Problems of methodology and explanation in word order universals research

Ever since the publication of Greenberg 1963, word order typologists have attempted to formulate and refine implicational universals of word order so as to characterize the restricted distribution of certain word order patterns, and in some cases have also attempted to develop general principles to explain the existence of those universals

Searching for insubordination: An analysis of ləbo in Lamaholot

In this paper, we present a description and analysis of ləbo ‘although’ in Lamaholot of eastern Indonesia, which is a subordinating conjunction that expresses a concessive relation between main and subordinate clauses. Although clause-initial conjunctions are predominant in this SVO language, the conjunction ləbo appears in clause-final position. Interestingly, subordinate clauses headed by ləbo can stand alone without a main clause, conveying the speaker’s irritation or blame toward the hearer or an undesirable event. By providing synchronic evidence of different kinds, this paper proposes that this construction involves insubordination, the independent use of constructions exhibiting prima facie characteristics of subordinate clauses (Evans 2007)

Forgotten factors in the development of dependent clauses in Swedish as a second language

This paper is concerned with the acquisition of Swedish dependent clauses. In a longitudinal study of Belgian foreign language learners of Swedish, three factors were found to be of special relevance in the learner’s successive acquisition of dependent clauses: (i) finiteness, i.e. the difference between finite and non-finite complements; (ii) complementizers, i.e. the acquisition of different complementizers (iii) dependent clause types, i.e. the acquisition and use of different types of dependent clauses. My study emphasizes the importance of acknowledging a wide array of structural factors besides internal word order, which has hitherto been the main focus in studies on the acquisition of Swedish dependent clauses

Cross-Categorial Case = Cross-Categorial Case

A kutatás számos újdonságot derített ki a gazdag esetrendszerekkel rendelkező nyelvekről, valamint a kognitív és a nyelvi logikák közötti határokról. A nyelvtankönyvekben általában az eset (-ban, -ról, stb.) a főnévhez kapcsolódik (ház-ban, ház-ról, stb.). Nagyon ritkán, különlegességként olvashatunk csak arról, hogy az esetnek az igéhez is lehet köze. Kutatásom azt mutatja be, hogy valójában egy elterjedtebb jelenségről van szó, mint azt sokan, az élő indoeurópai nyelvek ismerete alapján, gondolják. Megállapításaimat a gazdag esetrendszerrel rendelkező finnugor nyelvek vizsgálatára alapoztam. A kutatásom során feltérképezett “szabálytalan” példák elemzése megváltoztatja az esetről kialakult képünket. A nem csak az argumentumokon, főnévi kategóriájú szavak esetében előforduló, predikátummal is kombináló esetet “kategóriákat áthidaló esetnek” neveztem el. Amennyiben egy ilyen esetet nem főnévvel, hanem igei predikátummal kombinálunk, akkor általa időbeli, és nem térbeli viszonyokat fejezünk ki, miközben az eset alapjelentése megmarad. Az eredményeket magyar és nemzetközi fórumokon és publikációkban ismertettem. A részletek a következő honlapon található: . | The research proposes a new perspective on the phenomenon of case. Case has been studied predominantly on the phrases that constitute arguments of predicates. This research focuses on case as part of forms that stand for predicates, that is, on the phenomena covered by the terms verbal nouns, infinitives, gerunds, masdars, participles and the like. The empirical data from Uralic languages, which have exceptionally rich case systems, show that case forms as parts of predicates encode temporal, aspectual, modal, or evidential relationships. Further details can be found at

The 11th International Congress for Finno-Ugric Studies: Finno-Ugric Peoples and Languages in the 21st Century

The 11th International Congress for Finno-Ugric Studies was one of the biggest conferences in the last years among the Finno-Ugric events. Finno-Ugric People and Languages in the 21st Century dealt mainly with the language and political situation of the Finno-Ugric languages in Russia. Recent researches on descriptive linguistics and new approaches to theoretical and typological issues were also presented at the Congress

Linguistic Optimization

Optimality Theory (OT) is a model of language that combines aspects of generative and connectionist linguistics. It is unique in the field in its use of a rank ordering on constraints, which is used to formalize optimization, the choice of the best of a set of potential linguistic forms. We show that phenomena argued to require ranking fall out equally from the form of optimization in OT's predecessor Harmonic Grammar (HG), which uses numerical weights to encode the relative strength of constraints. We further argue that the known problems for HG can be resolved by adopting assumptions about the nature of constraints that have precedents both in OT and elsewhere in computational and generative linguistics. This leads to a formal proof that if the range of each constraint is a bounded number of violations, HG generates a finite number of languages. This is nontrivial, since the set of possible weights for each constraint is nondenumerably infinite. We also briefly review some advantages of HG