Towards greater social anchoring in language typology
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.60923/issn.2785-0943/19626Keywords:
Sociolinguistics, Language Typology, Language Contact, Language EcologyAbstract
In this paper we make the case for the further social anchoring of linguistic typology by illustrating recent methodological developments in the field of comparative research on language contact. We begin by discussing similarities and differences between sociolinguistics and language typology and focusing on the issue of the social anchoring of research on language variation and linguistic diversity. We argue that while sociolinguistics is socially anchored by definition, linguistic typology has so far abstracted languages from their social contexts due to the nature of macro-comparison and the poor availability of data on sociolinguistic environments. We suggest that greater social anchoring in large-scale comparative research on language structures is possible and can be achieved through integrating two general aspects of language use, relationality and context-dependency, into typological models of language variation and change. We illustrate how data collection on bilingual language ecologies embodies the notion of relationality and context-dependency.
Downloads
References
Adamou, Evangelia. 2021. The adaptive bilingual mind: Insights from endangered languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bell, Allan. 2013. The guidebook to sociolinguistics. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons.
Bentz, Christian & Bodo Winter. 2013. Languages with more second language learners tend to lose nominal case. Language Dynamics and Change 3(1). 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1163/22105832-13030105.
Berdicevskis, Aleksandrs. 2020. Foreigner-directed speech is simpler than native-directed: Evidence from social media. In Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on natural language processing and computational social science, 163–172. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Berthele, Raphael. 2021. The extraordinary ordinary: Re‐engineering multilingualism as a natural category. Language Learning 71(S1). 80–120. https://doi.org/10.1111/lang.12407.
Biber, Douglas. 1988. Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bickel, Balthasar. 2007. Typology in the 21st century: Major current developments. Linguistic Typology 11(1). 239–251. https://doi.org/10.1515/LINGTY.2007.018.
Bickel, Balthasar. 2013. Distributional biases in language families. In Balthasar Bickel, Lenore A. Grenoble, David A. Peterson & Alan Timberlake (eds.), Language typology and historical contingency: In honor of Johanna Nichols, 415–444. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Braunmüller, Kurt Steffen Höder & Karoline Kühl (eds). 2014. Stability and divergence in language contact: Factors and mechanisms (Studies in Language Variation 16). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Chen, Su-Chiao. 1997. Sociology of language. In Nancy H. Hornberger & David Corson (eds.), Encyclopedia of language and education: Research methods in language and education (Encyclopedia of Language and Education, vol. 8), 1–13. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4535-0_1.
Cysouw, Michael. 2011. Understanding transition probabilities. Linguistic Typology 15(2), 415–431. https://doi.org/10.1515/lity.2011.028.
Cysouw, Michael & Jeff Good. 2013. Languoid, doculect and glossonym: Formalizing the notion ‘language’. Language Documentation & Conservation 7. 331–359.
Correia, Fabrice & Benjamin Schnieder (eds.). 2012. Metaphysical grounding: Understanding the structure of reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Croft, William. 2001. Explaining language change. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education Limited.
Cronhamn, Sandra. 2018. Quantifying loanwords: A study of borrowability in the Finnish lexicon. MA thesis, Lund University, Lund.
Di Carlo, Pierpaolo & Jeff Good. 2023. Language contact or linguistic micro-engeeneering? Feature pool, social semiosis and intentional language change in the Cameroonian Grassfields. Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 3(1). 72–125. Special issue on: Language contact and non-convergent change: cases from Africa (edited by Pierpaolo Di Carlo & Pius Akumbu). https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2785-0943/17231.
Di Garbo, Francesca, Eri Kashima, Ricardo Napoleão de Souza & Kaius Sinnemäki. 2021. Concepts and methods for integrating language typology and sociolinguistics. In Silvia Ballaré & Guglielmo Inglese (eds.), Tipologia e Sociolinguistica: Verso un approccio integrato allo studio della variazione: Atti del Workshop della Societá Linguistica Italiana 20 settembre 2020), 143–176. Milano: Officinaventuno. https://doi.org/10.17469/O2105SLI000005.
Di Garbo, Francesca & Ricardo Napoleão de Souza. 2023. A sampling technique for worldwide comparisons of language contact scenarios. Linguistic Typology 27(3). 553–589. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2022-0005.
