introduction chapter of adverbial constructions in the languages of europe
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Johan van der Auwera
1 Introduction
I'm glad you like adverbs 1 adore them; they are the only qualifications I really much respect.
Henry James
1. Typology, adverbial constructions, Europe
This book represents the results of the work done by the EUROTYP theme group on adverbial constructions. It contains studies on the typology of adver-bial constructions in the languages of Europe. Each of the bold faced phrases needs a little explanation.
2. Typology
The studies collected here represent typology in the sense inspired by minences grises such as Joseph Greenberg and Hansjakob Seiler and represented in the textbooks by Ineichen (1979), Comrie (1981), Mallinson & Blake (1981) and Croft (1990), in most of the work found in Moreno (1995) and Shibatani & Bynon (1995), and in the journals Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung (Berlin: Akademie), Studies in language (Amsterdam: Benjamins), and Linguis-tic typology (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter). It is also the sense advocated by the Association for Linguistic Typology, established in the wake of EUROTYP. Typology attempts to describe and explain the restrictions on possible human languages. For any one phenomenon the combinatorial possibilities of the units of analysis are extremely high. Yet only a small subset of these possibilities is realized in actual languages. It is this subset of possible language structures that needs to be described as well as explained.
The typological enterprise must deal with a wide range of evidence and data, a narrow range of descriptive means, and some five types of explanation.
i. A wide range of evidence and data The evidence must be cross-linguistic, ideally arrived at on the basis of a justified sample of the languages of the world or of the region studied. Data sources are available language-specific grammatical de-
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2 Johan van der Auwera
scriptions, in existence independent of the typological project and written in any sensible format, and project-specific analyses of data that have been produced spontaneously or that have been elicited with questionnaires.
ii. A narrow range of descriptive means Descriptions should be minimally abstract. Part of the descriptive task is to classify constructions and languages as belonging to this or the other type and to relate construction and language types to one an-other.
iii. Five types of explanation Cross-linguistic regularities may be purely accidental or they may be explainable in terms of something else. There are five explanation types. The phenomenon in one language and the phenomenon in another language are similar or identical (are of a similar or identical type) because
a. The two languages share another structural feature or they have two other structural features, again similar, and these other features are more basic and can thus be argued to explain the initial identity or similarity the structural explanation;
b. they express a similar or identical meaning the semantic explana-tion;
c. they ultimately derive from processing principles (either of language production or understanding) the functional or psycholinguistic ex-planation:
d. they derive from the same phenomenon in the common ancestor lan-guage the genetic explanation;
e. they have arisen in a language contact situation with borrowing or calquing the areal explanation.
I take explanation type (a) to be preliminary: the correlation between the initial features and the more basic and hence explanatory features must ultimately be made sense of in terms of something else, either semantic or functional/ psycholinguistic considerations explanation types (b) or (c). Explanation type (d) is not itself the prime province of typology, but in being complementary to the other types, it will make its appearance in typological discussions any-way. For some linguists (e .g . , Croft 1990; Masica 1976: 112; Fox 1995: 247) explanation type (e) is not truly part of typology either, and it is correct that one can find areal cross-linguistic work also under nomers like "areal linguis-
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1 Introduction 3
tics" (Masica 1976; Campbell, Kaufmann & Smith-Stark 1986; Simpson 1994), "dialectology" and "geolinguistics" (Chambers & Trudgill 1980: 1 8 1 - 2 0 4 ) and "contact linguistics" (Ureland 1990). I take a broad view (cf. Haarmann 1976; Ineichen 1979: 9 0 - 1 1 0 ; Comrie 1981: 1 9 7 - 2 0 3 ) , call the subject "areal typol-ogy" and thus include it under "typology".
Each of the three general features is well reflected in this book. For feature (i) it suffices to glance at the acknowledgments and reference lists of chapters 2 to 9. A good illustration of feature (ii) is the chapter by Hengeveld: it is the one that one can most easily compare with co-called "generative" or " formal " work and will then be praised or reprimanded, depending on one's point of view, for the paucity of the descriptive means (e. g., no empty categories, no syntax-internal mechanisms). Feature (iii) is maybe best illustrated in my chap-ter, as it exemplifies each of the five types of explanations.
