Practice question · Select all that apply
Why might a universal induced from a sample of languages be less secure than it looks? Select every legitimate concern.
Hints
- Three are the standard methodological controls; one is a blanket dismissal.
- Greenberg chose 30 languages deliberately for spread, and the results have largely held.
Show the answer
- A. The sample over-represents well-described and written languages
- C. Areal contact can spread a feature across unrelated neighbours
- D. Genetically related languages may share a feature by inheritance rather than by constraint
Why
The first three are exactly why typological samples are stratified by family and region. The fourth overstates: Greenberg's 30 were chosen for genetic and areal spread rather than convenience, and the implicational results have largely survived samples fifty times larger.
Practise Universals and Typology
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Languages I is free to start.
More questions on Universals and Typology
- Approximately what percentage of languages with a dominant word order place the subject before the object?
- All six logically possible orders of subject, object and verb are attested in some language.
- Sort each property by whether it is typical of VERB-OBJECT languages or of OBJECT-VERB languages.
- Complete the account of typology.
- Greenberg's 1963 study examined thirty languages selected for genetic and areal spread.
- Greenbergian universals are induced from empirical samples, whereas Chomskyan universals are posited as…
- What percentage of the world's languages have SOV as their basic word order?