘elbow-
shoot’ = ‘jab with the elbow’ (Dayley 1989: 92). Tu¨ mpisa also contains a
sizeable inventory of means/manner prefixes that Dayley traces to Proto-
Uto-Aztecan noun and verb roots, among them ku- ‘with heat or fire’ < *kuh
‘fire’, ku
¨-‘with teeth or mouth’ < *ku
¨’i ‘bite’, ma- ‘with the hand’ < *maa
‘hand’, mu- ‘with the nose’ < *mupi ‘nose’, ni- ‘with words, talking’ < *niya/
niha ‘name’, pa- ‘involving water’ < *paa ‘water’, pi- ‘with the butt or
behind’ < *pih ‘back’, su
¨-‘from cold’ < *su
¨p‘cold’, sun- ‘with the mind, by
feelings, sensing’ < *suuna ‘heart’ or *suuwah ‘notice, believe’, ta- ‘with the
foot’ < *tannah ‘foot’, and tsa- ‘grasping in hand’ < Numic *tsa’i ‘grasp, hold’
(Dayley 1989: 95–96).
Examples of the kinds of compounds that could develop into locative/
directional constructions can be seen at the northern edge of the area.
Kathlamet Chinook of Oregon contains a kind of [verb–verb]
verb
com-
pounding in which the second root indicates motion in a particular direc-
tion, such as -pa ‘motion out of’, -pq ‘motion into’, -pck ‘motion from open
to cover, especially from water to shore or inland’, -ƛx‘motion from cover
to open, especially toward water’, -ti ‘motion, position down’, uulx
˙’‘motion
up’: ikux
˙u
´ni-pck ‘she drifted ashore’ [-x
˙uni-pck ‘drift-from.water.to.shore’].
These roots also occur independently: txu
´-pck-a ‘Let us go inland’ (Hymes
1955: 218).
Confirmation of the compounding origins of these prefix and suffix
constructions can be seen in what Jacobsen (1980b) and DeLancey (1996)
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term ‘bipartite stem’ constructions: some of the languages contain verb
stems which now appear to consist only of a prefix and a suffix. Maidu, for
example, contains a means/manner prefix wi- ‘with hands’ and a suffix -doj
‘upward’: wi-do
´k-doj ‘grasp with the hand and pull up’ (Shipley 1963: 187). It
also contains stems like wi-do
´j‘pull (something) up’. Such stems are likely
descendants of lexicalized compounds.
While it is unlikely that bilinguals would replicate the small, abstract
affixes seen in many of these languages directly, they could easily replicate
compounding types, with initial means/manner roots or with final loca-
tive/directional roots. Over time, perhaps also stimulated by ongoing con-
tact, frequently recurring elements of such compounds could easily erode
into affixes. Various stages of development can be seen across the area,
with affixes of varying productivity, varying degrees of abstraction and
varying phonological size.
31.6.2 Alignment: Hierarchical Systems
The alignment type Nichols found to be the rarest cross-linguistically is
hierarchical, where ‘access to inflectional slots for subject and/or object is
based on person, number, and/or animacy rather than (or no less than) on
syntactic relations’ (1992: 66). This type appeared in only 3 per cent of her
sample. Hierarchical systems also show areal patterning in North America,
and it is possible to discern mechanisms behind their geographical dis-
tribution (Mithun 2012b).
31.6.2.1 Northwest Coast
In Nuuchahnulth (Nootka), a Southern Wakashan language spoken on
Vancouver Island, British Columbia, arguments are identified by first
and second person enclitics to predicates. Third person is unmarked. The
first person singular is =s.
(26) Nuuchahnulth (Wakashan)
waɫs
ˇiʔaƛ=s ‘I went home.’
ʔunaak=s-i:s
ˇ‘I have a friend.’
ʕiih
˙s
ˇi
˙=s ‘I cried.’
ʔuuyimɫckʷi=s c’uʔic
ˇh. ‘I was born in winter.’
waaʔaƛat=s ... ‘He said to me.’
Nakayama (2003: 195, 204, 166, 163, 192)
This pronominal enclitic is not simply a subject, object, absolutive, erga-
tive, agent or patient. This is a hierarchical system, in which only one
argument may be specified. If there is a first or second person, this referent
takes precedence over a third person. If there is both a first and second
person, the agent takes precedence over the patient (imperatives allow
both). The system is thus 1, 2 > 3, agent > patient.
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The hierarchy is maintained through the use of a suffix -at. Much like a
passive in many languages, it functions to ensure that the discourse topic
is cast as a core argument (overt or not). Speaker George Louie was
describing how to make a canoe. One begins by looking for a cedar in
the forest.
(27) Nuuchahnulth (Wakashan)
ʔuuwaʔat h
˙umapt,
ʔu-wa-’at h
˙umapt
it-find-shift cedar.tree
‘You find a cedar tree
yacp’ic
ˇuʔat.
yac-p’ic
ˇ-u-’at.
step-at.base.of.pole-mom-shift
and then step up to the base of it.’
Hiistiʔat n’an’aan’ic
ˇat,ʔustʔas takqiinuʔat,
hista-‘’iƛ-’at n’an’a :n’ic
ˇ-’at ʔust-’as tak-qi :nu-’at
there-start.from-shift look-shift loc-on.ground facing-on.top.mom-shift
‘You look it over from the ground to the top ...’
Nakayama (2003: 232–233)
The -at suffix was used here to indicate that though the cedar was a
semantic goal, it was the discourse topic at this point in the discus-
sion. The same suffix is used whenever a third person acts on a first
or second.
(28) Nuuchahnulth shifter
waaʔaƛat-s...
wa :-’aƛ-’at=s
say-finite-shift=1sg
‘He said to me ...’ (‘it was said to me’)
Nakayama (2003: 192)
This suffix cannot be used if a first or second person acts on a third.
The two other Southern Wakashan languages, Nitinaht (Ditidat) and
Makah, spoken to the south, also show hierarchical systems, maintained by
suffixes cognate with the Nuuchahnulth at. Here the suffixes are also used
pervasively to maintain topicality through discourse, as well as whenever a
third person acts on a first or second. The hierarchical system has not
penetrated quite as far as in Nuuchahnulth, however. When both first and
second persons are present, both can be identified by clitics. The system is
thus 1, 2 > 3.
There is only a hint of the hierarchy in the Wakashan language imme-
diately to the north of Nuuchahnulth, Kwak’wala. Here subjects are iden-
tified by enclitics attached to the first element of the clause, and objects by
suffixes on the predicate. The language does not show a hierarchical
system like those of its Southern Wakashan relatives, but there is a
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significant gap in the pronominal object paradigm: there are no suffixes
for first person objects. Periphrastic constructions are used in their place,
built from a predicate ‘come’ for actions directed toward a first person, and
‘go’ for those directed toward a second or third. The other North Wakashan
languages spoken still further to the north, Heiltsuk and Haisla, contain
full sets of pronominal subject clitics and object suffixes, used in all
combinations.
To the south of the Wakashan family is the Chimakuan language
Quileute. Here, too, a hierarchical system can be seen, but it has not
penetrated quite as deeply as in Wakashan, affecting only second persons:
2 > 3. If a third person acts on a second (‘He saw you’), a passive suffix must
be used, as in Wakashan (‘you were seen’), though the forms of the
markers are completely different.
To the east of the Wakashan and Chimakuan families is the Salishan
family. Some Salishan languages also show hierarchical systems, those
closest geographically to Nuuchahnulth. To the east along the Central
Coast, Northern Straits and Klallam privilege first and second persons
over third, again maintaining the hierarchy via obligatory passivization:
1, 2 > 3. Immediately to the north, Halkomelem and Squamish privilege
just second persons over third: 2 > 3. Salishan languages beyond this area
show no restrictions.
The distribution of the hierarchical systems of the Northwest is clearly
areal. Nuuchahnulth is at the core, privileging first and second persons
over third and, among first and second, agents over patients. Immediately
adjacent languages privilege just first and second over third. Languages
immediately beyond these privilege just second over third. The hierarchies
in all of them are maintained by obligatory passivization, though the
markers differ across family lines.
It is easy to see how this areal distribution could come about. In lan-
guages with subjects, various factors can enter into subject selection:
person (first and second over third), humanness, animacy, givenness,
identifiability, agency, etc., features associated with discourse topicality.
A propensity to privilege first and second persons over third would be
easily spread by bilinguals, becoming crystallized as a grammatical
requirement to varying degrees (Mithun 2007b).
31.6.2.2 Northern California
Another hierarchical area occurs further south, but it developed in slightly
different ways. The Chimariko, Yana, Yurok and Karuk languages of
Northern California are genetically unrelated, but all exhibit hierarchical
systems to some degree. The foundations of the pronominal systems differ
from language to language, as do the forms of their markers. Chimariko
shows basic agent/patient alignment, Yana and Yurok nominative/accusa-
tive alignment, and Karuk a mixture of the two.
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In Chimariko, only one core argument is represented pronominally on
any verb. First and second persons have priority over third; if both parties
are speech act participants, the agent takes priority overthe patient:1, 2 > 3;
agent > patient. The roles of first person arguments are distinguished by the
shape of the pronominal affix: grammatical agents have one form and
grammatical patients another. Thus ‘I hit him’ = 1sg.agent-hit, ‘He hit
me’ = 1sg.patient-hit and ‘You hit me’ = 2sg.agent-hit. Independent
pronouns can be added for clarification.
In Yana, core arguments are represented by pronominal suffixes on
verbs. Third persons are unmarked: ‘I will eat it’ = ‘I will eat’. If a third
person agent is involved in a transitive event, however, an element -wa
appears in the pronominal suffix complex. Its source survives in modern
Yana as a passive marker. The only way to say ‘he hit me’ is literally ‘I was
hit’; ‘he hit you’ is literally ‘you were hit’. When both arguments are
speech act participants (1/2, 2/1), the suffix includes -wa:- plus a patient
subject pronominal. The verb meaning ‘I love you’ is essentially ‘you are
loved’. Such sentences are no longer necessarily interpreted as passives,
however: they may contain overt lexical agents. (Other elements have
since been added to the suffix complexes, so they are no longer identical
with passive constructions.)
The Yurok language is spoken in the same area as Chimariko and Yana,
but it is not related to either. It is Algic, remotely related to Algonquian.
Yurok indicative verbs carry pronominal suffixes identifying their core
arguments. The system appears to show a nominative/accusative basis. The
same pronominal suffixes appear in intransitives (‘go slowly’, ‘be in pain’)
and transitives (‘hear someone’). Some of the transitive pronominals are
still transparent combinations of an object marker followed by a subject
marker.
But not all core arguments are represented overtly in all combinations.
