text_combined: typological method pace fritz newmeyer extensive discussion methodological issues raises remarks independent assessment johanna nichol book fritz referred incidentally first good typological work devotes substantial amount effort defining delimiting sorts constructions belong particular structural type good examples many dryer papers e g dryer 1989a 1989b 1992 koptjevskaja tamm 1990 ch 1 3 nominalizations stassen 1985 ch 2 4 comparative chaining constructions haspelmath 1993 ch 2 indefinite pronouns generally discussion proper typological markedness criteria croft 1990 ch 4 6 attempt provide general structural criteria large class crosslinguistic phenomena see example formulation structural consequences hopper thompson 1980 transitivity hypothesis p 131 application criteria syntactic category problem croft 1991 ch 2 3 delimiting classifying phenomena analyzed simple descriptive task fact raises interesting issues typological analysis hardly ignored typological literature second respect basicness language type particular passage croft 1990 fritz referred pp 3336 argued typologists moved classifying languages typologically classifying constructions typologically good thing nevertheless suggested general criteria determining basic language type despite reservations identifying basic language types said great majority cases defining language type instead construction type terribly difficult matthew dryer p c observed inspection texts generally tells quickly word order type language experience study comparing syntax prenominal postnominal modifiers quite frustrated difficult find languages modifier freely occurs pre postnominally course identification basic types depends resources available quality grammatical descriptions availability texts language consultants etc well phenomenon studying e g word order head marking easier vs relative order modifiers syntax nonrestrictive modification harder studies insurmountable problem although always problematic cases third sampling problem discussed length typologists besides bell 1978 seminal article see also dryer 1989c perkins 1989 croft 1990 1825 rijkhoff et al 1993 issues complex go length pointed issues fritz raises apply different sorts samples different purposes mind question independent particular instances probability samples see particular dryer perkins croft references discussion problems note particular stability phenomenon studied important factor less stable likely cases historically independent question coming across rare types pertains variety samples see particular rijkhoff et al studies e g tomlin 1986 koptjevskaja tamm 1990 haspelmath 1993 draw large variety sample select stratified probability sample appropriate generalizations dryer sampling technique attempts combine needs variety probability samples single sampling procedure also add shift towards dynamic diachronic interpretations synchronic typological patterns examination cognate phenomena related languages comparison nonbasic well basic typological strategies becomes another important method analysis means extent problems basic vs nonbasic types single language historical relatedness data sets avoided fact exploited modern typological analysis bill croft references bell alan 1978 language samples universals human language vol 1 method theory ed joseph h greenberg charles ferguson edith moravcsik 123156 stanford stanford university press croft william 1990 typology universals cambridge cambridge university press 1991 syntactic categories grammatical relations cognitive organization information chicago university chicago press dryer matthew 1989a plural words linguistics 27 86595 1989b article noun order cls 25 8497 1989c large linguistic areas language sampling studies language 13 25792 1992 greenbergian word order correlations language 68 81 138 hopper paul sandra thompson 1980 transitivity grammar discourse language 56 251299 koptjevskaja tamm maria 1988 typology action nominal constructions stockholm university stockholm perkins revere 1989 statistical techniques determining language sample size studies languagea013 293315 rijkhoff jan dik bakker kees hengveld peter kahrel method language sampling studies language 17 169203 stassen leon 1985 comparison universal grammar oxford basil blackwell tomlin russell 1986 basic word order functional principles london croom helm dept linguistics u manchester oxford rd manchester m13 9pl uk w croft manchester ac uk fax 4461 275 3187 phone 275 3188