Di Garbo, Francesca & Panagiotis Kapellis 2025. Contact effects in nominal number systems: A world-wide survey. Studies in Language. https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.24019.dig.
Dingemanse, Mark, Francisco Torreira & Nick. J. Enfield. 2013. Is “Huh?” a universal word? Conversational infrastructure and the convergent evolution of linguistic items. PLOS ONE 8(11). e78273. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0078273.
Döhler, Christian. 2018. A grammar of Komnzo. Berlin: Language Science Press. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1477799.
Dunn, Michael & Simon J. Greenhill, Stephen C. Levinson & Russell D. Gray. 2011. Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals. Nature 473. 79–82. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09923.
Fishman, Joshua A. 1965. Who speaks what language to whom and when? La Linguistique 1(2). 67–88.
Fleming, Luke. 2011. Name taboos and rigid performativity. Anthropological Quarterly 84(1). 141–164.
Floyd, Simeon, Giovanni Rossi & Nick J. Enfield. 2020. A coding scheme for recruitment sequences in interaction. In Simeon Floyd, Giovanni Rossi & Nick Enfield (eds.), Getting others to do things: A pragmatic typology of recruitments, 25–50. Berlin: Language Science Press. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4018372.
Garde, Murray. 2008. Kun-dangwok: “clan lects” and Ausbau in western Arnhem Land. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 191. 141–169. https://doi.org/10.1515/IJSL.2008.027.
Givón, Talmy. 1971. Linguistic colonialism and de-colonialisation: The school system as a tool of oppression. Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies 1(3). 33–49. https://doi.org/10.5070/F713016373.
Griffiths, Devin. 2017. The comparative method and the history of the modern humanities. History of Humanities 2(2). http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/693325.
Greenberg, Joseph. 1978. Universals of human language. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Greenhill, Simon J., Xia Hua, Caela F. Welsh, Hilde Schneemann & Lindell Bromham. 2018. Population size and the rate of language evolution: A test across Indo-European, Austronesian, and Bantu languages. Frontiers in Psychology 9. 576. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00576.
Gumperz, John J. & Robert Wilson. 1971. Convergence and creolization: a case from the Indo-Aryan/Dravidian border in India. In Dell Hymes (ed.), Pidgnization and creolization of languages, 151–168. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Guzmán Naranjo, Matías & Gerhard Jäger. 2023. Euclide, the crow, the wolf and the pedestrian: distance metrics for linguistic typology. Open Research Europe 3. 104. https://doi.org/10.12688/openreseurope.16141.1.
Guzmán Naranjo, Matías & Laura Becker. 2022. Statistical bias control in typology. Linguistic Typology 26(3). 605–670. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2021-0002.
Haan, Johnson. 2001. The grammar of Adang: A Papuan language spoken on the island of Alor, East Nusa Tenggara – Indonesia. Doctoral dissertation, University of Sydney, Sidney. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/6413.
Haig, Geoffrey, Stefan Schnell (eds.). 2023. Multi-CAST: Multilingual corpus of annotated spoken texts. Version 2311. Bamberg: University of Bamberg. multicast.aspra.uni-bamberg.de/#veraa (Accessed 2025.12.05).
Haugen, Einar. 1972. Ecology of language. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Hawkins, John A. 2014. Cross-linguistic variation and efficiency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Janssen, Dirk, Balthasar Bickel & Fernando Zúñiga. 2006. Randomization tests in language typology. Linguistic Typology 10(3). 419–440. https://doi.org/10.1515/LINGTY.2006.013.
Kashima, Eri, Francesca Di Garbo, Oona Raatikainen, Rosnátaly Avelino, Sasha Beck, Anna Berge, Ana Blanco, et al. 2023. GramAdapt social contact dataset. Available online at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7508054.
Kashima, Eri, Francesca Di Garbo, Ruth Singer & Olesya Khanina & Ruth Singer. 2025. The design principles of a sociolinguistic-typological questionnaire for language contact research. Language Dynamics and Change 15(1). 1–103. https://doi.org/10.1163/22105832-bja10035.
King, Brian W. 2019. Communities of practice in applied language research: A critical introduction. London: Routledge.
