Rethinking Universals: How Rarities Affect Linguistic Theory (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology [EALT], 45)

Universals of language have been studied extensively for the last four decades, allowing fundamental insight into the principles and general properties of human language. Only incidentally have researchers looked at the other end of the scale. And even when they did, they mostly just noted peculiar facts as ''quirks'' or ''unusual behavior'', without making too much of an effort at explaining them beyond calling them ''exceptions'' to various rules or generalizations. Rarissima and rara, features and properties found only in one or very few languages, tell us as much about the capacities and limits of human language(s) as do universals. Explaining the existence of such rare phenomena on the one hand, and the fact of their rareness or uniqueness on the other, is a reasonable and interesting challenge to any theory of how human language works. The present volume for the first time compiles selected papers on the study of rare linguistic features from various fields of linguistics and from a wide range of languages. The other end of universals: theory and typology of rara / Michael Cysouw & Jan Wohlgemuth Rarities in numeral systems / Harald Hammarström Additional rarities in the typology of numerals / Thomas Hanke Explaining typologically unusual structures: the role of probability / Alice C. Harris Right at the left edge: initial consonant mutations in the languages of the world / Pavel Iosad "Quirky" case: rare phenomena in case-marking and their implications for a theory of typological distributions / Andrej Malchukov Negatives without negators / Matti Miestamo Accounting for rare typological features in formal syntax: three strategies and some general remarks / Frederick J. Newmeyer Rara and grammatical theory / Jan Rijkhoff Pairwise comparisons of typological profiles / Søren Wichmann & Eric W. Holman Language endangerment, community size and typological rarity / Jan Wohlgemuth. Frontmatter......Page 2 Contents......Page 8 The other end of universals: theory and typology of rara......Page 12 Rarities in numeral systems......Page 22 Additional rarities in the typology of numerals......Page 72 Explaining typologically unusual structures: the role of probability......Page 102 Right at the left edge: initial consonant mutations in the languages of the world......Page 116 “Quirky” case: rare phenomena in case-marking and their implications for a theory of typological distributions......Page 150 Negatives without negators......Page 180 Accounting for rare typological features in formal syntax: three strategies and some general remarks......Page 206 Rara and grammatical theory......Page 234 Pairwise comparisons of typological profiles......Page 252 Language endangerment, community size and typological rarity......Page 266 Backmatter......Page 290 Main description: Rarissima and rara, features and properties found only in one or very few languages, tell us as much about the capacities and limits of human language(s) as do universals. Explaining the existence of such rare phenomena on the one hand, and the fact of their rareness or uniqueness on the other, proves a reasonable and interesting challenge to any theory of how human language works