text_combined: summary basic order remarks typology last week asked references discussions problem comes linguistic typology conflicting ambiguous criteria deciding whether particular language particular type respect feature word order clause alignment whatever one decide assign language would like thank following helpful replies george huttar yehuda falk dan everett larry trask jon aske mike maxwell mark newson bill croft georgia green ingo plag randy harris andrew carstairs mccarthy quite surprised small amount published attention problem pointed short discussions couple pages major works devoted typology seminal greenberg paper comrie language universals linguistic typology croft typology universals hawkins word order universals also suggested look doris payne pragmatics word order papers yagua payne dan everett tzotzil judith aissen prompted query reading johanna nichols linguistic diversity space time found extremely impressive uneasy feeling caused pigeonholeing languages svo headmarking activestative whatever since many languages transparently one particular type surface wondered basis typecharacterizations general answer given question obvious reason neither nichols anyone else could profound firsthand knowledge small handful 174 languages data base suspect cases nichols could know criteria applied type language sources consulted many sources insufficiently explicit point take selfevident categorization another would take controversial simply wrong consider example typing french vso sure cases nichols threw language sample particular feature obvious ambiguous status respect feature could created problems solved aske croft pointed postings language inconsistent respect particular feature typological data data moreover could highly relevant conclusions stability diversity time sample 174 languages misassignment several languages within category 3 way division could lead rather different conclusions likewise would postulating different set categories categories specifically mixed types beginning sound like critique nichols nt mean rather commentary shaky art typological pigeonholeing underlies conclusions language prehistory also much functionalist theorizing increasingly generative theorizing well also question sample size typologists strive quite reasonably correct genetic areal biases samples heroic effort along lines know dryer work confident attempt eliminate bias sample given nichols conclusions influences extend halfway around globe nt present challenge purported explanations relative frequency typological feature common functionalist literature increasingly generative much could result historical accident one hand contact descent rather product external functional forces design ug smaller sample languages mutual influence common descent possibility likely implicational typological relation artifactual reason think lot typologically possible purely chance nonexisting languages fritz newmeyer fjn u washington edu ps respect last point alan bell shown feature appears 1 world languages say 4050 languages show 50 time random sample 75 languages need sample 200 languages could counted show 90 time assuming utterly counterfactually genetic relations areal influences languages