(The following conversation reflects some of the discussions that we had over the last few years, and particularly at a recent mini-workshop at WIKO Berlin.)
Martin Haspelmath: In the typological literature of the last decade, one finds more and more instances of people claiming that this or that typological generalization actually has a diachronic explanation. Continue reading
Quite a few people have argued in recent times that typological distributions should be explained with reference to diachronic change (e.g. Bybee (1988; 2006; 2008), Blevins (2004), Anderson (2005; 2016), (Plank 2007), Creissels (2008), and Cristofaro (2010; 2013; 2014)). As Bickel et al. (2015: 29) put it:
“statistical universals are not really synchronic in nature, but are rather the result of underlying diachronic mechanisms that cause languages to change in preferred or ‘natural’ ways”
This view seems to have been articulated first by Greenberg (1969; 1978), Continue reading
