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This paper discusses the emergence and demise of verbal person-number indexes on the basis of a sample of 310 languages. First, qualitative evidence is provided to show that there are different ways in which indexes may emerge, and that independent anaphoric pronouns are not the only possible source. Second, quantitative evidence is provided against the claim that indexes tend to demise via phonological attrition in the course of time. A considerable degree of demise is not a universally likely process, but rather a major restructuring process that requires additional – areal – triggers in order to come about. Thus, 92% of the languages of my sample do not show any strong tendency toward losing their indexes, and the degree of demise of their indexes is persistently low when compared to the proto-forms. This is despite the fact that indexes constantly change over time, and the phonetic shape found in the proto-languages is never faithfully preserved in the modern languages. Finally, those few languages that exhibit a relatively high degree of demise are not randomly distributed across the world, but are clustered in the following areas: Northwestern Europe, Eastern South East Asia with Oceania and, possibly, Mid Africa as well Northern South America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper deals with common developments in phonology and/or phonetics of High Latvian, White Russian and North-West-Russian varieties. Only non-trivial processes are discussed, in order to exclude the possibility of parallel, independent development. The focus of this paper lies on the High Latvian dialect as a local centre of language contact. In the first section a number of common phenomena of High Latvian and West-East-Slavic are demonstrated, while the second section deals with the contacts between the Lithuanian Aukštaitian variety of Kupiškis and High Latvian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]