3. Adverbial constructions
The notion of adverb or adverbial has not figured prominently in discussions of linguistic typology. This has at least three reasons. First, the category itself is elusive: it is not clear what the defining or prototypical features of adverbs and adverbials are, and consequently the borders with neighbouring categories, especially, particle, but also adjective, adposition, and conjunction, are unclear too. Second, the category seems vast. There seem to be many different subtypes of adverbs and adverbials. Third, as a partial result of the elusiveness and vastness of the category, grammars often have little to say about matters ad-verbial, and to the extent that typologists have to rely on grammars, they thus have little to rely on. The scarcity of adverbialist typology gave this project an extra challenge and the book should therefore be interpreted as a reconnais-sance. It does not attempt to throw any new light on the definition of adverb and adverbial, but merely presupposes a classical understanding of "adverb" as the word-level adverbial expression, and of "adverbial" as a syntactically optional modifier of primarily nonnominal constituents (see Ramat 8c Ricca 1994). The book similarly refrains from offering an exhaustive classification of adverbial subtypes. Nevertheless, in the chapters on sentence adverbs and on adverbial subordinators, we do find authors attempting to classify their respec-tive subdomains, but then these are indeed only subdomains, and not the full domain of all adverbials.
The reconnaissance aims at eight domains. Three primarily concern adverbs (chapters 2 to 4), one adverbial phrases (chapter 5), and four adverbial clauses (chapters 6 to 9). In chapter 2, I study the adverbs corresponding to English
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4 Johan van der Auwera
still, longer in no longer, already and yet in not yet in their simple "temporal" uses as in (1).
(1) John is still at home.
I call these adverbials "phasal". "Adverbial quantification" is the topic of the third chapter, written by Juan Carlos Moreno Cabrera. He investigates the properties of adverbs like twice and adverbial phrases like on seven occasions, as in (2).
(2) On seven occasions John washed his hands twice.
In the fourth chapter Paolo Ramat and Davide Ricca study the full variety of "sentence adverbs", exemplified by hopefully in (3).
(3) Hopefully John will soon leave.
Chapter 5, written by Martin Haspelmath in cooperation with Oda Buchholz, focuses on expressions of equality, like as tall as Maria in (4) and of similarity, like like a nightingale in (5).
(4) Robert is as tall as Maria.
(5) Fatmir sings like a nightingale.
In chapter 6 Kees Hengeveld studies choices between dependent and indepen-dent verb forms for the expression of adverbial clauses of Means, Simultaneity, Cause, Reason, Explanation, Anteriority, Concession, Purpose, Potential Cir-cumstance, Potential Condition, Negative Circumstance, Unreal Circumstance, and Unreal Condition. The use of a dependent verb form for the expression of Purpose is exemplified in (6); an independent verb used for Reason is found in
(7).
(6) I left early to catch the train.
(7) Jenny went home because her sister would visit her.
In chapter 7 Igor' Nedjalkov looks at a set of adverbial clauses, partially over-lapping with that of Hengeveld, and investigates the properties of specifically
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1 Introduction 5
adverbial types of dependent verb forms, called "converbs", such as the form citaja in (8).
(8) Russian Citaja knigu, ona ela. reading book she ate 'Reading the book she was eating.'
Yet a third set of partially overlapping adverbial clause types is investigated by Bernd Kortmann in chapter 8, with respect to the adverbial subordinators that operate over these clauses, such as because in (7). In chapter 9, Martin Haspel-math and Ekkehard Knig study the properties of concessive conditionals, such as even if we do not get any financial support in (9).
(9) Even if we do not get any financial support, we will go ahead with our project.
Chapter 10, written by Walter Bisang, takes another look at the eight do-mains. It attempts to get some ideas on the potential universal character of the findings based on European languages by checking them against the situation in some languages of the Far East, especially Chinese and Japanese, but also Khmer, Thai, and Vietnamese. Chapter 11 attempts to find generalizations that cut across the domains; the generalizations will turn out to have an areal char-acter.