Third person transitive patients are often not expressed at all. The pro-
nominal inflection of ‘we hear them’, for example, contains no object
marker for ‘them’: the form is the same as that for ‘we hear’. Third person
transitive agents are also sometimes not overtly represented. The form for
‘he meets me’ contains no ‘he’. Such verbs do, however, show an extra
element -y-. Its source is clear: a passive marker. Together these observa-
tions suggest a hierarchical system based on person priorities. The hier-
archy has not penetrated the entire transitive paradigm, however. For
some transitive combinations, there are choices between a marker overtly
specifying both arguments and a passive formation. Taken together, the
endings reflect a hierarchy 1pl > 2 > 3sg > 3pl. The strategies apparently
used to achieve the priorities in Yurok are reminiscent of those in Yana:
omission of some third person transitive patients and passivization in
certain contexts. The Yurok pronominal suffixes, like those in Yana, do
not constitute a regular, synchronic system, however. They reflect earlier
priorities whose traces have become frozen in the pronominal strings.
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Karuk is spoken directly to the east of Yurok. Core arguments are
identified by pronominal prefixes on verbs. First person prefixes dis-
tinguish subjects and objects, though Bright (1957: 59) notes that one
set of intransitive verb stems allows object forms, suggesting an inci-
pient agent/patient pattern: ‘be hungry’, ‘be jealous’, ‘be afraid’,
‘bleed’, ‘be thin, lose weight’, ‘defecate’, ‘be cross-eyed’, ‘fall asleep’,
‘be tired’, ‘burn oneself’, ‘be hot’, ‘feel pain’, ‘thirst for’, ‘be sick’,
‘have good luck with’, ‘be unwilling, lazy, tired’, ‘be cross-eyed’, ‘be
bald’, ‘be nervous, cranky, fretful’, ‘be late, be offended’, etc. But only
one argument can be expressed within a Karuk verb. The choice of
argument depends on person and number. Traces of a person hierar-
chy similar to those in Chimariko, Yana and Yurok can be perceived.
First and second persons are always chosen over third: 1, 2 > 3. When a
first or second person acts on a third, the third person is omitted, as in
the other languages. Second person plurals have priority over all other
participants: 2pl > 1 > 2sg > 3.
When a third person acts on a second person (3/2), the prefix refers to
the second person, but a suffix -ap appears on the verb. There is no
passive construction in modern Karuk (Macaulay 1992; 2000: 475), but
the distribution of the ap suffix suggests that it may have had a passive
origin. The suffix appears in clauses describing transitive events in which
the semantic agent would normally be viewed as less topical or lower on a
person hierarchy than the semantic patient, such as ‘A monster is going
to eat you’ or ‘They do not like you’. Lexical agents in such constructions
also carry a special postposition ʔi:n, labelled an agentive marker by
Bright, suggestive of an earlier oblique marker for passive agents. The
postposition occurs only in clauses describing semantically transitive
events.
The four languages in this area of California thus share hierarchical
alignment, but there is no shared substance, and the systems differ in
detail and in entrenchment. As on the Northwest Coast, a propensity to
privilege speech act participants over others was apparently spread across
languages by bilinguals. What was transferred was not a grammatical
structure, but rather a behaviour pertaining to preferred choices among
constructions already available in the languages. Over time the stylistic
tendencies became crystallized in grammar, in different constructions
with similar effects.
31.6.3 From Posture to Aspect
Evidence of the gradual development of grammatical patterns stimulated
by contact can be seen in another cluster of constructions in the Southeast.
A striking areal trait is the propensity of speakers to specify the posture or
position of entities, typically ‘sitting’, ‘standing (vertical)’, ‘lying (horizon-
tal)’ and often ‘moving’.
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(29) Creek (Muskogean)
Ci:pa
ˆ:na:t hı
ˆ:cit a
´:leykatı
´:s. ‘The boy was (sitting) there watching.’
Afa
´nna:kit siho:katı
´:s. ‘They were (standing) looking around.’
I
´sti ha
´mkit ino
´kki:t wa
ˆ:kkati:s. ‘A man was (lying) sick.’
Icinɫapı
´:t aɫi:
n
payeys o:mı
´:s. ‘I (go about) opposing you.’
Haas and Hill (2015: 39, 26, 685), Martin (2011: 354)
(30) Quapaw (Siouan)
data˛mi˛khe
´‘I am (sitting) drinking’
wa
´kiwe
´bdabda
´tha
´
˛he ma
´
˛. ‘I was (standing) working for him.’
A
´witta˛we az
ˇa
´
˛tta mi˛khe. ‘I will be (lying) watching you.’
Ko
´is
ˇo
´
˛tta˛ ekı
´z
ˇi bde
´tta
´nihe
´.‘So I am going to go (moving) somewhere else.’
Rankin (2005: 484, 459, 467, 458)
(31) Biloxi (Siouan)
Kʰo
´
˛ni naxe
´na
´
˛ki. ‘His mother was (sitting) listening.’
Ska
´kʰanadi naxe
´ne
´di. ‘The Opossum (stood) listening.’
Te o
´
˛ma˛kı
´.‘He was (lying) dead.’
Nka
´kitupe
´nkade
´di. ‘I was (moving) carrying it on my shoulder.’
Dorsey and Swanton (1912: 28, 26, 275, 150)
(32) Natchez (isolate)
O:ya sanaskuk kase
´Ncik. ‘He was (sitting) eating persimmons.’
Waskupe: sewetik sucik. ‘The dog was (lying) dead.’
S
ˇinakaY suhtik. ‘He was (going) carrying it on his back.’
Mary Haas (p.c.)
(33) Tunica (isolate)
Sa
´ku-hk-ʔuna
´-ni. ‘He was (sitting) eating.’
La
´tı˘hc
ˇhɛ
́r-ʔunana
´-ni. ‘At night they kept watch (sitting).’
Le
´hpi-na
´uni-hk-e
´nı
`.‘They two (alligators) were (lying) blocking it.’
ʔuso
´lʔuwa
´ni. ‘He was (going) creeping up on it.’
Haas (1946: 50, 51)
(34) Chitimacha (isolate)
Waʔas
ˇhis kec
ˇmi:k’ hiʔin. ‘He was (sitting) waiting for the others.’
Him yaʔa ni wopmi:k’ ʔap c
ˇu:k’s
ˇc
ˇikin
‘I’ve come (standing) to ask for your daughter’
Weʸnekas
ˇkap nu:pks
ˇpen. ‘That devil lay dead.’
Ku:ks
ˇmi:pk pentka, ... ‘Although he lay drunk, [he wanted more].’
Swadesh (1946: 332, 322), texts A35d, A49b from Daniel Hieber (p.c.)
(35) Atakapa (isolate)
Ke
´-uka
´ms
ˇkinto. ‘I am (seated) paddling.’
Na
´uta
´-uwalwa
´lekit. ‘The feather is (standing) waving.’
Is
ˇkalı
´t-nu
´l-wilwı
´lhiento I rock a child (lying down).’
Gatschet and Swanton (1932: 64, 123, 94)
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In most of the languages, the posture is indicated by an auxiliary
construction.
(36) Quapaw (Siouan)
Wa
´kiwe
´bdabda
´tha
´
˛he ma
´
˛.
o-wa
´-ki-we
´-wa-da-wa-da
´wa-tha
´
˛-he wa-ʔa
´
˛
V1–1sg.agt-ben-indef-1sg.agt-work 1sg.agt-stand.cont
1sg.agt-do.impf
‘I was (standing) working for him.’
Rankin (2005: 459)
(37) Biloxi (Siouan)
Nkı
´
˛txa nka
´kitupe
´nkade
´di
nki˛-txa nka-kitupe nka-de-di
1sg.pat-alone 1sg.agt-carry.on.shoulder 1sg.agt-go-m.decl
‘I carried it (moving) on my shoulder alone.’
Dorsey and Swanton (1912: 150)
(38) Creek (Muskogean)
Łało
´pasa
´ti:pı
´t akhoyłı
ˆ:pin.
łało
´pasa
´t-i:p-ı
´-t ak-hoy-ł-ı
ˆ:p-i-n.
fish kill-spont-i-same.subject in.water-stand-spont-i-diff.
subj
‘He was standing there killing fish.’
Martin (2004: 279)
(39) Chitimacha (isolate)
Ni:ki:k’ peken.
nii:k-i:k’ pe-ke-n
sick-participle.same.subject lie-1sg-cont
‘I am (lying) sick.’
Swadesh (1939: 238)
These constructions are not exactly equivalent. All contain a lexical verb
followed by an inflected auxiliary. In the Siouan languages, the lexical verb
is also inflected, in Muskogean it is not inflected but it ends in a same-
subject linker, and in Chitimacha it is a same-subject participle. Swadesh
notes that the Chitimacha neutral ‘sit’ auxiliary hi(h) had begun to con-
tract: it ‘often loses its initial hand amalgamates with a preceding parti-
ciple when the latter ends in -s
ˇ(an optional element in participles), e.g.
teyk’s
ˇhin >teyk’s
ˇin ‘he is seated’ (1939: 25.47). In Atakapa the positionals are
generally loosely attached verbal prefixes.
(40) Atakapa
Ke
´uka
´ms
ˇkinto.
ke-u-kam-s
ˇ-kint-o
sit-hab-paddle-be-cont-1sg.agt
‘I am (seated) paddling.’
Gatschet and Swanton (1932: 64)
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In Tunica they are now an integral part of the verb word, which consists of
a bare lexical root followed by the inflected positional.
(41) Tunica
La
´tı˘hc
ˇhɛ
́r-ʔunana
´-ni.
at.night watch-sit.m.du-hearsay
‘At night they kept watch (sitting).’
Haas (1946: 50)
The auxiliaries do not necessarily match such independent lexical verbs as
‘sit’, ‘stand’, ‘lie’ in form. Specification of position is not unknown else-
where in the world. Many of the examples above have English counter-
parts (‘they sat waiting’). The pervasiveness of the postural auxiliaries
across the Southeast suggests an areal trait, however. In a series of
works, Rankin (1977, 1978, 2004, 2011) has demonstrated that it origi-
nated in the Siouan family. The positional roots ‘sit’, ‘stand (animate)’,
‘stand (inanimate)’, ‘lie’ and ‘move’ can be reconstructed for Proto-Siouan.
In the modern Muskogean languages, positionals are used in similar ways,
but they are not generally cognate across the family.
