Re: What would you want to hear Thomas Payne (author of Describing Morphosyntax) speak about?

---In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Sai Emrys <sai@...> wrote:
>This is way too early to be sure of anything yet, but he is a
>plausible speaker for a future LCC.
>I'd just like to gather some suggestions from y'all for things you'd
>like to hear him talk about.
>See http://www.sil.org/sil/roster/payne_thomas.htm and
>http://www.uoregon.edu/~tpayne/ for his profile & research.
>FWIW, he is not himself a conlanger, and would most likely prefer to
>talk about something that's closer to 'straight' linguistics.
>Thanks,
>- Sai
I'd like any or all (Ha!  Wouldn't that take more than a day?) of the following;
but what I'd like to hear him say probably isn't limited to this.

I. "accidents" or "desinences", and, "parts-of-speech".
-A. A complete list of all, or a list of the 25 cross-linguistically most-common,
major (open) classes of words -- major grammatical categories.
--1. Is it common, or, How common is it, for "verbs" to be divisible into two or
more such classes?
--2. Is it common, or, How common is it, for "nouns" to be divisible into two or
more such classes?
--3. Is it common, or, How common is it, for "adjectives" to be divisible into
two or more such classes?
--4. Is it common, or, How common is it, for "adverbs" to be divisible into two
or more such classes?
--5. Is it common, or, How common is it, for
---a. "adpostions"
---b. "pronouns"
---c. any other major class
--to be divisible into two or more such classes?
-B. A complete list of all, or a list of the 25 cross-linguitically most-common,
accidents (inflectional categories or derivational categories) which, cross-
linguistically, apply to more than one of the major open grammatical categories
of words.
-C. A complete list of all, or a list of the 25 cross-linguitically most-common,
accidents (inflectional categories or derivational categories) of verbs.
-D. A complete list of all, or a list of the 25 cross-linguitically most-common,
accidents (inflectional categories or derivational categories) of nouns.
-E. A complete list of all, or a list of the 25 cross-linguitically most-common,
accidents (inflectional categories or derivational categories) of adjectives.
-F. A complete list of all, or a list of the 25 cross-linguitically most-common,
accidents (inflectional categories or derivational categories)
--1. of adpositions; and/or
--2. of adverbs.
--(3? any other major "part-of-speech"?)

II. Clause types, clause combinations, and transformations.
-A. Cross-linguistically most common clause-types.
-B. Cross-linguistically common "transformations" on clauses.
-C. Cross-linguistically common ways of combining clauses;
--1. semantics
--2. syntax
--3. morphology
--4? pragmatics?

III. Typology
-A. What are the major ways of dividing languages into types based on
morphosyntax?
--1. And what are the major types in each such way?

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