The book was to contain two further chapters, but the work was not finished in time and should, in due course, appear elsewhere. Thomas Mller-Bardey conducted research on spatial prepositions and cases, the realm of meanings they cover, their morphological make-up and markedness relations. Hartmut Haberland studied expressions of repetition, revision, and reversal, more par-ticularly the choice between adverbial strategies, as with back and again in (10), and preverbal ones, as with re- in (11).
(10) John sent the book again/back.
(11) The team replayed the match.
The work done for the project is furthermore reflected in many other publi-cations, the most prominent ones being Haspelmath & Knig's Converbs in cross-linguistic perspective (1995) and Kortmann's Adverbial subordinators in the languages of Europe (1994 and 1997).
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6 Johan van der Auwera
4. Europe
It is not clear what constitutes "a language of Europe". For the purpose of the adverbialist project and thus also of this book, we composed a list of languages largely based on genetic information as presented by Ruhlen (1991), geographi-cal information as found in Grimes (1988) and Mosely & Asher (1994), and other lists circulating within the E U R O T Y P project (esp. Bakker et al. n. d.). Our list, comprising one hundred and forty five languages, is provided in Ta-ble l . 1 The first column describes the genetic affiliation, the second one lists the languages discussed in this book, and the third one the remaining languages. A number following the family name refers to the number of languages within that family.
In some chapters older stages of languages are discussed, other than those listed as separate languages in Table 1. One chapter discusses Upper Sorbian separately and some discuss dialectal variation, be it minimally (esp. Belgian Dutch or Flemish, Piedmontese, Swiss German).
Table 1. The languages of Europe
W E S T C E N T R A L SEMITIC (2) Aramaic (1) Arabo-Canaanite (1)
ALTAIC (12) Turkic (11)
Assyrian Maltese
Common Turkic (10) Western (6)
Bashkir (1) Kumyk-Karachai (3)
Bashkir Karaim, Karachai-Balkar, Kumyk Tatar Tatar (2)
Southern (3) Gagauz (1) Azerbaijani (1)
Gagauz Azerbaijani
Crimean Tatar
Turkish (1) Central (1)
Turkish Nogai Chuvash Kalmyk
Bolgar(l) Oirat-Kalmyk (1)
CAUCASIAN (38) North
Northeast (29) Daghestan (26)
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1 Introduction 7
Table 1 (continued)
Lezgian (10) Agul, Archi, Budukh, Khinalug, Lezgian, Rutul , Tabasaran , Tsakhur
Kryts, Udi
Lak-Dargwa (2) Da rgwa , Lak Avaro-Andi-Tsez (14) Avar, Bezhta, Bagvalal, Andi, Akhvakh ,
Botlikh, Godober i , Chamala l , H inukh , Hunz ib , Tsez Karata , Khvarshi ,
Tindi Nakh (3) Chechen Bats, Ingush
Nor thwes t (5) Ubykh (1) Ubykh Circassian (2) Adyghe, Kabardian Abkhaz-Abaza (2) Abaza , Abkhaz
South (4) Georgian (1) Georgian Svan (1) Svan Z a n (2) Laz, Megrelian
I N D O - E U R O P E A N (74) Germanic (16)
West (7) Cont inenta l (4) Dutch , German ,
Yiddish Luxembourgeois
Nor th Sea (3) English, Fering, Frisian Nor th (6)
West (3) Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian
East (2) Danish , Swedish Runic (1)
East (3) Goth ic Burgundian, Vandalic Italic (23)
Latino-Faliscan (20) Romance (18)
Cont inenta l (17) Western (13) Cata lan , French, Friu- Da lmat ian , Franco-
lian, Galician, Italian, Provencal, Ladin, Occi tan, Portuguese, Mozarab ic Romansh , Spanish
Eastern (4) Aruman ian , Rumanian Is t ro-Rumanian , Megleno-Rumanian
Sardinian (1) Sardinian Latin (1) Latin Faliscan (1) Faliscan
Osco-Umbr ian (3) Oscian, Umbr ian , Sabellian
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Table 1 (continued)
Balto-Slavic (17) Baltic (3)
East (2) West (1)
Slavic (14) East (3)
West (6) North (3) Central (1) South (2)
South (5)
Greek (3) Indo-Iranian (5)