(42) Muskogean positional verbs
‘sit’ singular dual plural
Choctaw-Chickasaw binili chiiya binoh- (animate)
talaya taloha taloh- (inanimate)
Creek-Seminole le
´ykita ka
´a
´kita apo
´o
´kita
Hitchiti-Mikasuki c
ˇokooli- wiik- iił-
Alabama-Koasati c
ˇokooka- c
ˇikiika c
ˇikka, iisa
‘stand’
Choctaw-Chickasaw hikiya hiili (hi)yoh-
Creek-Seminole hoyı
´łita siho
´o
´kita sapa
´a
´klı
`ta
Hitchiti-Mikasuki hac
ˇaali- lokooka- lokooka-
Alabama-Koasati hac
ˇaali- hikiili- lokooli-
‘lie’
Choctaw-Chickasaw ittola kaha kah-
Creek-Seminole wakkita wakhokita lomhita
Hitchiti-Mikasuki talaaka- s
ˇolka- s
ˇolka-
Alabama-Koasati balaaka balka-
Rankin (1978)
The mismatches across the languages suggest that the distinction came
into Muskogean after they had diverged. Positional distinctions were
replicated from different native resources. Rankin provides detailed dis-
cussion of the formations. Choctaw and Chickasaw singular and plural
binili and binohli ‘sit’ are derived from a noun denoting a type of abode: bina
(h) ‘lodge, tent, camp’. The Hitchiti-Mikasuki c
ˇokoo(l)- and Alabama-Koasati
c
ˇokoo(ka)- ‘dwell, sit’ came from the Proto-Muskogean *c
ˇokk- ‘house’.
Choctaw and Chickasaw contain verbs derived from this noun, but they
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mean ‘enter’ and are not part of the positional paradigm. The Choctaw-
Chickasaw dual c
ˇiiya is the passive form of the verb celi ‘to bear, bring forth
young’, so ‘to enter’ or ‘to exist’. Rankin notes that the use of verbs mean-
ing ‘be born’ as auxiliaries is also characteristic of the Alabama-Koasati ‘sit’
positionals. The Creek cognates of these forms mean ‘enter’, and are not
positionals.
The modern Choctaw ‘stand’ plurals hiyohli and hiyohmaa
´ya originated as
duals containing the dual marker *-oh-. The modern dual hiili is based on
the same root hi- ‘upright’ with the active suffix -li. The Koasati singular,
dual and plural positionals for ‘stand’ were formed from three different
roots. All of the Hitchiti-Mikasuki and Alabama-Koasati non-singular posi-
tionals are based on a Common Muskogean root *lokoo- ‘be in a group’.
Cognates in Creek, Choctaw and Chickasaw are not positional in meaning:
Choctaw lukoli ‘to collect, flock, cluster, huddle’, Creek loye
´tv ‘to fill’ (as a
container)’. Rankin reconstructs the ancestor of the Creek plural ‘stand’ as
*(i)si-apaak-lita ‘to have or hold together in a group.’ Both the Choctaw
inanimate ‘sit’ positionals and the Hitchiti-Mikasuki singular ‘lie’ are
traced to a general locative verb ‘remain, be fixed’.
The various ‘lie’ positionals developed from verbs of falling, crawling,
placing and grouping. The Choctaw singular ittol- comes from the verb
ittola ‘fall, remain, lie’. Creek has a cognate to
´letv ‘fall’. The Choctaw dual
and plural kah- are based on the root kah- ‘lie, fall down’. Creek has
cognates outside the auxiliary system, with the suppletive plural ka
´a
´yita
‘to lay eggs, have young’. Rankin reconstructs the common ancestor as
‘put, place’. The Hitchiti-Mikasuki singular ‘lie’ positional talaakom is cog-
nate with the Choctaw talaya, taloha ‘sit’, a more general locational. The
Hitchiti dual and plural ‘lie’ positional sol(k)- is cognate with Creek sulkii
‘many, much, a herd’. The Alabama-Koasati ‘lie’ positional bal(a)- matches
the regular Choctaw and Chickasaw verbs bala-li ‘crawl, creep’.
Positionals occur in other constructions as well. They appear in existen-
tial/ presentative/locational constructions throughout the area: ‘There is a
house (sitting) over there’, ‘There is a stream (lying) over there’, etc. They
occur in possessive constructions. They also mark aspect. Already in Proto-
Siouan, they had undergone grammaticalization to durative or continua-
tive markers.
(43) Osage Dhegiha (Siouan)
Awa
´achi a˛he
´. awa
´achie
a-waachi a
˛ði˛he
´wa-waachi-ðe
1sg.agt-dance 1sg.cont.moving 1sg.agt-dance-decl
‘I’m dancing.’ ‘I danced’.
Quintero (2004: 312)
Quintero notes that in Osage, all positionals can serve as basic continua-
tives distinguishing position, but individual forms have taken on specia-
lized implications: ‘moving’ auxiliaries imply that the action has been
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ongoing for some time, and the ‘standing’ continuative can convey immi-
nence, being on the verge of undertaking an activity (2004: 315).
The positional aspect markers now co-occur with lexical positional
verbs.
(44) Biloxi (Siouan)
a. Xe na˛ki.
sit sitting.cont
‘She is sitting (sitting).’
b. Tox ma˛ki.
lie lying.cont
‘He was lying (lying)
c. Si˛hi˛x ne.
stand stand.cont
‘It was standing (standing).’
Einaudi (1976: 154)
Kaufman (2013: 298) notes that in Biloxi, certain positionals were
coming to be routinely associated with particular entities: the sun,
forests, lakes and villages sit; rain, hens and rivers lie; thunder
moves.
Similar developments have occurred elsewhere in the Southeast to
varying degrees. In some languages, all of the positionals serve as durative/
continuative/progressive markers. In others, just one or two have become
specialized in this function.
(45) Creek (Muskogean)
a. Im-itita
ˆ:k-aha:ni-t apo
ˆ:ki-t o
´:-s.
dat.appl-get.ready-going.
to-same.subject
sit.pl-same.
subject
be-indic
‘They’re [sitting waiting] going to get ready.’
b. Ahı
ˆ:ci-t leyk-icki-n ye
´yc-al-i:-s
watch-same.subject sit.sg-2sg.agt arrive.sg-fut-dur-indic
‘Keep [sit] looking, and they’ll come.’
cAhkopan-ı
ˆ:t-t ał-ı˘:
n
p-at-i:-s.
play-spont-ss go.about.sg-spontaneous-ant-dur-indic
‘He kept on playing.’
Martin (2011: 304, 304, 443)
Martin notes that in their aspectual use, the forms based on ‘sit’ need not
involve actual sitting. The aspectual auxiliary in (46) based on apo
ˆ:k ‘sit pl’
could be translated as ‘settled down’.
(46) Creek (Muskogean)
Opa
´n-ka-ta:t ta
ˆyi: hı˘:
n
i-n opa:ni-t
dance.ger-foc be-dur very-diff.subj dance-same.subj
apo
ˆ:ki-t o
´mho:yi-n ...
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sit.pl-same.subj be-diff.subj
‘And as they were really beginning to dance, [he sat down].’
Martin (2011: 304)
The Natchez aspectual use of auxiliaries is less developed, but beginnings
can be seen. The motion verb ‘be about’ could be spatial in meaning or
temporal below.
(47) Natchez (isolate)
ʔohoti:nuhc cu:tahaw polos
ˇaL s
ˇupitine ...
ʔohoti:
nuh-c
cu:tahaw polo-s
ˇ-al-k s
ˇu-piti-ne
wildcat-erg rail split-hearsay-aux-
conn
hearsay-be.
about-when
‘When Wildcat was around splitting rails, so it is said, [Turkey
arrived].’
Kimball (2005: 386)
The Tunica positionals ‘sit’ and ‘lie’ are also used as aspectual markers.
With a basic verb they are stative or durative. With habitual aspect they
function as progressives.
(48) Tunica (isolate)
ka
´ta
˘n, ... tı
´tihtʔɛ hopı
´ʔurahc
ˇ
ka
´ta
˘ntı
´tihtʔɛ hopı
´-ʔu
´ra-hc
ˇ
where river get.out-m.sg.lie-subord
‘where a river came out’
Ta
´wis
ˇı˘hc
ˇhı
´s
ˇtaha wı
´c
ˇihkʔara
´ni.
ta-wis
ˇi-hc
ˇ-hı
´s
ˇtahaki wı
´c
ˇi-hk-ʔara-a
´ni
art-water-f.sg still rise-hab-f.sg.lie-hearsay
‘The water was still rising.’
Haas (1941: 50)
The Chitimacha ‘sit’ (neutral), ‘stand’ (vertical) and ‘lie’ (horizontal) posi-
tionals are also exploited for aspectual meanings.
(49) Chitimacha
a. ʔasi nanc’ip’u hikinakis
ˇ.
ʔasi nahc’ip’u hi-ki=nk=i=s
ˇ
man small sit-1sg.pat-loc=nzr-subord
‘When I was a boy’
b. k’ihkite hikin.
k’iht-ki-te hi-ki-n
want-1sg-ptcp sit-1sg.agt-cont
‘I am (sitting) wanting (it)’
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c. Teyk’is
ˇhiʔi.
tey-k’is
ˇhi-ʔi
sit-participle.same sit-3sg
‘He just sat (sitting) there.’
d. Nat’ik’is
ˇpekin.
nat’i-k’is
ˇpe-kin
lie-participle.same lie-1sg
‘I am (lying) lying down.’
Hieber (p.c.) from Swadesh texts A36d, A1b, A30d
The horizontal ‘lie’ auxiliary is often translated as an anterior.
(50) Chitimacha
a. Weʸpo: sek’is taps
ˇi:k’ c
ˇi
weʸpo: sekʔis taps
ˇi-k’ C
ˇi
that plant among be.standing-participial.same.subject stand
‘She had stood among those plants.’
b. Wetk kas tuhyt:k’ peʔanki
we-t-k ka tuhyte-:ik’ pe-ʔe=nk=i
dem-rfl-loc back stoop-participial lie-3sg=loc-nzr
‘When he had stooped down ...’
Swadesh (1939: 234, 255, text A30e)
The co-occurrence of the auxiliary hi- ‘sit’ with the lexical verb tey ‘sit’, the
auxiliary c
ˇi‘stand’ with the verb taps
ˇi- ‘stand’, and pe- with nat’i- ‘lie’
confirm their aspectual function.
The Chitimacha positionals have become still further grammaticalized
as elements of the verbal continuative aspect suffix, which consists of a
continuative element -ʔis
ˇ-plus a positional.
(51) Chitimacha continuative
Kow-ʔis
ˇ-c
ˇiʔi-ı
´
call-cont-standing-3sg
‘He stood calling.’
Swadesh (1939: 239)
Swadesh (1933) notes that the vertical (‘standing’) positional has developed
a refined or respectful connotation, and the horizontal (‘lying’) a deroga-
tory or disrespectful one.