Klamer, Marian. 2012. Papuan-Austronesian language contact: Alorese from an areal perspective. In Nicholas Evans & Marian Klamer (eds). Melanesian languages on the edge of Asia: Challenges for the 21st century, 72–108. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press.
Kluge, Angela. 2017. A grammar of Papuan Malay. Berlin: Language Science Press.
Kusters, Wouter. 2003. Linguistic complexity: The influence of social change on verbal inflection. Doctoral dissertation, University of Leiden, Leiden.
Ladd, D. Robert & Roberts, Seán G. & Dediu, Dan. 2015. Correlational studies in typological and historical linguistics. Annual Review of Linguistics 1. 221–241. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguist-030514-124819.
Levshina, Natalia. 2019. Token-based typology and word order entropy: A study based on universal dependencies. Linguistic Typology 23(3), 533–572. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2019-0025.
Levshina, Natalia. 2022. Communicative efficiency: Language structure and use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Levshina, Natalia, Savithry Namboodiripad, Marc Allassonnière-Tang, Mathew Kramer, Luigi Talamo, Annemarie Verkerk, Sasha Wilmoth, et al. 2023. Why we need a gradient approach to word order. Linguistics 61(4). 825–883. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2021-0098.
Lupyan, Gary & Rick Dale. 2010. Language structure is partly determined by social structure. PLOS One 5(1). e8559. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0008559.
Lüpke, Friederike. 2022. Contact, concord, classification: Noun class systems and categorisation in a multilingual area. (Paper presented at the seminar of the Helsinki Diversity Linguistics Group, Helsinki, 29 April 2022).
Lüpke, Friederike. 2024. Language, land and languaging in the Atlantic space. In Friederike Lüpke (ed.), The Oxford guide to the Atlantic languages of West Africa, 3–15. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mansfield, John, Henry Leslie-O’Neill & Haoyi Li. 2023. Dialect differences and linguistic divergence: A crosslinguistic survey of grammatical variation. Language Dynamics and Change 13(2). 232–276. https://doi.org/10.1163/22105832-bja10026.
Maslova, Elena. 2000. A dynamic approach to the verification of distributional universals. Linguistic Typology 4. 307–333.
Maslova, Elena & Tatiana Nikitina. 2007. Stochastic universals and dynamics of cross-linguistic distributions: The case of alignment types. (Stanford: Stanford University, Unpublished manuscript). http://anothersumma.net/Publications/Ergativity.pdf.
Merlan, Francesca. 1981. Land, language and social identity in Aboriginal Australia. Mankind 13(2). 133–148.
Milroy, James & Milroy, Lesley. 1985. Linguistic change, social network and speaker innovation. Journal of Linguistics 21(2). 339–384. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226700010306.
Moro, Francesca R. 2018. The plural word hire in Alorese: Contact-induced change from neighboring Alor-Pantar languages. Oceanic Linguistics 57(1). 177–198. https://doi.org/10.1353/ol.2018.0006.
Moro, Francesca R. 2021. Multilingualism in eastern Indonesia: linguistic evidence of a shift from symmetric to asymmetric multilingualism. International Journal of Bilingualism 25(4). 1102–1119. https://doi.org/10.1177/13670069211023134.
Moro, Francesca & Yunus Sulistyono. forthcoming. The Alorese and the Adang in eastern Indonesia. In Francesca Di Garbo & Eri Kashima & Kaius Sinnemäki (eds.), Social foundations of language contact: A comparative survey. Berlin: Language Science Press.
Muysken, Pieter. 2013. Language contact outcomes as the result of bilingual optimization strategies. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 16(4). 709–730. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728912000727.
Nevalainen, Terttu & Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 2017. Historical sociolinguistics: Language change in Tudor and Stuart England. 2nd edn. London: Routledge.
Nishiyama, Kunio & Herman Kelen. 2007. A grammar of Lamaholot, eastern Indonesia: The morphology and syntax of the Lewoingu dialect. München: Lincom.
Pakendorf, Brigitte Nina Dobrushina & Olesya Khanina. 2021. A typology of small-scale multilingualism. International Journal of Bilingualism 25(4). 835–859. https://doi.org/10.1177/13670069211023137.
Ross, Malcolm. 2013. Diagnosing contact processes from their outcomes: The importance of life stages. Journal of Language Contact 6(1). 5–47. https://doi.org/10.1163/19552629-006001002.
