We consider agent-denoting nominalizations like the finder of the wallet, contrasting them with the better-studied action/event-denoting nominalizations. We show that in English, Sakha, and Mapudungun, agent-denoting nominalizations can have none of the verbal/clausal features that event-denoting nominalizations often have: they cannot contain adverbs, voice markers, aspect, or negation. The one apparent exception to this generalization is that (only) Sakha allows accusative-case objects in agentive nominalizations, but we show that this is due to Sakha's special rule of accusative case assignment, not to a difference in the structure. We explain these restrictions by saying that agentive nominalizers have a semantics like that of a Voice head (Kratzer 1996). Given this, the natural order of semantic composition implies that agentive nominalizers, like Voice, must combine directly with a bare VP. We conclude by presenting the results of a seventy-eight-language survey, confirming that human languages in general avoid clause-like syntax inside agentive nominalizations, although it is permitted in reduced relative clauses, which may look superficially similar.

Because many of the forms participating in inherent variability are not attested in the standard language, they are often construed as evidence of change. We test this assumption by confronting the standard, as instantiated by a unique corpus covering five centuries of French grammatical injunctions, with data on the evolution of spontaneous speech over an apparent-time span of 119 years.

Reasoning that forms salient enough to have attracted the attention of grammarians were likely widespread in the speech of the time, we demonstrate how these materials may be used to (i) infer the existence of prior variability, (ii) trace the evolution of normative dictates associated with the variants, and most revealing, (iii) discern hints of prior linguistic conditioning of variant selection. These are then operationalized as factors in a multivariate analysis and tested against the facts of usage.

The linguistic focus is on future temporal reference, a notoriously variable sector of the grammar in which competing exponents have persisted for centuries. Systematic comparison of grammatical treatments with actual speaker behavior shows virtually no correspondence between the motivations offered in the literature and those constraining actual variant choice. Prescriptive efforts to explain variability, by ascribing to each variant form a dedicated reading or context of use, have had no effect on speech, which is shown to be governed by a powerful set of tacit variable constraints. These in turn are unacknowledged by the grammatical tradition. The result is a great and growing disconnect between the variable rules governing speech and the normative dictates that underlie the notion of the standard. We explore the implications of these findings for the use of grammarians' observations as data for linguistic analysis.

The reconstruction of genealogical relationships between languages is traditionally performed through lexical comparison and the establishment of regular sound changes. The historical analysis of other aspects of linguistic structure, like syntactic patterns or the function of grammatical elements, is normally understood to depend on a previously established thorough understanding of the genealogical structure of the family. In this article we show that it is possible to reconstruct historical changes in morphosyntactic function without assuming detailed knowledge about the genealogical developments of the languages involved. Even more surprisingly, we are able to accurately reconstruct the genealogical structure of a language family using only a limited amount of morphosyntactic variation.

As a case study, this article focuses on the nonspatial usage of spatial case marking in the Tsezic languages, a subgroup of Nakh-Daghestanian, spoken in the Caucasus. A new semantic-map-like visualization is developed to represent functional differences in case marking between the various Tsezic languages. Using MAXIMUM PARSIMONY, a reconstruction is proposed for the historical development of the case marking, and the same visualization is used to present the reconstructed historical developments in an insightful manner. Besides various new insights regarding the development of Tsezic case marking, the approach used in this article presents a generally applicable method for the reconstruction of morphosyntactic function.

The purpose of this paper is to explore academic linguistics' tacit reliance on a Christian missionary organization, SIL International, to develop technological infrastructure and offer service in local linguistic communities—areas that have generally been ignored by academic linguistics because they have been seen as falling outside its domain of professional responsibility. We refer to these kinds of activities as PRACTICAL LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT because they draw upon linguistic expertise to solve practical real-world problems. Until now, academic linguists have benefited from the practical language development work carried out by our missionary counterparts without much deliberation. But with the contemporary rise in concern over language endangerment, the time has come for us to reflect on how this partnership of convenience can be reconciled with the changing priorities of the discipline. As we redouble our efforts to document, understand, and support the world's linguistic diversity, academic linguists are taking a renewed interest in fieldwork. There are more numerous and generous sources of funding for endangered-language research. Documentary linguistics, which takes the collection, preservation, and annotation of primary linguistic data as its key aim, is emerging as a subfield in its own right (Woodbury 2003, Himmelmann 2006). A growing recognition of the social and economic forces that drive language shift has led many linguists to see basic research in small, minority, and indigenous language communities as addressing issues of human rights (Nettle & Romaine 2000, Skutnabb-Kangas 2000, Hinton 2002). Moral and political questions like who funds linguistic work, who carries it out, and who benefits from it and how are much harder to ignore in the context of these changes (Dorian 1993, England 1995). At the same time, changes in the way information is communicated, initiated by the spread of digital technology, have created demands for precise methods of referring to language names, written characters, lexical items, and other linguistic objects. But movements within the academy have not kept pace with these demands.

SIL International trains between two hundred and three hundred linguists every year. Many of these missionary linguists will use their training not only to win converts to Protestant Christianity, but also to add to SIL's massive linguistic bibliography. While tension between the evangelical and scientific goals of the organization have manifested from time to time internally, as some members insist that linguistic expertise and publication come before evangelism while others resist, it is for outsiders that SIL's dual identity has tended to cause the most difficulties (Svelmoe 2008). Ironically, as this paper demonstrates, linguists in the United States, Mexico, and Latin America have themselves to blame and credit, almost as much as SIL itself, for the eventual shape of the organization.

Language ideologies generally refer to the kinds of cultural assumptions or beliefs that speakers hold about their OWN language: its relation to the world, its relation to their sense of self, its relation to other languages, and so forth (Silverstein 1979, Woolard 1998). But in the kinds of cross-cultural contact situations that linguists, anthropologists, missionaries, or other Christian aid workers often find themselves, language ideologies about OTHER peoples' languages can be just as important. Though cultural assumptions about language may change over time and across historical and social contexts, they never disappear, not even from professional linguistics. Here I look at some of the key language ideologies at issue when considering the relationship between SIL and endangered-language linguistics.

Commentators on the Christian missionary organization SIL International have long noted the organization's bipartite structure, which embraces both evangelism and linguistic science. These seemingly dissociate goals are mutually reinforcing, with SIL's linguistic work contributing to its evangelical aims and vice versa. This paper focuses on a third, equally important, component of SIL's work that academic linguists tend to overlook: community development. We argue that although this kind of work evidences a concern for speaker welfare, it also conceals an incompatibility with the principle of self-determination, the idea that communities have a right to freely choose their own futures. Despite a rhetorical commitment to the latter ideal, the practical effects of SIL involvement are closely aligned with the forces of politically and economically dominant societies that confront and overwhelm local indigenous societies and their languages.

Recent concern among linguists about endangered languages has increased interest in fieldwork to document these languages. This in turn has brought a new generation of linguists into contact with the largest linguistic fieldwork organization in the world, SIL International, and its primary partner organization Wycliffe Bible Translators.

Discussions of the psycholinguistic significance of regularity in inflectional morphology generally deal with languages in which regular forms can be clearly identified and revolve around whether there are distinct processing mechanisms for regular and irregular forms. We present a detailed description of Dinka's notoriously irregular noun number inflection and suggest that no pattern can usefully be designated as regular. Psycholinguistic studies of Dinka would make a valuable contribution to our understanding of inflectional morphology crosslinguistically.