Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time

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Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time (Chicago, 1992) is linguist Johanna Nichols's best known work, considered a pioneering work in the use of linguistic typology as a tool for understanding human migrations in prehistory.

Nichols selects a sample of the world's languages (one per stock) and tabulates typological characteristics such as:

• Morphosyntactic alignment
• Head-marking vs. dependent-marking
• Word order
• Morphological complexity
• Valence-changing operations or voice system
• Presence or absence of distinction between inclusive we and exclusive we
• Presence or absence of distinction between inalienable possession and alienable possession
• Presence or absence of numerical classifiers
• Presence or absence of noun classes (such as gender)
• Presence or absence of grammatical number (plurality neutralization)
• Presence or absence of adpositional phrases
• Presence or absence of non-finite verbs (infinitives or verbal nouns)

for each language, using this data to discover regional patterns in the distribution of these features.