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Standard typological methods are designed to test hypotheses on strong universals that broadly override all other competing universal and language-specific forces. In this paper, I argue that there exist also weak universal forces. Weak universal forces systematically operate in the course of development but then interact with, or are even subsequently overridden by, other processes such as analogical exten- sion, persistence effects from the source function, etc. This, in turn, means that there can be statistically significant evidence for violations at the synchronic level and, accordingly, only a weak positive statistical signal. But crucially, the absence of statistical prima-facie evidence for such forces does not amount to evidence for their absence. The assumption that there are also weak universal forces that affect language evolution goes in line with the view that human cognition in general and language acquisition in particular are constrained by probabilistic biases of differ- ent range, including weak ones (cf. Thompson et al. 2016). By way of example, the present paper claims that the discriminatory function of case in differential object marking (DOM) systems is a weak universal: It keeps appearing in historically, syn- chronically and typologically very divergent constellations but is often overridden by other processes in further developments and is, therefore, not significant at the synchronic level in a large sample. &nbsp

This volume provides an up-to-date discussion of a foundational issue that has recently taken centre stage in linguistic typology and which is relevant to the language sciences more generally: To what extent can cross-linguistic generalizations, i.e. statistical universals of linguistic structure, be explained by the diachronic sources of these structures? Everyone agrees that typological distributions are the result of complex histories, as “languages evolve into the variation states to which synchronic universals pertain” (Hawkins 1988). However, an increasingly popular line of argumentation holds that many, perhaps most, typological regularities are long-term reflections of their diachronic sources, rather than being ‘target-driven’ by overarching functional-adaptive motivations. On this view, recurrent pathways of reanalysis and grammaticalization can lead to uniform synchronic results, obviating the need to postulate global forces like ambiguity avoidance, processing efficiency or iconicity, especially if there is no evidence for such motivations in the genesis of the respective constructions. On the other hand, the recent typological literature is equally ripe with talk of ‘complex adaptive systems’, ‘attractor states’ and ‘cross-linguistic convergence’. One may wonder, therefore, how much room is left for traditional functional-adaptive forces and how exactly they influence the diachronic trajectories that shape universal distributions. The papers in the present volume are intended to provide an accessible introduction to this debate. Covering theoretical, methodological and empirical facets of the issue at hand, they represent current ways of thinking about the role of diachronic sources in explaining grammatical universals, articulated by seasoned and budding linguists alike. &nbsp

In this article we consider the Slavic perfective/imperfective opposition, a well-known example of viewpoint aspect which establishes a classificatory grammatical category by means of stem derivation. Although Slavic languages are not unique in having developed a classificatory aspect system, a survey of such systems shows that the Slavic perfective/imperfective opposition is a particularly rare subcase of such systems, first of all because it combines prefixing with suffixing patterns of derivation. We therefore explore the morphology involved, tracing its development from Proto-Indo-European into Early Slavic. The emergence of Slavic aspect is atypical for grammatical categories, and it deviates considerably from mainstream instances of grammaticalization in many respects. We show that there is a strong tendency (i) towards abandonment of highly lexically conditioned and versatile suffix choices in Proto-Indo-European and in Common Slavic, which led to fewer and more transparent suffixes, and (ii) towards concatenation, away from originally non-concatenative (fusional) schemata. Furthermore, we compare Slavic with some other Indo-European languages and inquire as to why in Europe no other Indo-European group beyond Slavic went so far as to productively exploit newly developed prefixes (or verb particles) merely for use as aspectual modifiers of stems and to combine them with a (partially inherited, partially remodelled) stock of suffixes to yield a classificatory aspect system. The Slavic system, thus, appears quite unique not only from a typological point of view, but also in diachronic-genealogical terms. Based on this background, amplified by some inner-Slavic biases in the productivity of patterns of stem derivation, we pose the provocative question as to whether the rise and consolidation of the stem-derivational perfective/imperfective opposition in Slavic was favoured by direct and indirect contacts with Uralic (Finno-Ugric) and Altaic (Turkic) populations at different periods since at least the time of the Great Migrations.

The paper describes the syntax, morphology and meaning of the new periphrastic perfect of Tocharian.

Straipsnyje teigiama, kad dauguma latvių skolinių iš senosios rusų kalbos pateko į kalbą iš latvių aukštaičių prokalbės, iš kurios jie paskolinti latvių viduriečių prokalbei. Tai galėtų paaiškinti jų fonetinį pavidalą, ypač latvių viduriečių prokalbės "uo" kaip senosios rusų kalbos "oy" [u:] atitikmenį tokiuose skoliniuose kaip "suoma", "muoka", galimas daiktas, patekusiu per latvių aukštaičių prokalbę "*sūma", "*mūka" su vėlesniu [uo] į [u:] pakeitimu pagal garsų atitikimo dialektuose modelį. Ši prielaida taip pat paaiškina daugelį kitų atvejų, kur latvių viduriečių formos skiriasi nuo senųjų rusų (ir lietuvių), plg. latvių viduriečių "baznica" su laužtine priegaide priesagoje, kuri paprastai turi išlaikytą cirkumfleksinę priegaidę. Laužtinė priegaidė negali būti atsiradusi dėl senosios rusų kalbos tarties ir greičiausiai atspindi latvių aukštaičių glotalizaciją vidiniuose skiemenyse, kurie turi prigimtinius "ī" ar "ū". In this article it is argued that most Latvian borrowings from Old Russian must have entered the language through Proto-High-Latvian, whence they were borrowed into Proto-Middle-Latvian. This would explain their phonetic shape, particularly Middle Latvian uo as the reflex of Old Russ. oy [u:] in borrowings like suoma (OR. соумa), тиока (OR. мoукa), presumably through Proto-High-Latvian *sūma, *mūka with subsequent substitution of [uo] for [u:] according to the pattern of sound correspondences between the dialects. This assumption would also account for many- other cases where Middle Latvian forms diverge from those of Old Russian (and Lithuanian), cf. Middle Latvian baznica with broken tone on a suffix usually bearing sustained tone (-nĩca). This broken tone cannot be due to the Old Russian pronunciation and must reflect the High Latvian glottalization of internal syllables containing original i or ū.