The distribution of postural/positional constructions through the
Southeast raises intriguing questions about the mechanisms behind the
development of such areal traits. Postural distinctions originated in the
Siouan languages and were well-established in existential/locational, pos-
sessive, auxiliary, aspectual and demonstrative constructions in those
languages in the Southeast. Speakers of other Southeastern languages
apparently replicated the distinctions using native material. But without
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a philological record, the relative timing of developments can only be a
matter of conjecture.
It is not uncommon cross-linguistically for postural verbs to develop
into continuative/durative/progressive markers. Such developments
have been noted for Ngambay, Dieguen˜o, Alyawarra, Imonda, Kxoe,
Tatar, Tamil, Diola-Fogny, Mamvy, Nobiin, Tibetan and Kabyle, in addi-
tion to Siouan (Blansitt 1975; Bybee et al. 1994; Heine 1993; Kuteva 2001).
Kuteva proposes a sit/stand/lie auxiliation chain, with examples from
Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch and Bulgarian (2001: 43–74). The
postural verbs are first used with human subjects to specify the orienta-
tion of the human body in space (‘She is (sitting) over there’). Their
meanings include inherent stative semantics, or temporal ‘unbounded-
ness’. They can also appear in coordinate bi-clausal structures with co-
referential subjects (‘She is sitting on the couch and writing a letter’).
Next they are extended to express the canonical spatial position of phy-
sical objects (‘The clothes are (sitting) in the corridor’). Finally the inher-
ent temporal unboundedness becomes a focal feature, yielding
continuative/durative/progressive markers (perhaps first with inani-
mates and then animates), and the bi-clausal structure is reanalysed as
monoclausal.
Each of these stages persists in the Southeastern languages. Any of them
could have occurred in any of the languages in isolation. Given the geo-
graphical distribution, however, it is more likely that each was stimulated
and/or facilitated by contact. Bilinguals may have begun by simply increas-
ing the frequency of postural specification, with constructions that
already existed in the languages. Specification via auxiliary constructions
was not a big step, since auxiliary constructions already existed in the
languages at various stages of development (cf. Munro 1985 on
Muskogean). The Atakapa positional prefixes may have been stimulated
by contact with the neighbouring Caddo, which contains stem-initial sit/
stand/lie postural elements, cognate with other Caddoan languages out of
the area (Chafe 2005: 432; David Rood p.c.).
The result is what Heine and Kuteva (2005: 5.2.1) term a ‘grammaticali-
zation area’: ‘a group of geographically contiguous languages that have
undergone the same grammaticalization process as a result of language
contact.’
31.7 Conclusion
North America, with its vast territory, large numbers of languages and
genetic units, and diversity of environmental, social, cultural and lin-
guistic situations, provides an excellent arena for investigating the devel-
opment of linguistic areas. The strongest areas have emerged out of long-
term, intensive contact among small communities, in relatively densely
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populated areas with long-standing intermarriage practices and multi-
lingualism. Significantly, the traits that characterize these areas go
against many expectations about the relative ease of borrowing: vocabu-
lary > sounds > sound patterns > syntax > morphology. They generally
show little lexical borrowing, but often extensive parallelisms in abstract
structures that are deeply embedded in grammar. At least two kinds of
factors might be responsible.
Thefirstkindaresocialandcognitive. In many areas of North
America, there was a marked absence of extensive code-switching: so
far as is known, bilinguals worked hard to keep their languages apart,
often for social reasons. In some cases language was viewed as a sign of
identity, while in others it was simply socially appropriate to speak the
language of the community one was in. In both cases, attention was paid
to those aspects of language most accessible to consciousness, particu-
larly vocabulary choice. Second language speakers tend to focus on
vocabulary as well. Less attention was paid to tightly integrated gram-
matical constructions, particularly morphology, which tend to be less
accessible to consciousness and less isomorphic across unrelated
languages.
The second kind of factors involve the duration of contact. Some
parallelisms can develop relatively rapidly. A bilingual may copy an
inclusive/exclusive distinction in first person pronouns by simply com-
bining existing first and second person forms to create a new inclusive
form. Language learners may reanalyse a nominative/accusative system
as agent/patient or vice versa. Other parallelisms can develop more
gradually, often in layers. The early spread of predicate-initial order
can set the stage for certain kinds of complement constructions, like
the negation on the Northwest Coast. The early spread of predicate-
final order could facilitate the parallel development of auxiliary con-
structions. Grammatical parallelism can also arise simply from recur-
ring patterns of expression. Language communities differ not only in
what speakers are required to specify, but in what they tend to express
most often. Bilinguals might easily carry a propensity for elaboration of
manner, location or posture from one to another, exploiting native
lexical resources. They might carry over relative frequencies of stylistic
alternatives like subject selection without violating grammatical
norms. The recurring choices can become routinized and undergo
further integration into the grammar. Such grammaticalization pro-
cesses could occur in any of the languages in isolation, but they can
also be stimulated by ongoing contact, as speakers extend the uses of
constructions in one language on the model of the other, like specifica-
tion of position to continuative aspect in the Southeast.
There is much we will never know about the circumstances underlying
the emergence of linguistic areas, but we continue to discover routes by
which they can develop.
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The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics
Providing a contemporary and comprehensive look at the topical area of areal
linguistics, this book looks systematically at different regions of the world
whilst presenting a focused and informed overview of the theory behind
research into areal linguistics and language contact. The topicality of areal
linguistics is thoroughly documented by a wealth of case studies from all major
regions of the world and, with chapters from scholars with a broad spectrum of
language expertise, it offers insights into the mechanisms of external language
change. With no book currently like this in the market, The Cambridge Handbook
of Areal Linguistics will be welcomed by students and scholars working on the
history of language families, documentation and classification, and will help
readers to understand the key area of areal linguistics within a broader lin-
guistic context.
RAYMOND HICKEY is Professor of English Linguistics, University of Duisburg and
Essen, Germany. His main research interests are varieties of English (especially
Irish English and Dublin English) and general questions of language contact,
variation and change. Among his recent book publications are Motives for
Language Change (2003), Legacies of Colonial English (2004), Dublin English:
Evolution and Change (2005), Irish English: History and Present-day Forms (2007),
The Handbook of Language Contact (2010), Eighteenth-Century English (2010) and
The Sound Structure of Modern Irish (2014).
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cambridge handbooks in language and linguistics
Genuinely broad in scope, each handbook in this series provides a complete
state-of-the-field overview of a major sub-discipline within language study and
research. Grouped into broad thematic areas, the chapters in each volume
encompass the most important issues and topics within each subject, offering
a coherent picture of the latest theories and findings. Together, the volumes
will build into an integrated overview of the discipline in its entirety.
Published titles
The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology, edited by Paul de Lacy
The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Code-switching, edited by Barbara E. Bullock
and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio
The Cambridge Handbook of Child Language, Second Edition, edited by Edith L. Bavin
and Letitia Naigles
The Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages, edited by Peter K. Austin and
Julia Sallabank
The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics, edited by Rajend Mesthrie
The Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics, edited by Keith Allan and Kasia M.
Jaszczolt
The Cambridge Handbook of Language Policy, edited by Bernard Spolsky
The Cambridge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, edited by Julia
Herschensohn and Martha Young-Scholten
The Cambridge Handbook of Biolinguistics, edited by Cedric Boeckx and Kleanthes
K. Grohmann
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The Cambridge Handbook of Communication Disorders, edited by Louise Cummings
The Cambridge Handbook of Stylistics, edited by Peter Stockwell and Sara Whiteley
The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology, edited by N.J. Enfield, Paul
Kockelman and Jack Sidnell
The Cambridge Handbook of English Corpus Linguistics, edited by Douglas Biber and
Randi Reppen
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The Cambridge Handbook of Learner Corpus Research, edited by Sylviane Granger,
Gae¨ tanelle Gilquin and Fanny Meunier
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Pa¨ ivi Pahta
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Cook
Forthcoming
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Dekker
The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Typology, edited by Alexandra Aikhenvald
and R. M. W. Dixon
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The Cambridge
Handbook of Areal
Linguistics
Edited by
Raymond Hickey
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It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hickey, Raymond, 1954– editor.
The Cambridge handbook of areal linguistics / edited by Raymond Hickey.
Handbook of areal linguistics
Cambridge, United Kingdom : University Printing House, [2017] |
Series: Cambridge handbooks in language and linguistics
LCCN 2016024593 | ISBN 9781107051614
LCSH: Areal linguistics – Handbooks, manuals, etc. | Linguistic geography –
Handbooks, manuals, etc.