Iranian (4) Western (3) West Scythian (1)
Romani (1) Armenian (2) Albanian (1) Celtic (7)
Insular (6) Goidelic (3)
Brythonic (3) Continental (1)
URALIC (17) Samoyed (1) Finno-Ugric (16)
Finnic (14) Permic (2) Volgaic (2) North Finnic (10)
Ugric (2) Hungarian (1) Ob-Ugric (1)
BASQUE (1)
ETRUSCAN (1)
Latvian, Lithuanian Old Prussian
Belorussian, Russian, Ukrainian
Polish Kashubian, Polabian Sorbian Czech, Slovak Bulgarian, Macedo-nian, Old Church Slavonic, Serbian/ Croatian, Slovene Classical Greek, Greek Tsakonian
Kirmanji, Talysh, Tati Ossetic Romani Armenian Albanian
Classical Armenian
Irish, Manx, Scottish Gaelic Breton, Welsh Cornish
Gaulish
Nenets
Komi, Udmurt Mari, Mordvin Estonian, Finnish, Olonets Ingrian, Karelian, Livonian, Ludic, Sami, Votian, Vepsian
Hungarian Mansi
Basque
Etruscan
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1 0 Johan van der Auwera
All in all the book thus makes statements about some one hundred and ten European languages. The majority of these are spoken at the moment. Map 1 (largely due to Martin Haspelmath) indicates the approximate location of the speakers of these languages. Not every chapter discusses all of these one hun-dred and ten languages. To increase both the unity of the book and the predic-tive power of the statements, we defined various samples with the method outlined in Ri jkhoff et al. (1993). This method yields "variety samples", i. e., samples that are geared towards maximal variety. It attempts to avoid a genetic bias by including for any area all the phyla (including single language phyla or language isolates) and for any such phylum the number of languages is propor-tional to the linguistic diversity reflected by the graph-theoretic structure of the genetic language tree, measured for depth and width. This method was applied to the languages listed in Table 1 and classified for genetic affiliation according to Ruhlen (1991). For any choice left open by this method, languages were chosen that were not adjacent and for which the group was likely to have specialist knowledge. For instance, in the sample given in Table 2, the method makes us choose two Germanic languages which have to be taken from dif-ferent subfamilies, of which there are three (West, North, and East). In the sample in Table 2 one finds Dutch (West) and Danish (North): they are not spoken in adjacent areas and competence was available in the group. Instead of Danish no other North Germanic language was possible, for the group lacked immediate (near-)native access. For German there was a lot of competence in the group, but it was excluded as a representative of West Germanic, because it is spoken in an area adjacent to the Danish language area. Lack of native access also excluded Gothic as an East Germanic language choice.
Every author tried to include the languages of what is called the "minimal sample", given in Table 2. This minimal sample theoretically consists of 25 languages, but because there are no interesting data for Etruscan and for Osco-Umbrian languages, it actually consists of 23 languages. The method does not allow for gaps to be filled up by other languages. The number between paren-theses in the first column indicates the number of languages the method makes us choose from that phylum or family.
The same method also yielded samples for 30, 35, 40 , 45 and 50 languages. Only the last two make an appearance in the book and are given in Table 3. The number between parentheses in the first column indicates the number of languages the method allows for respectively the 45 and 50 language sample.
Authors were not restricted to these sample languages, but those authors most committed to the sampling method (van der Auwera, Moreno, Ramat and Ricca, and Hengeveld) separated statements based on the sample languages from other statements.
