Séminaire du Lattice : Sonia Cristofaro, “Explaining typological universals from the perspective of language change:
The development and loss of overt marking”

Typological universals are usually explained in terms of efficiency principles: certain grammatical configurations are favored across languages because they are beneficial for speakers, for example in terms of economy or processing ease. Diachronically, however, these configurations emerge from pre-existing constructions, for example through grammaticalization or other processes of constructional reinterpretation. Such processes are traditionally assumed to be triggered by properties of the source constructions and their contexts of use, not by the efficiency of the resulting configurations.

This will be illustrated by examining the diachronic origins of overt and zero marking for different grammatical categories, including singular and plural, first, second, and third person, and alienable and inalienable possession. While this phenomenon has been argued to be driven by economy, the available diachronic evidence shows that it results from multiple processes unrelated to this factor, such as context-induced reanalysis. These facts suggest that explaining typological universals requires a detailed understanding of several diachronic factors independent of the efficiency of the relevant configurations, including multiple source constructions and multiple processes of change through which individual configurations arise from their respective sources. These factors remain largely under–investigated, pointing to new research perspectives for both language typology and the study of language change..

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