TY - BOOK ID - 7892890 TI - Rethinking Universals AU - Cysouw, Michael AU - Hammarström, Harald AU - Hanke, Thomas AU - Harris, Alice C AU - Holman, Eric W AU - Iosad, Pavel AU - Malchukov, Andrej AU - Miestamo, Matti AU - Newmeyer, Frederick J AU - Wichmann, Søren AU - Wohlgemuth, Jan AU - Rijkhoff, Jan PY - 2010 SN - 1282716360 9786612716362 3110220938 311022092X 9783110220926 9783110220933 9781282716360 6612716363 PB - Berlin Boston DB - UniCat KW - Grammar, Comparative and general. KW - Grammar, Comparative. KW - Linguistic universals. KW - Typology (Linguistics). KW - Typology (Linguistics) KW - Linguistic universals KW - Grammar, Comparative and general KW - Languages & Literatures KW - Philology & Linguistics KW - Comparative grammar KW - Grammar KW - Grammar, Philosophical KW - Grammar, Universal KW - Language and languages KW - Philosophical grammar KW - Universals (Linguistics) KW - Linguistic typology KW - Grammar, Comparative KW - Universals KW - Typology KW - Linguistics KW - Philology KW - Classification KW - Historical Linguistics. KW - Language Typology. KW - Linguistic Theories. KW - Typologie (linguistique) KW - Universaux (linguistique) UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:7892890 AB - Universals of language have been studied extensively for the last four decades, allowing fundamental insight into the principles and general properties of human language. Only incidentally have researchers looked at the other end of the scale. And even when they did, they mostly just noted peculiar facts as ''quirks'' or ''unusual behavior'', without making too much of an effort at explaining them beyond calling them ''exceptions'' to various rules or generalizations. Rarissima and rara, features and properties found only in one or very few languages, tell us as much about the capacities and limits of human language(s) as do universals. Explaining the existence of such rare phenomena on the one hand, and the fact of their rareness or uniqueness on the other, is a reasonable and interesting challenge to any theory of how human language works. The present volume for the first time compiles selected papers on the study of rare linguistic features from various fields of linguistics and from a wide range of languages. ER -