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1 Introduction 11
Table 2. The minimal sample, 25 languages
WEST CENTRAL SEMITIC (1) ALTAIC (3)
Turkic (2) Common Turkic (1) Bolgar (1)
Oirat-Kalmyk (1) CAUCASIAN (4)
North (3) Northeast (2)
Daghestan (1) Nakh (1)
Northwest (1) South (1)
INDO-EUROPEAN (13) Germanic (2)
West (1) North (1)
Italic (3) Latino-Faliscan (2)
Romance (1) Latin (1)
Osco-Umbrian (1) Balto-Slavic (2)
Baltic (1) Slavic (1)
Greek (1) Indo-Iranian (2)
Iranian (1) Romani (1)
Armenian (1) Albanian (1) Celtic (7)
Insular (1) URALIC (2)
Samoyed (1) Finno-Ugric (1)
BASQUE (1) ETRUSCAN (1)
Maltese
Turkish Chuvash Kalmyk
Lezgian Chechen Abkhaz Georgian
Dutch Danish
Spanish Latin
Lithuanian Russian Greek
Ossetic Romani Armenian Albanian
Irish
Nenets Finnish Basque
The cross-linguistic statements found in this book are of t w o types. Some are generalizations that are claimed to hold for all or for a large number of the languages of Europe. Following a usage heard in the EUROTYP Adverbials group since 1990 and appearing in print in Kortmann (1994), some authors call
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12 Johan van der Auwera
Table 3. Samples for 45 and 50 languages
45 50
WEST CENTRAL SEMITIC (2/2) Aramaic (1/1) Arabo-Canaanite (1/1)
ALTAIC (4/5) Turkic (3/4)
Common Turkic (2/3) Western (1/1) Southern (1/1) Central (0/1)
Bolgar (1/1) Oirat-Kalmyk (1/1)
CAUCASIAN (8/9) North (5/6)
Northeast (3/4) Daghestan (2/3)
Lezgian (1/) Lak-Dargwa (0/1) Avaro-Andi-Tsez (1/1)
Nakh (1/1) Northwest (2/2)
Circassian (1/1) Abkhaz-Abaza (1/1)
South (3/3) Georgian (1/1) Svan (1/1) Zan (1/1)
INDO-EUROPEAN (25/27) Germanic (5/6)
West (2/2) Continental (1/2) North Sea (1/1)
North (2/3) West (1/1) East (1/1) Runic (0/1)
East (1/1) Italic (6/6)
Latino-Faliscan (5/5) Romance (3/3)
Continental (2/2) Western (1/1) Eastern (1/1)
Sardinian (1/1)
Assyrian Maltese
Karachai-Balkar Turkish
Chuvash Kalmyk
Lezgian
Tsez Chechen
Kabardian Abkhaz
Georgian Svan Laz
Dutch English
Faroese Danish
Gothic
Spanish Rumanian Sardinian
+ Nogai
+ Dargwa
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1 Introduction 13
Table 3. (continued)
45 50
Latin (1/1) Latin Faliscan (1/1) -
Osco-Umbrian (1/1) -Balto-Slavic (5/6)
Baltic (2/2) East (1/1) Lithuanian West (1/1) Old Prussian
Slavic (3/4) East (1/1) Russian West (1/2)
North (1/1) Polish South (0/1) + Czech
South (1/1) Bulgarian Greek (1/1) Greek Indo-Iranian (3/3)
Iranian (2/2) Western (1/1) Kirmanji West Scythian (1/1) Ossetic
Romani (1/1) Romani Armenian (1/1) Armenian Albanian (1/1) Albanian Celtic (3/3)
Insular (2/2) Goidelic (1/1) Irish Brythonic (1/1) Welsh
Continental (1/1) -
URALIC (4/5) Samoyed (1/1) Nenets Finno-Ugric (3/4)
Finnic (2/2) Permic (1/1) Udmurt North Finnic (1/1) Finnish
Ugric (1/2) Hungarian (1/1) Hungarian Ob-Ugric (0/1) + Mansi
BASQUE (1/1) Basque
ETRUSCAN (1/1) -
these generalizations "Euroversals". Authors most committed to the sampling method base them only on the variety samples giyen in Tables 2 and 3 or slight variations thereof. Since they are hypothesized to hold for all or for most of the languages of Europe, they are also offered as hypotheses, however tentative,
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14 Johan van der Auwera
of the world's languages. The second type of cross-linguistic hypothesis con-cerns areal phenomena. For all authors, they are based on as many languages as possible of as many areas as possible. They document large linguistic areas, like Standard Average European, as well as smaller ones, like the Balkan Sprachbund.
