This paper applies finite state technologies to verify the typological validity of Turbid Spreading, a theory of vowel harmony in Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince & Smolensky, 1993/2004). Previous analyses of vowel harmony in OT have been prone to typological inconsistencies, predicting grammars that do not occur in natural language (Wilson, 2003). However, attempts to eliminate typological patho...

This paper looks at negation in Finnish dialects from a typological perspective. The focus is on standard negation, i.e. the negation of declarative verbal main clauses. The dialectal variation that Finnish shows in its negative construction is examined in the light of current typological knowledge of the expression of negation. Developmental trends connected to the micro-typological variation ...

One of the basic principles in establishing a genetic grouping of languages is that typological traits must be excluded from consideration at the initial stage of establishment; only substantive traits (form-meaning pairings) are relevant. Yet typological evidence is still frequently appealed to in recent discussions of the methodology for establishing genetic classifications and in recent prop...

OBJECTIVES This article reports comparisons of the Giessen Test (GT) with the NEO-Five-Factor-Inventory (NEO-FFI) based on a dimensional as well as on a typological approach. METHOD Data were collected from 1673 subjects (aged between 18 and 96 years) constituting a representative sample of the German population. RESULTS The results indicate only moderate agreement (ranging from .25 to .61)...

of protein for the mountain pygmy possum, a tiny 45 g possum and the only mammal unique to alpine and subalpine areas of Australia. Pygmy possums have a range totalling less than ten square kilometres and almost entirely coincident with Australian ski resorts, so it is perhaps fortuitous for them that they hibernate during the winter. Winter-active mammals, like the dusky antechinus (a carnivor...

We will provide an analysis of negative concord in sentential negation in three languages, French, Polish and German. The focus of the paper is (1) the typological variation with respect to the realization of negative concord in the three languages under investigation and (2) the treatment of lexical exceptions within the different typological classes. We will propose a unified theory of negati...