LCC P130 .C36 2017 | DDC 409–dc23
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ISBN 978-1-107-05161-4 Hardback
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Contents
List of Figures page vii
List of Maps viii
List of Tables xi
List of Contributors xvi
Preface xxvii
1 Areas, Areal Features and Areality Raymond Hickey 1
Part I Issues in Areal Linguistics 17
2 Why is it so Hard to Define a Linguistic Area? Lyle Campbell 19
3 Areas and Universals Balthasar Bickel 40
4 Reassessing Sprachbunds: A View from the Balkans
Victor A. Friedman and Brian D. Joseph 55
5 Areal Sound Patterns: From Perceptual Magnets to Stone
Soup Juliette Blevins 88
6 Convergence and Divergence in the Phonology of the Languages
of Europe Thomas Stolz and Nataliya Levkovych 122
7 Word Prominence and Areal Linguistics Harry van der Hulst,
Rob Goedemans and Keren Rice 161
8 Semantic Patterns from an Areal Perspective
Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm and Henrik Liljegren 204
Part II Case studies for areal linguistics 237
9 The Germanic Languages and Areal Linguistics Johan van der
Auwera and Danie
¨l Van Olmen 239
10 Britain and Ireland Raymond Hickey 270
11 Varieties of English Bernd Kortmann and Verena Schro¨ter 304
12 Slavic Languages Alan Timberlake 331
13 The Caucasus Sven Grawunder 356
14 Western Asia: Anatolia as a Transition Zone Geoffrey Haig 396
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15 An Areal View of Africa Bernd Heine and Anne-Maria Fehn 424
16 Areal Contact in Nilo-Saharan Gerrit J. Dimmendaal 446
17 Niger-Congo Languages Jeff Good 471
18 The Kalahari Basin Area as a ‘sprachbund’ Before the Bantu
Expansion Tom Gu
¨ldemann and Anne-Maria Fehn 500
19 South Africa and Areal Linguistics Rajend Mesthrie 527
20 Jharkhand as a ‘Linguistic Area’: Language Contact Between
Indo-Aryan and Munda in Eastern-Central South Asia John
Peterson 551
21 Sri Lanka and South India Umberto Ansaldo 575
22 The Transeurasian Languages Martine Robbeets 586
23 The Changing Profile of Case Marking in the Northeastern
Siberia Area Gregory D. S. Anderson 627
24 Languages of China in their East and Southeast Asian
Context Hilary Chappell 651
25 Language in the Mainland Southeast Asia Area N. J. Enfield 677
26 Southeast Asian Tone in Areal Perspective James Kirby and Marc
Brunelle 703
27 The Areal Linguistics of Australia Luisa Miceli and Alan Dench 732
28 Languages of the New Guinea Region Malcolm Ross 758
29 Languages of Eastern Melanesia Paul Geraghty 821
30 The Western Micronesian Sprachbund Anthony P. Grant 852
31 Native North American Languages Marianne Mithun 878
32 The Areal Linguistics of Amazonia Patience Epps and Lev
Michael 934
33 Linguistic Areas, Linguistic Convergence and River Systems in
South America Rik van Gijn, Harald Hammarstro¨ m, Simon van de
Kerke, Olga Krasnoukhova and Pieter Muysken 964
Index 997
vi Contents
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Figures
1.1 Increase in areality due to close contact page 4
1.2 Increase in areality due to language shift 4
1.3 Feature development: decrease in areality 5
1.4 Feature development: (coincidental) increase in areality 5
1.5 Levels of language and borrowing 6
8.1 The process of polysemy copying: Spanish verde and
Acatec yaas
ˇin the speech of Acatec–Spanish bilinguals
(after Smith-Stark 1994) 206
8.2 Lexico-constructional parallels: Mandarin chı
¯ya
´nand
Singlish eat salt 207
8.3 Palula spatial pro-forms 222
11.1 NeighborNet diagram: typological and areal clusters of 76
varieties, pidgins and creoles in eWAVE 2.0 308
11.2 Areal distinctiveness: strength of the geographical signal 326
13.1 Sub-inventory sizes and vowel/consonant ratio 369
16.1 Subclassification of Nilo-Saharan languages 447
16.2 Subclassification of Eastern Sudanic languages 459
21.1 Typological ecology and contact output 583
22.1 Family tree of the Transeurasian languages 617
27.1 Innovations in pronoun paradigms most likely reflecting
shared inheritance 743
27.2 Innovations in first person singular pronoun, proximal
and distal demonstratives, and the levelling of irregular
verbs 744
27.3 Innovation of accusative alignment, passive voice, and
switch-reference in subordinate clauses 747
31.1 Borrowability 892
32.1 NeighborNet representation of grammatical structures in
languages of the northwest Amazon, divided into four
groups 945
33.1 Bird versus water distance 982
33.2 Bird versus NP distance 983
33.3 Water versus NP distance 984
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Maps
5.1 Pre-glottalization in a micro-area of central Taiwan page 90
5.2 Areas on the Australian continent lacking contrastive
retroflexion 91
5.3 Glottalized consonants as an areal feature, arrow
pointing to Yurok 93
5.4 Final obstruent devoicing in Europe 95
5.5 Ejectives of the Caucasus region including Ossetic and
Eastern Armenian 102
5.6 General area of consonant retroflexion in South Asia 104
5.7 Front rounded vowels in Central and Western Europe,
including ‘edge’ languages Breton (NW), Souletin Basque
(SW), Albanian (SE), Finnish (NE) 106
5.8 Principal locations of pre- and post-aspiration in
Scandinavia and the North Atlantic (Helgason 2002: 3) 108
5.9a The modern distribution of Chamic languages (Thurgood
1999) 110
5.9b The modern distribution of Cham and Mon-Khmer
languages (Thurgood 1999) 111
5.10 Tone as an areal feature of Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast
Asia and New Guinea (Maddieson 2013d) 114
6.1 Absence of trills in European languages 131
6.2 Absence of affricates in European languages 133
6.3 Attested minority configurations (place of articulation,
Table 6.6) 135
6.4 Absence of majority configurations (place of articulation,
Table 6.6) 136
6.5 Absence of voice correlation with bilabials 141
6.6 Absence of voice correlation with uvulars 142
6.7 Absence of voice correlation with alveo-palatals/palatals/
velars 142
6.8 Absence of voice correlation with labio-dentals 143
6.9 Absence of voice correlation with palato-alveolars 143
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6.10 Phonemic secondary articulation 145
6.11 Presence of ranks 42–76 (Table 6.14) 149
6.12 Absence of ranks 1–10 (Table 6.13) 150
6.13 Attestation of minority configurations (ranks 42–76) and
absence of majority configurations (ranks 1–10) in
combination 151
7.1 Arnhem Land area with P, I and hybrids 192
13.1 The language families of the Caucasus, showing the main
branches 359
13.2 Types of phonation contrasts in obstruent series (N= 85) 371
13.3 Presence of common contrastive features: uvular place of
articulation, labialization, glottalic initiation (ejectives),
pharyngealization 373
13.4 Areal pockets (subareas) including the features of
palatalization, nasalization, gemination,
pharyngealization 379
13.5 A type frequency account of glottalic uvular stops in
wordlist sample (N= 86) of Nakh-Dagestanian languages 384
13.6 Relative measures for F0 of the following vowel of a stop
(lower panel); relative measures for voice onset time with
pulmonic, i.e. aspirated, versus ejective stops (upper
panel) 386
14.1 Approximate locations of the language varieties of East
Anatolia 397
15.1 Phonological zones in Africa according to Clements and
Rialland (2008) 426
15.2 The Macro-Sudan Belt: labial–velar consonants according
to Gu¨ ldemann (2008) 429
16.1 Nilo-Saharan languages 448
16.2 The Central Sudanic–Ubangi contact zone 449
16.3 The typological dichotomy within Northeastern Nilo-
Saharan languages 454
16.4 Languages allowing for post-verbal subjects (A-roles) 460
17.1 Distribution of Niger-Congo languages 472
17.2 Distribution of Bantu languages 473
20.1 Jharkhand and its neighbours 552
20.2 The major Indo-Aryan and Munda languages of eastern-
central South Asia and their general relative positions 554
20.3 The IA–Munda contact area: convergence patterns of the
investigated traits 569
25.1 Greater Mainland Southeast Asia: present day Cambodia,
Laos, Peninsular Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar and
Vietnam, along with China south of the Yangzi River,
Northeast India and Insular Southeast Asia 678
25.2 Core Mainland Southeast Asia: present day Cambodia,
Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, and neighbouring parts of
China, Malaysia and Myanmar 679
List of Maps ix
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27.1 Geographical extent of Pama-Nyungan and non-Pama-
Nyungan languages 734
27.2 The Pilbara: approximate locations of languages and
classification following O’Grady et al. (1966) 739
28.1 The New Guinea Region 760
28.2 Sunda and Sahul 40,000 years ago 761
28.3 Papuan lineages of East Nusantara and mainland New
Guinea 766
28.4 Papuan lineages of northwest island Melanesia 767
28.5 Microgroups within the Trans New Guinea family 772
28.6 Verb/object and adposition/NP in New Guinea Region
languages 787
28.7 Positions of verbal subject and object indices in New
Guinea Region languages 790
28.8 Clause-final negators in declarative realis verbal clauses
in New Guinea Region languages 793
28.9 Clause-chaining with and without switch-reference in
New Guinea Region languages 796
28.10 Possessum/possessor order in New Guinea Region
languages 798
28.11 Alignment of argument indices in New Guinea Region
languages 800
28.12 Tense- and mood-prominence in New Guinea Region
languages 803
29.1 The three main cultural and linguistic areas of the Pacific 825
30.1 Micronesia area of the Western Pacific 853
31.1 Culture areas of North America (Sturtevant 1988: ix) 879
31.2 Northwest Coast (Suttles 1990b: ix) 884
31.3 Plateau (Walker 1998: iii) 885
31.4 Northern and Central California (Heizer 1978: ix) 886
31.5 The Southeast of North America, sixteenth to eighteenth
centuries (Fogelson 2004a: ix) 888
31.6 The Southwest culture area: Ortiz (1983: ix) 889
32.1 Lowland South American contact zones 937
33.1 Ecological zones of South America: smaller regions
considered in the present study 979
33.2 River data and language locations in South America 980
33.3 The river path between the languages Hixkarya
´na and
Nhengatu 981
xList of Maps
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Tables
3.1 Estimated diachronic biases of NP order in families with
right-branching versus left-branching VPs, inside versus
outside Eurasia page 49
4.1 Distribution of infinitival markers 76
5.1 Radical phonological change in two Chamic languages:
Rade of South Vietnam, and Tsat of Hainan Island (based
on Thurgood 1999) 112
6.1 Unity and diversity with regard to airstream mechanism 129
6.2 Diversity in the realm of rhotics 131
6.3 Unity and diversity in the realm of laterals 132
6.4 Unity versus diversity with major places of articulation
(tongue positions) 134
6.5 Unity versus diversity with major places of articulation
(non-tongue positions) 134
6.6 Unity versus diversity with places of articulation (primary
subdivisions) 135
6.7 Unity versus diversity in the realm of phonation (manner
of articulation) 139
6.8 Unity versus diversity in the realm of phonation (place of
articulation) 140
6.9 Genetic affiliation of languages with phonemic secondary
articulations 144
6.10 Types of phonemic secondary articulations (statistics) 145
6.11 Secondary articulations and manner of articulation 146
6.12 Secondary articulations and place of articulation 146
6.13 Statistics of phonemic primary articulations which occur
in more than half of the sample languages 147
6.14 Statistics of phonemic primary articulations which occur
in less than half of the sample languages 148
6.15 Diversity within language families (manner of
articulation) 151
6.16 Diversity within language families (place of articulation) 152
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7.1 Arnhem Land hybrid stress languages 188
8.1 Calendrical expressions in Kamviri (Strand 2013),
Burushaski (Berger 1998: 103), Dameli (Morgenstierne
1942: 137–178; Emil Perder, personal communication)
and Balti (Read 1934: 30–31) 220
8.2 Numerals in Burushaski (isolate: Berger 1998: 100–101),
Balti (Tibeto-Burman: Bielmeier 1985; Read 1934: 24–25)