The restriction to the languages of Europe affects the two types of cross-linguistic statements in a different way. To the extent that the hypotheses about the world's languages are truly based on European data, these hypotheses must be considered very weak. Universalist hypotheses is the business of worldwide typology. To do the latter, one needs a sample of the world's languages and in this sample Europe's languages make a very modest appearance. This is not to deny that some of the Euroversals offered in this book might turn out to be universals anyway. The ones that have the best chance are likely to be based on a sensible semantic or functional analysis of some phenomenon, rather than on any data specifically found in Europe. Whereas the worldwide typology of the eight adverbialist issues must remain a task for the future, our book never-theless makes a modest first step. In chapter 10, Walter Bisang assesses at least some would-be universal Euroversals against the background of South East Asian languages. Of course, he cannot vindicate any universals, he can only show that they are or are not falsified by one or more South East Asian lan-guages.
The areal statements in this book tend to be much stronger. This is due to the fact that they all concern areas properly included within the Europe of the one hundred and forty languages that have been investigated and are thus based on data from both inside and outside any area set off by a construction or language type. The importance of the areal component in this book is in tune with the present development of the field of typology at large. Typologists are becoming increasingly aware of the areal bias of their data and of the impor-tance of contact-instigated convergence. This development can be witnessed both in the typology of the world, e. g., in Dryer (1989) and Nichols (1992), and in that of Europe, e. g., in Bernini 8c Ramat (1992, 1996) and in Bechert, Bernini & Buridant (eds.) (1990). In fact, the latter publication sets a part of the agenda of the EUROTYP project as a whole. It calls for a large scale and detailed investigation of Whorf's notion of "Standard Average European" (Whorf 1941). In this volume, van der Auwera, Ramat & Ricca, Haspelmath with Buchholz, Kortmann, and Haspelmath & Knig address this task explic-itly, and while Hengeveld does not do so, his results can be interpreted as having a direct bearing on this issue too. Consequently, it will be an important element of the conclusion of this book to try to generalize over all these results, reach a verdict on "Standard Average European", and if the verdict is positive give it as much exactitude as our adverbialist studies allow for.
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1 Introduction 1 5
5. Unity and diversity
Chapters 2 to 9 are similar to each other in that they all attempt to do typology (in the sense of 2) about adverbial constructions (listed in 3) about similar samples and sets of languages (as explained in 4). Three features of unity may be singled out for special attention.
5.1. Questionnaires
All of the chapters are to a large extent based on questionnaires. These are always of the mixed type, i. e., partly analytical and demanding a linguist to furnish an analysis, and partly elicitative and demanding a native or specialist to give or translate example sentences. These questionnaires were constructed out of necessity. For all domains of research, it was felt that existing descrip-tions (grammars, papers, dictionaries) did not contain the necessary informa-tion. Much of this book is thus based on newly collected data. This adds to the interest value of the book. But it also makes many specific descriptions highly tentative, especially those that are based on single informants that filled out questionnaires without the assistance of the investigator who designed the questionnaire.
5.2. Name maps
Chapters 2 to 9 all represent some of the generalizations in the form of name maps of the type pioneered by Bernini &C Ramat (1992, 1996), and illustrated in Map 2 below. These maps neither indicate coasts, rivers, mountains, cities, nor even the borders between areas where languages are spoken. Abbreviated language names symbolize the more or less imaginary center of an area where the language is spoken. Similarities are symbolized by marking off areas with lines of various types, with the typographical choice of the language names, and/or with shading all of these methods are illustrated on Map 2. Repre-senting similarities in this way does not yet imply any claim on the origin/ explanation of the similarities. The similarity may be genetic, as genetically related languages are often spoken in contiguous areas. It may also be areal in the sense that it is due to language contact, as geographically close languages often influence each other, though again they need not. Finally, it may be due to some other, more basic property of the languages in question, possibly re-flecting identical meanings or explained by identical processing principles. Nev-
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16 Johan van der Auwera
Ice Sam
Kom
Nnts Mns
/
Chu / B s h
Idm' /
/ '/
/
Kbr ''. / - ^
Tskh BS B z h t
Trk ^ M Arm I Krmn/ Asr
strikeout: Phenomenon 1 underline : Phenomenon 2
double underline : Phenomenon 3 : Phenomenon 4
: Phenomenon 5 1 : Phenomenon 6
/ / / : Phenomenon 7 double underline : Phenomenon 8
Map 2. Phenomena 1 to 8 in the languages of Europe (cf. van der Auwera (this vol-ume: Map 1))
ertheless, the primary use of the name maps is to reflect a possible contact-related convergence, either direct, resulting from contact between languages of different or relatively distant genetic affiliation, or indirect, resulting from languages, also of different or relatively distant genetic affiliation, that were excluded from contact-instigated change affecting other languages. No chapter, except that by Kortmann and to a small extent also the one by Ramat and Ricca, makes any explicit hypothesis about the cultural or socio-historical cir-cumstances of the language contact.