Rossi, Giovanni, Simeon Floyd & Nick J. Enfield. 2020. Recruitments and pragmatic typology. In Simeon Floyd, Giovanni Rossi & Nick J. Enfield (eds.), Getting others to do things: A pragmatic typology of recruitments, 1–23. Berlin: Language Science Press. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4018370.
Seifart, Frank Ludger Paschen & Matthew Stave (eds.). 2024. Language documentation reference corpus (DoReCo) 2.0. Berlin & Lyon: Laboratoire Dynamique Du Langage (UMR5596, CNRS & Université Lyon 2). Available online at: https://doi.org/10.34847/nkl.7cbfq779 (Accessed 2025.12.05).
Silverstein, Michael. 2003. Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language & Communication 23(3). 193–229. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0271-5309(03)00013-2.
Sinnemäki, Kaius. 2009. Complexity in core argument marking and population size. In Geoffrey Sampson, David Gil & Peter Trudgill (eds.), Language complexity as an evolving variable, 125–140. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sinnemäki, Kaius. 2010. Word order in zero-marking languages. Studies in Language 34(4). 869–912. https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.34.4.04sin.
Sinnemäki, Kaius. 2014. Cognitive processing, language typology, and variation. WIREs Cognitive Science 5(4). 477–487. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1294.
Sinnemäki, Kaius & Francesca Di Garbo. 2018. Language structures may adapt to the sociolinguistic environment, but it matters what and how you count: A typological study of verbal and nominal complexity. Frontiers in Psychology 9. 1141. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01141.
Sinnemäki, Kaius. 2020. Linguistic system and sociolinguistic environment as competing factors in linguistic variation: A typological approach. Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics 6(2). 1–39. https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2019-1010.
Sinnemäki, Kaius & Ahola, Noora. 2023. Testing inferences about language contact on morphosyntax: A typological case study on Alorese–Adang contact. Transactions of the Philological Society 121(3). 513–545. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968X.12284.
Sinnemäki, Kaius, Francesca Di Garbo, Mark Ellison & Ricardo Napoleão de Souza. 2024. A typological approach to language change in contact situations. Diachronica 41(3). 379–413. https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.23029.sin.
Sinnemäki, Kaius. (in revision). On the “socio” in sociolinguistic typology: A review.
Sinnemäki, Kaius & Eri Kashima (forthcoming). Comparative historical sociolinguistics. In Terttu Nevalainen, Bridget Drinka, & Gijsbert J. Rutten (eds.), Handbook of historical sociolinguistics. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Suokhrie, Kelhouvinuo. 2016. Clans and clanlectal contact: Variation and change in Angami. Asia-Pacific Language Variation 2(2). 188–214. https://doi.org/10.1075/aplv.2.2.04suo.
Sulistyono, Yunus. 2022. A history of Alorese (Austronesian) Combining linguistic and oral history. Doctoral dissertation, University of Leiden, Leiden.
Thomason, Sarah G. & Terrence Kaufman. 1988. Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Tomasello, Michael. 2010. Origins of human communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Trudgill, Peter. 2011. Sociolinguistic typology: Social determinants of linguistic complexity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Winter, Bodo, & Grice, Martine. 2021. Independence and generalizability in linguistics. Linguistics 59(5). 1251–1277. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2019-0049.
Witzlack-Makarevich, Alena, Johanna Nichols, Kristine A. Hildebrandt, Taras Zakharko & Balthasar Bickel. 2022. Managing AUTOTYP data: Design principles and implementation. In Andrea L. Berez-Kroeker, Bradley McDonnell, Eve Koller & Lauren B. Collister (eds.), The open handbook of linguistic data management (Open Handbooks in Linguistics), 631–642. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/12200.003.0061.
Yakpo, Kofi. 2020. Social factors. In Evangelina Amadou & Yaron Matras (eds.), The Routledge handbook of language contact, 129–146. London: Routledge.
Zeman, Daniel et al. 2023. Universal Dependencies 2.13. LINDAT/CLARIAH-CZ digital library at the Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics (ÚFAL), Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University. Available online at: http://hdl.handle.net/11234/1-5287.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Francesca Di Garbo, Kaius Sinnemäki, Eri Kashima
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