and Ashkun (Nuristani: Strand 2013) 220
8.3 Sets of pro-forms in GHK languages (Bashir 2003, 2009;
Berger 1998; Koul 2003; Strand 2013; Zemp 2013) 221
8.4 Extended (but incomplete) set of Kashmiri pro-forms
(Koul 2003) 221
8.5 Palula co-lexicalized intensifiers 223
10.1 Types of consonant lenition 277
10.2 West Saxon present-tense forms of ‘to be’ (after Campbell
1959: 349) 282
10.3 Middle Welsh present-tense forms of ‘to be’ (Evans 1976:
136) 283
10.4 Possible transfer features from Celtic (Brythonic) to
English 286
10.5 Aspectual distinctions for varieties of English 292
10.6 Classification of English habitual aspect in Britain and
Ireland 293
10.7 Category and exponence in Irish and Irish English 294
10.8 Suggested areal features in the regions of Celtic Englishes 295
11.1 Seventy-six L1 and L2 varieties, pidgins and creoles
represented in eWAVE 2.0 305
11.2 Domains of grammar covered in WAVE (235 features in
all) 309
11.3a Pronouns: top diagnostic features for individual world
regions 311
11.3b Pronouns: top diagnostic feature sets for individual world
regions 312
11.4 Noun phrase: top diagnostic features for individual world
regions 314
11.5 Tense and aspect: top diagnostic features for individual
world regions 315
11.6 Modal verbs: top diagnostic features for individual world
regions 315
11.7 Verb morphology: top diagnostic features for individual
world regions 316
11.8 Negation: top diagnostic features for individual world
regions 318
11.9 Agreement: top diagnostic features for individual world
regions 319
11.10 Relativization: top diagnostic features for individual
world regions 319
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11.11 Complementation: top diagnostic features for individual
world regions 320
11.12 Adverbial subordination: top diagnostic features for
individual world regions 320
11.13 Adverbs and prepositions: top diagnostic features for
individual world regions 321
11.14 Discourse and word order: top diagnostic features for
individual world regions 321
11.15 Overview: diagnostic areal features per grammatical
domain 322
11.16 Overview: list of most distinctive areal features per world
region 323
11.17 Diagnostic morphosyntactic features per Anglophone
world region 325
13.1 Languages of the wider Caucasus, combined from Hewitt
(1981) and Koryakov (2006) 358
14.1 Typical vowel systems in Iranian and Semitic languages of
Anatolia 402
14.2 Three-way VOT distinction on bilabial, alveolar and
dental stops, and affricates in Northern Kurdish 402
14.3 Copular constructions, third person singular, present
indicative 405
14.4 Word orders for direct object and goals in Anatolia 410
14.5 Marking the addressee of verbs of speech: areal changes
across Northern Kurdish 412
14.6 Patterns of WANT-complementization 414
14.7 Morphosyntactic features in languages of Anatolia 417
14.8 Possible shared features of a pan-Anatolian region 418
15.1 Linguistic zones in Africa 426
15.2 Marking of terms for ‘meat’ and ‘animal’ 436
15.3 Quantitative distribution of 11 typological properties
according to major world regions 438
16.1 Past tense markers in Luo and Kalenjin 464
18.1 The three lineages commonly subsumed under southern
African ‘Khoisan’ 502
18.2 Examples of three major patterns of lexical borrowing in
the Kalahari Basin 506
18.3 Polysemy in ‘experience’ perception verbs across the
Kalahari Basin 508
18.4 Clause-second elements in declarative clauses in Kalahari
Basin languages 512
18.5 Linguistic features shared across the Kalahari Basin 516
18.6 Kalahari Basin features shared by other local languages 517
19.1 Official languages of South Africa as first languages
(Census 2011) 528
20.1 Sadri-L1/L2andKhariaformsofthefirstpersons(=mʌn‘pl’) 561
20.2 The past tense in Sadri: kha- ‘eat’ (Nowrangi 1956: 93) 563
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20.3 Mundari enclitic person/number markers (based on
Osada 2008: 120) 564
20.4 The Santali existential/locative copula (non-negated)
(adapted from Neukom 2001: 168) 566
20.5 The Santali existential/locative copula (negated) (adapted
from Neukom 2001: 170) 567
20.6 The identificational copula in Sadri 568
20.7 The existential/locative copula in Sadri 568
21.1 Case in Sri Lanka Malay, Sinhala and Lankan Tamil 580
21.2 Lankan features of recent contact languages in Sri Lanka 580
22.1 Feature values for selected Transeurasian languages along
with their historical stages 611
22.2 Feature values for representative neighbouring languages 612
23.1 Languages of Native Siberia 629
23.2 Self-reported ethnic identity of Native Siberians 1959–2010643
23.3 Self-reported percentage of language use in censuses
1959–2002 644
24.1 The Sinitic branch of Sino-Tibetan 656
24.2 Tendencies in Sinitic languages according to Hashimoto’s
north/south division 658
24.3 Gender affixes in three languages spoken in Nanning,
Guangxi (de Sousa 2015) 665
25.1 A breakdown of numbers of languages in MSEA,
separated into language families 682
26.1 Tones in Khmu dialects (after Suwilai Premsrirat 2001) 706
26.2 Possible phonetic correlates of register 707
26.3 ‘Tone’ in Burmese (examples and notation from Watkins
2001) 708
26.4 Contrasting tones and phonation types in Mpi (after
Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996: 316) 711
26.5 Haudricourt’s schematic view of Vietnamese tonogenesis 716
26.6 Examples of Hu tonogenesis from vowel length (after
Svantesson 1989) 717
27.1 Reconstructed demonstrative stems 745
27.2 Paradigm reflexes of the *pa- mid-distal demonstrative
(see Dench 2007) 746
27.3 Structural isomorphism in Lemerig and Koro 750
28.1 A tentative listing of Papuan lineages 763
28.2 WALS variables distinguishing Austronesian and West
Papuan from the other non-Austronesian languages 770
28.3 Typological clustering of NGR languages (after Reesink,
Singer and Dunn 2009: 5) 774
28.4 Variables used to investigate NGR areality and their
assignment to two types A and B 777
28.5 Morphosyntactic ordering variables: dominant values by
lineage 778
28.6 Semantic encoding variables: dominant values by lineage 780
28.7 Key to lineage symbols in Maps 28.6–28.12 784
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29.1 Oceanic languages with words beginning in /a/, /e/, /o/ and
/n/ 840
29.2 Southern Vanuatu languages with words beginning in /a/,
/e/, /o/ and /n/ 840
29.3 Indicators of post-linguistic areas in Eastern Melanesia 844
30A.1 Sources of loans in the languages of Western Micronesia 868
30A.2 Some areal-typological phonological features in selected
Western Micronesian languages 870
30A.3 Some structural parallels in Western Micronesian
languages 872
32.1 Similar classifier forms in Guapore
´-Mamore
´languages
(van der Voort 2005: 397) 948
33.1 Features used to classify the languages of the Amazon 968
33.2 Features of the Colombian–Central America area in
Constenla-Uman˜ a (1991) 969
33.3 Ecological zones of South America: regions, locations and
sample languages 978
33.4 Convergence of the NP profile in different areas of South
America 985
33.5 How ‘riverine’ are the NP features? 987
33A.1 Areal linguistics of South America: the language sample 991
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Contributors
Gregory D. S. Anderson is Lead Scientist and President at the Living
Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages and Research Fellow at the
University of South Africa (UNISA). His main research interests are
linguistic typology and historical linguistics, with particular focus on
the languages of Siberia, Papua New Guinea, Africa, and the Munda and
Tibeto-Burman languages of India. Recent publications include his
monograph on Auxiliary Verb Constructions, as well as articles on
Indian linguistics, language and education, and studies on African
linguistics, linguistic typology and Oceanic linguistics. Current research
projects include descriptive grammars with text collections and
dictionaries for the Munda language Gta’ of India and the Turkic
language Xyzyl of Siberia, a monograph on language extinction,
electronic online dictionaries and ethno-biological compendia for
several languages of Papua New Guinea.
Umberto Ansaldo is Professor of Linguistics at The University of Hong
Kong. His interests include contact linguistics, linguistic typology and
language evolution. He specializes in languages of East, South and
Southeast Asia as well as pidgin and creole studies. His most recent
publication is Languages in Contact (with Lisa Lim, 2015).
Johan Van Der Auwera is Professor of English and General Linguistics at
the University of Antwerp in Belgium. His main research interests are
the grammar and the semantics of modality, mood, negation and
indefiniteness, both from language-specific, areal and typological as
well as synchronic and diachronic perspectives. Publications relevant to
this chapter include The Germanic Languages (with Ekkehard Ko¨ nig,
1994), ‘English do: on the convergence of languages and linguists’ (with
Inge Genee, English Language and Linguistics 6, 283–307, 2002), The
Languages and Linguistics of Europe: A Comprehensive Guide (with
Bernd Kortmann, 2011) and ‘Modality and mood in Standard Average
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European’ in The Oxford Handbook of Mood and Modality, edited by Jan
Nuyts and Johan van der Auwera (with Danie¨ l Van Olmen, 2016).
Balthasar Bickel holds the Chair of General Linguistics at the University
of Zu¨rich. Before this, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University
of California, Berkeley, and then a professor of general linguistics at the
University of Leipzig. His core interests are the regional and universal
factors shaping the distribution of linguistic diversity over time. For this,
Bickel applies methods ranging from the statistical analysis of
typological databases and corpora to ethnolinguistic fieldwork and
experimental methods. A special focus area is the Himalayas, where
Bickel has been engaged in interdisciplinary projects on endangered
languages and developing and analysing corpora of them. He has been
editor of the journal Studies of Language and co-edited the volume
Language Typology and Historical Contingency (2013).
Juliette Blevins is Professor of Linguistics at The Graduate Center, City
University of New York, and was previously a senior research scientist at
the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. Her
main research interests are sound patterns and sound change, with a
special focus on phonological typology, as detailed in her chapter
‘Evolutionary Phonology: A holistic approach to sound change
typology’, in the Oxford Handbook of Historical Phonology (2015). She is
currently working on a new reconstruction of Proto-Basque.
Marc Brunelle is Associate Professor in Linguistics at the University of
Ottawa. His main research interests are the phonetics and phonology of
Southeast Asian languages, with a special emphasis on tones and
prosody. His research mostly focuses on Vietnamese and Eastern Cham.
His work has been published in a variety of journals including Journal of
Phonetics, Phonetica, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,
Diachronica and the Linguistic Review.
Lyle Campbell (PhD, University of California, Los Angeles), Professor of
Linguistics, University of Hawai‘i, Ma
¯noa, has held appointments in
anthropology, behavioural research, Latin American studies, linguistics,
and Spanish, and has taught in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Finland,
Germany, Mexico, New Zealand and Spain. His specializations are:
languages documentation, historical linguistics, American Indian
languages, and typology. He has published 20 books and about 200
articles, and won the Linguistic Society of America’s ‘Leonard
Bloomfield Book Award’ twice, for American Indian Languages (1997)
and Historical Syntax in Cross-linguistics Perspective (with Alice Harris,
1995). His current projects include the Catalogue of Endangered
Languages (www.endangeredlanguages.com) and documentation of
several indigenous languages of Latin America.
