Re: FYI re: Greenberg's Universals

Nik Taylor wrote:

>Jonathan Chang wrote: are hardly
> > represented well and neither are pidgins and creoles ...
> >     So much for Greenberg's Universals... ::makes look of vague
> >     annoyance::
>
>But are the universals based only on this 30-language study?  Or was
>there a later study with more languages?
His sample was 30, but he made observations from many languages that were
not on the formal list.  They were the basis of his list of universals, but
not of universals in general.

John Hawkins did a typological study using over 300 languages and he
produced some universals that are exceptionless (in his sample)!  For example:

"If a language is SOV, then if the adjective precedes the noun, then the
genitive precedes the noun."

Russell Tomlin has also done a study on word order with a sample of 402
languages.  Here are some interesting statistics from that survey:

Word order      % of sample
SV      86%
VO      54%
SO      96%

So the preference for SO is pretty strong, for SV is less so, and for VO is
statistically insignificant.

>   If it was only those 30, then
>I don't care how carefully they were chosen to avoid mutual influence
>and the like, 30's not a good sample size, and the study could hardly be
>considered conclusive.
Agreed.  But whatever came out of Hawkins' study cannot be ignored -- 300
is a very good sample; and even more so Tomlin's.


>--
>Dievas dave dantis; Dievas duos duonos
>God gave teeth; God will give bread - Lithuanian proverb
>ICQ: 18656696
>AIM Screen-Name: NikTailor


===============================
Marcus Smith
AIM:  Anaakoot
"When you lose a language, it's like
dropping a bomb on a museum."
   -- Kenneth Hale
===============================