Category: Typological Paper of the Week

Good evening, afternoon, or morning to you, people of r/conlangs. Today's Saturday, and that means it's time for another typological paper! Once again, there will be some prompts for you to discuss in the comments.

---

Verbal allocutivity in a crosslinguistic perspective (Antonov)

This week's paper was again brought to me by u/PyrolatrousCoagulate, thank you for that! Allocutivity is an often overlooked but nevertheless very interesting grammatical phenomenon in which in certain circumstances, an addressee who is not an argument of the verb is systematically encoded in all declarative main clause conjugated verb forms. It was first described for Basque, but similar phenomena have been observed in Pumé, Nambikwara, Mandan and Beja. The paper linked above aims to propose a typology of verbal allocutivity. A prototypical example featuring allocutivity from Basque would be Bilbora noa "I am going to Bilbao.", Bilbora noak "I am going to Bilbao." (male addressee) and Bilbora noan "I am going to Bilbao." (female addressee). Now, let's move onto the prompts:

• Does your language feature verbal allocutivity?
  • If so, how does it interact with other morphosyntactic categories such as person, TAM or evidentiality?
  • Are there any interesting lexicalization processes going on with respect to allocutivity?
  • Are there any restrictions regarding which predicates may be marked for allocutivity?
  • What are the loci of allocutivity in your language? Does it appear on a sentence- or a word-level?

Remember to try to comment on other people's languages

---

Submit your papers here!

So, that's about it for this week's edition. See you next Saturday, and happy conlanging!

Good evening, afternoon, or morning to you, people of r/conlangs. Today's Saturday, and that means it's time for another typological paper! Once again, there will be some prompts for you to discuss in the comments.

---

Towards a Semantic Typology of Adversative and Contrast Marking (Malchukov)

After a short holiday break, I am back with the weekly linguistic papers! This one, submitted by u/mareck_, presents a typology of adversative constructions, such as those introduced by English but and Russian но. Now onto the prompts:

• How are adversative clauses constructed in your language? Does it use conjunctions, affixes, or sth. else entirely?
• The paper describes some semantic connections adversative marking can exhibit. Are any of those present in your language? Are there any connections that aren't described in the paper, but are still used in your language?
• If you considered diachrony while creating your language, how did adversative constructions arise? Any fun historical processes going on there?

Remember to try to comment on other people's languages

---

Submit your papers here!

So, that's about it for this week's edition. See you next Saturday, and happy conlanging!

Good evening, afternoon, or morning to you, people of r/conlangs. Today's Saturday, and that means it's time for another typological paper! Once again, there will be some prompts for you to discuss in the comments.

---

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays! Since Christmas has been keeping me busy lately, I didn't really have the time or energy to choose a paper, so today we'll be doing the whole TyPoW thingy without the P. In this week's edition you'll be able to talk about the way your conspeakers deal with festivities! Now onto the propmts:

• Do your conspeakers celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah or any other important cultural event?
  • What are some important words that are contained within that semantic field?
  • Are there any prominent morphosyntactic constructions that are commonly used while celebrating? (E.g. Optatives for wishes etc.)
  • Are there any interesting pragmatic/discourse-level phenomena relating to festivities (E.g. a special ritual register etc.)

Remember to try to comment on other people's languages

---

Submit your papers here!

So, that's about it for this week's edition. See you next Saturday, and happy conlanging!

Good evening, afternoon, or morning to you, people of r/conlangs. Today's Saturday, and that means it's time for another typological paper! Once again, there will be some prompts for you to discuss in the comments.

---

Morphology in the wrong place: A survey of preposed enclitics (Cysouw)

This week's paper is another one submitted by u/PyrolatrousCoagulate! It talks about a certain phenomenon related to morphology, viz. preposed enclitics. In this week's edition you can talk about how your language handles clitics, and since every language handles them differently, you're free to use your own (convincing) definitions. If you really have no clue what a clitic is, you can check out this short paper to get a rough overview. Now onto the prompts:

• Does your language distinguish between clitics and affixes?
  • Are there ditropic clitics in your language?
• Are there any other types of morphemes besides those two?
• How does the distinction between clitics and affixes manifest phonologically and/or syntactically?
• Which grammatical categories are encoded by clitics, and which by affixes?

Remember to try to comment on other people's languages

---

Submit your papers here!

So, that's about it for this week's edition. See you next Saturday, and happy conlanging!

Good evening, afternoon, or morning to you, people of r/conlangs. Today's Saturday, and that means it's time for another typological paper! Once again, there will be some prompts for you to discuss in the comments.

---

Appositive possession in Ainu and around the Pacific (Bugaeva, Nichols & Bickel)

This week's paper was again submitted by u/PyrolatrousCoagulate and presents a survey of appositive possession in Ainu, a language isolate spoken on the northern Japanese island Hokkaido, as well as in several other languages around the pacific. This week's TyPoW is going to be less specific again; thus you'll be able to talk about the general functioning on possessive constructions in your language! Nevertheless, there are some prompts to guide you:

• How does possession work in your language?
  • Is there dedicated morphology to mark possession on nouns?
  • Are there semantic or pragmatic distinctions between different possessive constructions, if there are more than one?
  • Is there an alienability (or an inherent/non-inherent, possessable/unpossessable) contrast?
• If you considered diachronics while creating your language, how did possessive constructions evolve?

Remember to try to comment on other people's languages

---

Submit your papers here!

So, that's about it for this week's edition. See you next Saturday, and happy conlanging!

Good evening, afternoon, or morning to you, people of r/conlangs. Today's Saturday, and that means it's time for another typological paper! Once again, there will be some prompts for you to discuss in the comments.