Hilary Chappell holds a Research Chair as Professor in Linguistic
Typology of East Asian Languages at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en
Sciences Sociales in Paris, an appointment she took up in 2005 after
List of Contributors xvii
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teaching in the Linguistics Department at La Trobe University in
Melbourne for 18 years. She was originally awarded her doctoral degree
in 1984 by the Australian National University in Canberra for her thesis,
A Semantic Analysis of Passive, Causative and Dative Constructions in
Standard Chinese, and has over 60 publications on Chinese linguistics
and typology, with a book, A Grammar and Lexicon of Hakka (with
Christine Lamarre), and four edited volumes, including The Grammar of
Inalienability (with William McGregor, 1996), Sinitic Grammar:
Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives (2001) and Diversity in Sinitic
languages (2015). Her main research interests are (1) rethinking the
typological profile of Sinitic languages on the basis of in-depth
explorations of their diversity, and (2) studying the diachronic grammar
of the Southern Min or Hokkien dialect, using a corpus of late sixteenth
and early seventeenth century materials.
Alan Dench is Pro Vice-Chancellor of Humanities at Curtin University,
Western Australia. His principal area of expertise lies in the
documentation and grammatical description of Australian Aboriginal
languages, especially those of Western Australia. He has written
grammars of three languages of the Pilbara – Panyjima, Martuthunira
and Yingkarta – and is working towards a description of Nyamal. In
addition to primary grammatical description he has made contributions
to the historical and comparative analysis of Australian languages, and
has written in the general area of ethnolinguistics. His work also
includes contributions to studies of language contact.
Gerrit J. Dimmendaal is Professor of African Studies at the University of
Cologne. His main research interests are the comparative study of
African languages, language typology and anthropological linguistics.
Recent publications include Historical Linguistics and the Comparative
Study of African Languages (2011), Number: Constructions and
Semantics. Case Studies from Africa, Amazonia, India and Oceania (with
Anne Storch, 2014) and The Leopard’s Spots: Essays on Language,
Cognition and Culture (2015).
N. J. Enfield is Professor and Chair of Linguistics at the University of
Sydney, and a Research Associate at the Max Planck Institute for
Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. His research on
language and cognition in social and cultural context is based on long-
term field work in Mainland Southeast Asia, especially Laos. His books
include A Grammar of Lao (2007), Dynamics of Human Diversity: The
Case of Mainland Southeast Asia (2011), The Cambridge Handbook of
Linguistic Anthropology (with Paul Kockelman and Jack Sidnell, 2014)
and Mainland Southeast Asian Languages: The State of the Art (with
Bernard Comrie, 2015).
Patience Epps is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of
Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on indigenous languages of
Amazonia, particularly involving description/documentation and the
xviii List of Contributors
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study of language contact and change. Recent publications include A
Grammar of Hup (2008) and articles in Linguistic Typology,
International Journal of American Linguistics, Journal of Ethnobiology
and Journal of Language Contact.
Anne-maria Fehn is a research fellow at InBIO-CIBIO Porto and also
affiliated to the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology
Leipzig. She holds a PhD in African Studies from the University of
Cologne and has been a part of the ‘Kalahari Basin Area’ project of the
EUROCORES programme EuroBABEL, which was hosted at the
Humboldt University of Berlin. Her research interests include language
documentation and areal linguistics. She is currently working on
‘Khoisan’ languages of Botswana and Angola, and on varieties of Himba
and Kuvale spoken in southwestern Angola.
Victor A. Friedman (PhD, University of Chicago, 1975) is Andrew W.
Mellon Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Linguistics
at the University of Chicago, where he also holds an associate
appointment in the Department of Anthropology. He is also Director of
Chicago’s Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies and
president of the US National Committee of the International Association
for Southeast European Studies. He has held Guggenheim, Fulbright-
Hays, ACLS, IREX, NEH and other fellowships. His publications include
The Grammatical Categories of the Macedonian Indicative (1977; second
revised edition, 2014), Turkish in Macedonia and Beyond (2003), Studies
in Albanian and Other Balkan Languages (2004), Oc
ˇerki lakskogo jazyka
(2011), and Makedonistic
ˇki Studii (2011), as well as more than 200
scholarly articles. His main research interests are grammatical
categories and sociolinguistic issues related to contact, standardization,
ideology and identity in the languages of the Balkans and the Caucasus.
Paul Geraghty graduated from Cambridge with an MA in Modern
Languages (French and German), and earned his PhD from the University
of Hawai‘i with a dissertation on the history of the Fijian languages. He
was Director of the Institute of Fijian Language and Culture in Suva from
1986 to 2001, and is currently Associate Professor in Linguistics at the
University of the South Pacific and Adjunct Associate Professor at the
University of New England in Australia. He is author and editor of
several books, including The History of the Fijian Languages (1983),
Fijian Phrasebook (1994), Borrowing: A Pacific Perspective (with Jan
Tent, 2004) and The Macquarie Dictionary of English for the Fiji Islands
(2006) and numerous articles in professional journals and newspapers
on Fijian and Pacific languages, culture and history. He is also well
known in Fiji as a newspaper columnist and radio and TV presenter.
Rik Van Gijn is postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zu¨ rich. His
main research interests are South American languages, areal typology,
morphology and complex sentences. Recent publications include co-
edited volumes Subordination Strategies in Native South American
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Languages (2011) and Information Structure and Reference Tracking in
Complex Sentences (2014). Current research projects look at areal
distributions of subordination strategies and morphological patterns.
Rob Goedemans is presently employed as Editor-in-Chief and
ICT&Education coordinator at the Humanities Faculty of Leiden
University. He is associated with the Leiden University Centre for
Linguistics as a guest researcher. His main research interests are the
phonology, phonetics and typology of stress and accent. He is currently
involved in a research project, funded by the Dutch National Science
Foundation, with Harry van der Hulst (University of Connecticut) and
Jeff Heinz (University of Delaware). The goal of this project is to merge
and enhance two large databases on stress to facilitate the advance of
research in stress typology.
Jeff Good is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University at Buffalo.
His research interests centre around comparative Benue-Congo
linguistics, morphosyntactic typology, and the documentation of
underdescribed Bantoid languages. His recent publications include The
Linguistic Typology of Templates (2015) and articles in Language,
Morphology, Diachronica, Studies in Language, the Journal of Pidgin and
Creole Languages, and Language Documentation and Conservation. He
is currently heading a research project investigating the relationship
between multilingualism and language change in rural areas of the
Cameroonian Grassfields.
Anthony P. Grant is Professor of Historical Linguistics and Language
Contact at Edge Hill University, having studied at York under Robert Le
Page, defending his PhD at the University of Bradford in 1995 on
Agglutinated Nominals in Creole French, and having previously worked
at the Universities of Manchester, Sheffield, Southampton and St
Andrews. A native Bradfordian and author of over four dozen books,
articles and chapters, his special research interests are Native North
American languages, Austronesian languages, Romani, creoles and
pidgins, and issues in language documentation. He is editor of the
forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Language Contact, and is completing
a monograph on intimate language contact.
Sven Grawunder has been working since 2005 as a postdoctorate
researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in
Leipzig. His main research topics are phonetic motivations of sound
change with an areal perspective, and voice (production and perception)
from an evolutionary perspective. Current projects involve the
assessment of phonetic speaker variability in processes of neutralization
as well as areal phonetic typology of glottalization, ejective stops,
germination, palatalization and pharyngealization (mainly) in
languages of the Caucasus.
Tom Gu
¨ldemann is Professor of African Linguistics at the Department of
African Studies of the Humboldt University of Berlin. His main research
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interests are language description and typology as well as historical and
areal linguistics. Major publications include Quotative Indexes in
African Languages: A Synchronic and Diachronic Survey (2008) and
Beyond ‘Khoisan’: Historical Relations in the Kalahari Basin (with Anne-
Maria Fehn, 2015). Current research projects deal with macro-areal
linguistics in Africa in general and the linguistic and population history
of southern Africa in particular.
Geoffrey Haig is Professor of General Linguistics at the Institute for
Oriental Studies at the University of Bamberg. His main areas of research
are the languages of the Middle East with a focus on Iranian languages,
areal linguistics, documentary linguistics, and language typology, in
particular corpus-based typology.
Harald Hammarstro¨mstudied Computer Science and Linguistics at the
University of Uppsala (1997–2003). He then went on to do a PhD in
Computational Linguistics at Chalmers University (2004–2009), focusing
on computational models that cater to diverse kinds of languages. In his
postdoctoral work he started documentation of the endangered
language isolate Mor in Papua, Indonesia. At present he is research staff
at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, where he
is engaged in empirical and computational approaches to linguistic
diversity, genealogical/areal relationships and language universals.
Bernd Heine is Emeritus Professor at the Institute of African Studies
(Institut fu¨ r Afrikanistik), University of Cologne, Germany. He is
presently Yunshan Chair Professor at Guangdong University of Foreign
Studies, China. His 33 books include Possession: Cognitive Sources,
Forces, and Grammaticalization (1997), Auxiliaries: Cognitive Forces
and Grammaticalization (1993), Cognitive Foundations of Grammar
(1997); with Derek Nurse, African Languages: An Introduction (2000),
A Linguistic Geography of Africa (2008); with Tania Kuteva, World
Lexicon of Grammaticalization (2002), Language Contact and
Grammatical Change (2005),The Changing Languages of Europe (2006),
The Genesis of Grammar: A Reconstruction (2007). He has held visiting
professorships and appointments in several countries in Europe,
Eastern Asia, Australia, Africa, North America and South America. His
present main research areas are discourse grammar and
grammaticalization theory.
Raymond Hickey is Professor of English Linguistics at the University of
Duisburg and Essen. His main research interests are varieties of English,
Late Modern English and general questions of language contact,
variation and change. Recent book publications include Motives for
Language Change (2003), A Sound Atlas of Irish English (2004), Legacies
of Colonial English (2004), Dublin English. Evolution and Change (2005),
Irish English. History and Present-day Forms (2007), The Handbook of
Language Contact (2010), Eighteenth-Century English (2010), Varieties
of English in Writing (2010), Areal Features of the Anglophone World
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(2012), The Sound Structure of Modern Irish (2014) and A Dictionary of
Varieties of English (2014).
Harry Van Der Hulst is Professor in Linguistics at the University of
Connecticut. His main area of research is phonology (of both spoken and
sign languages). He is the author of Syllable Structure and Stress in
Dutch () and The Phonological Structure of Words: An Introduction (with
Colin Ewen, 2001) as well as some 26 edited books and 150 articles/book
chapters. He is also the editor-in-chief of The Linguistic Review (since
1990).