The generalizations represented with name maps make no claim about lan-guages that are spoken either in or out of an area marked off on the map, but that do not themselves get represented with abbreviations. Belorussian, for instance, is not included on Map 2, hence nothing is said about it. O f course, given its genetic and geographical closeness to Russian and Polish, which are
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1: Phenomenon 1 3 : Phenomenon 3 2 : Phenomenon 2 4 : Phenomenon 4
Map. 3. Phenomena 1 to 4 in the languages of Europe (cf. Hengeveld (this volume: Map 7))
on M a p 2, it is highly likely that the phenomena which the map attributes to
both Russian and Polish as well as to Lithuanian, Karaim, and Yiddish, for that matter occur in Belorussian, too . T h e language names refer to the stan-
dard languages or if there is no standard, to just those varieties studied by the author. Thus no claims are made about dialects or about varieties that have
not been studied. T h e language names furthermore refer only to the present-
day stages o f the languages in question. M o r e generally speaking, the language maps will not contain any extinct languages, unless this is mentioned explicitly.
O n all o f the maps areas are marked off with definite borders. Visually, this usually means that the lines are closed. In some cases, the lines are implicitly
closed, as they " t o u c h " the border o f the map, as in M a p 3. Such closures are significant relative to (i) whether the area marked off that way is included in a larger area in which relevant languages are spoken, and (ii) the number o f languages both inside and outside o f the smaller areas that have actually been investigated. Consider M a p 2 again. T h e closure for the Iberian area that exhib-
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18 Johan van der Auwera
its phenomenon 4 is relatively significant. Inside the area, all the languages have been investigated. Outside of the area, to the West there are no relevant languages; languages to be encountered westward are those of North America, and they are, of course, irrelevant. Second, to the North and the East, there is a larger area with relevant languages, and many have been investigated, but not all, the main absentees being Occitan and Franco-Provencal. To the South, finally, we find Semitic, but it is unlikely that they are relevant note also that Maltese is not linked up with the Iberian area. Let us contrast this with two relatively insignificant closures. Take, first, the eastern area exhibiting phe-nomenon 4, i. e., the same phenomenon as found on the Iberian peninsula. Here the closure is highly insignificant. Inside this area, several languages are missing, e. g., Belorussian and Ukrainian in the Northwest, Tatar in the North-east, and Gagauz in the Southwest. As to the outside, any closure on the eastern fringe of Europe is relatively insignificant, the reason being that there are rele-vant languages to the East and they have not been part of the investigation. A second example of a relatively insignificant closure is found in the Caucasus. For any areal statement on Caucasian languages in this book, there are usually relevant languages both inside and outside of closures that elude the investiga-tion. Thus the circumference lines marking the area comprising Nogai , Lak, and Tabasaran in Map 2 for phenomenon 5 are relatively insignificant, given my ignorance about the data for the many surrounding languages. Indica-tive of the same lack of data is also the fairly arbitrary decision to limit the clustering to just those three languages and not to extend the area southward to include Lezgian and Azerbaijani.