---

Demonstratives: A cross-linguistic typology (Dixon)

This week's paper was again submitted by u/PyrolatrousCoagulate and presents a cross-linguistic typology of demonstratives. It primarily distinguishes three main types of demonstratives: nominal, local adverbial and verbal. It then surveys their basic properties: forms, functions and types of reference. More on that can be found if you click on the link above. Dixon defines a demonstrative as "a grammatical word (or, occasionally, a clitic or affix) which can have pointing (or deictic) reference;" Now, let's move unto the prompts:

• What are the morphosyntactic properties of demonstratives in your language, if they exist at all?
  • How are the three main types proposed by the paper included, if at all?
  • Is there any syncretism or polysemy with regards to the forms of demonstratives?
• Do the demonstratives in your language exhibit any characteristics that are not included in the prototypical definition of demonstratives?

Remember to try to comment on other people's languages

---

Submit your papers here!

So, that's about it for this week's edition. See you next Saturday, and happy conlanging!

Good evening, afternoon, or morning to you, people of r/conlangs. Today's Saturday, and that means it's time for another typological paper! Once again, there will be some prompts for you to discuss in the comments.

---

Pluractionality: A cross-linguistic perspective (Mattiola)

This week's paper was submitted by my friend u/PyrolatrousCoagulate and presents a cross-linguistic perspective of pluractionality. Mattiola defines pluractionality as being a "morphological modification of the verb or a pair of semantically related verbs that primarily convey a plurality of situations involving a repetition in time, space, and/or participants (Mattiola, 2019, p. 164)." Moreover, the paper distinguishes pluractionality as a subtype of verbal number; the latter may be encoded through any linguistic means (e.g., adverbs), whereas pluractionality refers to the encoding of these semantics by direct morphological modification on the verb. An alternative definition can be found on Wikipedia: "[it] is a grammatical device that indicates that the action or participants of a verb is/are plural." Now onto the prompts:

• Are verbs marked for pluractionality in your language?
  • If not, what are other means to express verbal number?
  • What other functions do these markers encode — besides pluractionality? (e.g., habituality, continuativity)
  • How do pluractional markers behave morphosyntactically?
  • Are there any interesting interactions between pluractional markers and other morphemes?

Remember to try to comment on other people's languages

---

Submit your papers here!

So, that's about it for this week's edition. See you next Saturday, and happy conlanging!

Good evening, afternoon, or morning to you, people of r/conlangs. Today's Saturday, and that means it's time for another typological paper! Once again, there will be some prompts for you to discuss in the comments.

---

Anticircumstantial clauses across languages (Mauri & Sansò)

This week's paper provides a first typology of so-called anticircumstantial clauses. It defines anticircumstantial clauses (ACs) as "the negative counterpart of circumstantial clauses". The main types of AC the paper presents are negated temporal clauses ("People lost in the wild have survived for long periods without eating"), negated conditional clauses and negated reason clauses. In this TyPoW you will be able to share with us how to encode ACs in your language! Now onto the prompts:

• How are ACs expressed in your language?
  • Is there a relation to the nominal domain? (E.g. syncretism with privative cases)
  • What morphosyntactic properties do ACs have in your language (cf. page 3 in the paper)
  • Are there any restrictions on different subjects?
  • What semantic distinctions are exhibited by AC in your language?

Remember to try to comment on other people's languages

---

Submit your papers here!

So, that's about it for this week's edition. See you next Saturday, and happy conlanging!

Good evening, afternoon, or morning to you, people of r/conlangs. Today's Saturday, and that means it's time for another typological paper! Once again, there will be some prompts for you to discuss in the comments.

---

A typology of demonstrative clause linkers (Diessel & Breunesse)

This week's paper talks about how demonstratives (e.g. "thus", "therefore", or "that") can grammaticalize into marking different kinds of clause linkage. It specifically focusses on (i) relative pronouns, (ii) linking and nominalising articles, (iii) quotative markers, (iv) complementisers, (v) conjunctive adverbs, (vi) adverbial subordinate conjunctions, (vii) correlatives and (viii) topic markers. Now onto the prompts:

• Have demonstratives grammaticalized to function non-prototypically in your language?
  • Do they exhibit any of the functions listed above and in the paper?
  • Do they work differently?
• What role do demonstratives play in general?
• How does your language express the contexts listed above, if not with demonstratives?

Remember to try to comment on other people's languages

---

Submit your papers here!

So, that's about it for this week's edition. See you next Saturday, and happy conlanging!

Good evening, afternoon, or morning to you, people of r/conlangs. Today's Saturday, and that means it's time for another typological paper! Once again, there will be some prompts for you to discuss in the comments.

---

Savosavo Kinship Terminology: Social Context and Linguistic Features

This week's paper is on kinship terminology in the Papuan language Savosavo, which is remarkable as it covers fifteen generations; a rare feature, cross-linguistically. In this week's TyPoW you can talk about your own language's kinship system. Anthropologist Lewis H. Morgan identified six basic patterns of kinship terminologies, which are listed here. Even though those are the six underlying structures that have been observed in natural languages so far, each language may modify that basis, yielding distinct results. There are also some funky elements like the so-called dual propositus tri-relational kinship terms, found in some Australian Aboriginal languages. You can read more about them on the aforementioned wikipedia page. Now onto the prompts:

• How does your language handle kinship terms?
  • Which basic pattern (see above) does your conlang exhibit? Or is it impossible to categorize it like that?
  • How do kinship terms interact with other cultural elements? (e.g. taboos)
• How are kinship terms used in discourse?

Remember to try to comment on other people's languages

---

Submit your papers here!

So, that's about it for this week's edition. See you next Saturday, and happy conlanging!