This paper gives an overview of differential placemarking phenomena and
formulates a number of universals that seem to be well supported. Differential place
marking is a situation in which the coding of locative, allative or ablative roles
depends on subclasses of nouns, in particular place names (toponyms), inanimate
common nouns and human nouns. When languages show asymmetric coding
differences depending on such subclasses, they show shorter (and often zero) coding
of place roles with toponyms, and longer (often adpositional rather than affixal)
coding of place roles with human nouns. Like differential objectmarking, differential
place marking can be explained by frequency asymmetries, expectations derived
from frequencies, and the general preference for efficient coding. I also argue that
differential place marking patterns provide an argument against the need to appeal
to ambiguity avoidance to explain differential object marking.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:91719 |
| Date | 29 May 2024 |
| Creators | Haspelmath, Martin |
| Publisher | De Gruyter |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion, doc-type:article, info:eu-repo/semantics/article, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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