The maps that are to be found in this book come in three subtypes, depend-ing on the homogeneity of the areas marked off. In the examples of Maps 2 and 3 any language found in a marked off area exhibits the feature(s) in ques-tion. These lines are isoglosses: they mark identity. This is not the case for what could be called "cluster maps " or "degree maps" . In the example of Map 4 we are concerned with a language or construction type characterized by twelve features. In all the areas marked off we find languages that exhibit subsets of these features, with the core area languages possibly exhibiting all of the features. Assuming for simplicity's sake that the features are equal in weight, the number of features can thus be taken to characterize the degree to which a language exhibits the type or, to use Masica's (1976) words, the "typo-logical distance" of the language relative to a language, if any, that would realize all the features Masica, in one of the appendices to his (1976) book, was possibly the first to suggest this feature counting method in typology. What is important to note here is that when for any subset of languages certain features are absent, these features need not be identical for the languages con-
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1 Introduction 19
: S 11 features : S 7 features : Si 9 features : j features
Map 4. Language/construction type 1 in the languages of Europe (cf. van der Auwera (this volume: Map 12))
cerned. The circumference lines thus do not mark identity and are not "iso-glosses" one could call them "quantified isoglosses" or "isopleths" (cf. North (1985) for a use of this term). The significance of isopleth closures is dependent on the two conditions mentioned for isoglosses, but it is furthermore propor-tional to the amount of features shared. Thus the probability that a language is part of the Sprachbund defining its ideal type to have twelve features is higher for a language that has eleven of those features than for a language that has seven.
In a cluster map, the area marked off is typically not homogeneous, but whether or not the homogeneity is there is not made explicit. In the third type of map, the homogeneity is explicitly denounced. In Map 5, the lining and the bold face are each designed to signal the presence of phenomenon 1.
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20 Johan van der Auwera
Ice Nnts
Far
Fin
ScGI
Ir Mnx
Wis Eng
Dut
Brt
Bsq
Fr
Prt Spn Ctl
Ttr Udm
Chu
Kim
Krch Che Abkh Oss Lzg
Grg Tsz Azb
Trk Arm Tis
Asr
boldface: Phenomenon 1
Map 5. Phenomenon 1 in the languages of Europe (cf. Kortmann (this volume: Map 6))
This phenomenon is not necessary for the area in the middle (see Lithuanian, Yiddish, and Romani ) , nor is it sufficient (see Udmurt and Armenian) , but it is at least typical.
In its use of maps but also in the use o f questionnaires our work is reminiscent o f dialectology. It is, o f course, a far cry from the level o f sophisti-cation attained therein, cf. the dialectometric work of Goebl (e. g., 1984) . But it seems that areal typology has a good excuse: the data simply are not good and large enough to make dialectometric methods worthwhile .
5.3. Word order
Another factor o f unity is that nearly all the chapters relate at least some of the adverbialist findings to another domain o f the grammar, invariably that of
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1 Introduction 21
word order. For pronouncements on word order we ceteris paribus relied on the then ongoing work of the theme group headed by Anna Siewierska, most specifically on the index of word order properties o f the languages o f Europe (Siewierska, R i j k h o f f & Bakker, 1997) .
5 . 4 . Diversity
O f course, the chapters also differ a greal deal, e. g., in the weight they attribute to semantic analysis, the level of language-specific detail, the amount o f biblio-graphical references underlying language-specific statements, the extent to which the author takes the sampling method to heart, or the extent to which diachrony comes in. This divergence is in part a reflection o f the research interests o f each individual author and/or the nature o f the domain itself. Trivi-ally, chapters differ in length. This is to some extent a reflection o f the duration of the projects the chapters emanated from. Thus the project with the longest research period yielded the longest chapter (Chapter 2, on phasal adverbials), and the project with the shortest time span resulted in the shortest chapter (Chapter 7 on converbs) .
Note
1. Differences between versions of our list, and between our list and other EUROTYP lists primarily involve low level problems of classification, e. g., whether Upper and Lower Sorbian or Eastern, Northern and Southern Sami are to be listed separately, or whether Asturian is a separate Romance language. Such decisions have no implica-tions for the results of the sampling described below. The one high-level classificatory decision, with an implication for the sampling, is to consider Mansi as a European language.
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