Brian D. Joseph is Distinguished University Professor of Linguistics and
The Kenneth E. Naylor Professor of South Slavic Linguistics at The Ohio
State University, where he has taught since 1979. He received his PhD
from Harvard University in 1978, writing his dissertation on syntactic
change between Medieval and Modern Greek. Brian Joseph specializes in
historical linguistics, Greek linguistics, and Balkan linguistics, and has
published extensively in these areas, including the monograph The
Synchrony and Diachrony of the Balkan Infinitive: A Study in Areal,
General, and Historical Linguistics (1983). He served as editor of
Diachronica from 1999 to 2001 and as editor of Language from 2002 to
2008.
Simon Van De Kerke is a retired senior lecturer at Leiden University and
a specialist in the indigenous languages of Bolivia. He wrote his thesis on
the morphological structure of the verb in Bolivian Quechua. Currently
he is working on Pukina and Leko in particular. He wrote the
grammatical sketches of these languages for the first volume of the
Lenguas de Bolivia series (edited by Emily Irene Crevels and Pieter
Muysken; the sketch of Pukina with Willem Adelaar as co-author).
James Kirby has been a Lecturer in Phonetics at the University of
Edinburgh since 2011. His research is on the phonetic and phonological
underpinnings of sound change, with particular attention to
tonogenesis and the phonetic mechanisms underpinning the
realization of tone and voice quality.
Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm is Professor of Linguistics at Stockholm
University. She has published extensively on various aspects of
semantically oriented typology, combining synchronic and diachronic
approaches across many languages. A large portion of her work focuses
on the interplay between lexical and grammatical semantics. An
important direction in her work has been areal typology, with the main
focus on the European and, particularly, the circum-Baltic languages:
see The Circum-Baltic Languages: Typology and Contact (with O
¨sten
Dahl, 2001). More recent publications include New Directions in Lexical
Typology (special issue of Linguistics, 2013, co-edited with Martine
Vanhove) and The Linguistics of Temperature (2015).
Bernd Kortmann is Full Professor in English Language and Linguistics at
the University of Freiburg, Germany, and Director of the Freiburg
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Institute for Advanced Studies. His main research interests include the
areal typology of Europe, grammaticalization, language complexity, and
grammatical variation across non-standard varieties of English. His
publications include four monographs, nine edited volumes, two
handbooks, one print and one open-access online atlas on grammatical
variation in the Anglophone world (2012/2013), and about 90 research
articles and reviews in journals and collective volumes. He is co-editor of
the journal English Language and Linguistics and co-editor of two
international book series.
Olga Krasnoukhova received her PhD at the Centre for Language Studies
of Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Her main research
interests are linguistic typology, morphology and noun phrase. Her PhD
thesis focuses on noun phrase structure in indigenous South American
languages. Her other publications deal with such topics as attributive
possession and the typology of demonstratives in South American
languages.
Nataliya Levkovych is Lecturer in General Linguistics at the University of
Bremen. Her main research interests are language contact, areal
linguistics and typology. Recent publications include Po-russki in
Deutschland: Russisch und Deutsch als Konkurrenten in der
Kommunikation mehrsprachiger Gruppen von Personen mit
postsowjetischem Hintergrund in Deutschland (2012).
Henrik Liljegren is Researcher in Linguistics at Stockholm University. He
is a co-founder of Forum for Language Initiatives, a resource and training
centre for the many language communities in Pakistan’s mountainous
north, where he carried out linguistic fieldwork, primarily in the Indo-
Aryan Palula community. His main research interests are areal-linguistic
typology, Indo-Iranian languages (in particular in the northwest of the
Indian subcontinent), case alignment, phonology and lexicography. He
has also been engaged in revitalization efforts, mentoring language
activists in local communities. He is presently leading a Swedish
Research Council project, investigating language contact and
relatedness in the Hindu Kush region.
Rajend Mesthrie is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Cape
Town where he teaches sociolinguistics, including language contact and
variation. He was head of the Linguistics Section (1998–2009), and
currently holds a National Research Foundation research chair in
migration, language and social change. He was President of the
Linguistics Society of Southern Africa (2002–2009) and co-editor of
English Today (2008–2012). Amongst his book publications are
Introducing Sociolinguistics (with Joan Swann, Ana Deumert and
William Leap, 2009), Language in South Africa (2002), A Dictionary of
South African Indian English (2010) and The Cambridge Handbook of
Sociolinguistics (2011).
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Luisa Miceli is an Associate Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of
Western Australia. Her research interests include methodological issues
in historical linguistics, the role of bilingualism in language change, and
Australian languages (in particular Pama-Nyungan languages). She is
currently collaborating on a research project investigating bilingual-led
form differentiation in language contact.
Lev Michael is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of
California, Berkeley. With a methodological grounding in language
documentation, his research focuses on the sociocultural dimensions of
grammar and language use, typology, language contact in South
America, and the historical linguistics of Arawak, Tupı
´-Guaranı
´, and
Zaparoan languages. His recent publications include Evidentiality in
Interaction (with Janis Nuckolls, 2012) and Negation in Arawak
Languages (with Tania Granadillo, 2014).
Marianne Mithun is Professor of Linguistics at the University of
California, Santa Barbara. Her main research interests are morphology,
syntax, discourse, prosody, and their interrelations; language contact
and language change; typology and universals; language
documentation; North American Indian linguistics; and Austronesian
linguistics. Among her major publications is The Languages of Native
North America (1999).
Pieter Muysken is Professor of Linguistics at Radboud University
Nijmegen, the Netherlands. His main research interests are language
contact, Andean linguistics, and Creole studies. Recent publications
include The Native Languages of South America: Origins, Development,
Typology (with Loretta O’Connor, 2014) and Surviving Middle Passage:
The West Africa–Surinam Sprachbund (with Norval Smith, 2014). Earlier
books include The Languages of the Andes (Willem Adelaar with Pieter
Muysken 2004).
John Peterson is Professor in General Linguistics at the University of Kiel
in Germany. His areas of specialization include language description,
especially with respect to the Munda and Indo-Aryan languages of
eastern-central India, multilingualism and linguistic theory. He is editor
of the series Brill’s Studies in South and Southwestern Asian Languages
(BSSAL) and is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of South
Asian Languages and Linguistics.
Keren Rice is University Professor and Canada Research Chair in
Linguistics and Aboriginal Studies at the University of Toronto. Her
major research interests are in phonology (with a focus on markedness),
morphology, indigenous languages of North America (in particular Dene
[Athabaskan] languages), and fieldwork. Recent publications include
papers on accent systems in North American indigenous languages,
accent and language contact in North America, derivational morphology
in Athabaskan languages, and sounds in grammar writing. She is one of
the co-editors of the Blackwell Companion to Phonology.
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Martine Robbeets is Associate Professor of Japanese Linguistics at Leiden
University. Her main research interests are historical comparative
linguistics, areal linguistics, diachronic typology, grammaticalization
theory, morphology and interdisciplinary research of linguistic
prehistory. Recent publications include Diachrony of Verb Morphology:
Japanese and the Other Transeurasian Languages (2015) and various
edited volumes such as Copies versus Cognates in Bound Morphology
(with Lars Johanson, 2012), Shared Grammaticalization (with Hubert
Cuyckens, 2013) and Paradigm Change (with Walter Bisang, 2014). Since
September 2015 she has been conducting an interdisciplinary research
project on the dispersal of the Transeurasian languages, funded by a
Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council.
Malcolm Ross is Emeritus Professor in Linguistics at the Australian
National University, where he held various positions from 1986 until his
retirement in 2007. His main research interests are the histories of the
languages of New Guinea and the Pacific, the study of language contact,
and the methodologies of historical linguistics. Recent articles have
appeared in Oceanic Linguistics, the Journal of Historical Linguistics and
the Journal of Language Contact. He is co-editor with Andrew Pawley and
Meredith Osmond of the volumes (four to date) of The Lexicon of Proto
Oceanic. Current research projects include the Oceanic Lexicon Project
(reconstructing the lexicon of the language ancestral to the Oceanic
group of Austronesian languages) and reconstructing the history of the
Trans New Guinea family of Papuan languages.
Verena Schro¨ ter studied English language and literature and philosophy
at the University of Freiburg, and completed her MA in 2010. She is a
part-time lecturer at the English Department of the University of
Freiburg, and is currently working on her PhD, exploring
morphosyntactic variation in Southeast Asian varieties of English.
Thomas Stolz is Full Professor of General and Comparative Linguistics at
the University of Bremen (Germany). His main research interests are
areal linguistics, language contact, morphology and language typology.
Recent publications include Competing Comparative Constructions in
Europe (with Sander Lestrade and Christel Stolz, 2013), The
Crosslinguistics of Zero-marking of Spatial Relations (2014), articles in
Linguistics, Studies in Language, Sprachtypologie und
Universalienforschung. Current research projects include the areal
linguistics and typology of spatial interrogatives as well as the
morphosyntax of place names in cross-linguistic perspective.
Alan Timberlake is Professor of Slavic Linguistics and Director of the East
Central European Center at Columbia University. A long-term research
concern of his is the integration of sociolinguistic/communicative
approaches and structural analysis. Recent publications include two
articles on historical syntax for the volume on Slavic languages in the
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series Handbu¨ cher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft and
three studies on the legends of Wenceslaus of Bohemia.
Danie
¨l Van Olmen is lecturer in historical linguistics and linguistic
typology at Lancaster University. His main research interests are tense,
mood, modality and pragmatic markers from a West Germanic,
Standard Average European and typological perspective.
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Preface
The current book aims at presenting a focused and clearly structured
volume on a topical field of linguistics, that of areal linguistics. This relates
to many other fields such as language contact, typology and historical
linguistics, to mention the three most directly involved. However, areal
linguistics is more than each of these, and unifies research into how
languages come to share features diachronically and the manner in
which this takes place. Areal linguistics is thus both an intersection
between different subfields of linguistics and a domain of research in its
own right.
For the current book a team of forty-seven scholars came together to
discuss issues surrounding areal linguistics in their particular fields of
expertise. The editor is grateful to these colleagues for agreeing to con-
tribute to this volume, helping to make it a comprehensive and linguisti-
cally insightful work on a topical subject in present-day linguistics.
In the preparation of this book Helen Barton, commissioning editor for
linguistics at Cambridge University Press, was a great source of assistance
and encouragement and ready to answer any questions which arose in the
course of the project, so my thanks also go to her and her colleagues at the
press, as well as to my copy-editor Glennis Starling, who all worked as a
team to transform the manuscripts of authors into finished products in
print.
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