Geography (nb: strange names)

Families Indo-European: most primary branches Greek (Hellenic) Italic (> Romance) Celtic Germanic Balto-Slavic Albanian (Armenian) (Anatolian)

Families Uralic: Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian… Semitic: Maltese Basque Turkic (Turkish, Gagauz, Crimean Tatar, Karaim, Krymchak …)

Basic characteristics The number of vowels is not small (≥ 5) Consonant clusters are relatively common (no restriction to CV syllables) These characteristics are neither average nor extreme.

Basic characteristics More analytic than synthetic Index of synthesis Welsh (Elena Parina) English 1.68 (Joseph Greenberg) German Russian 2.4

Basic characteristics But Polysynthesis in French (Knud Lambrecht, Andrej Kibrik, Peter Arkadiev)

Basic characteristics: locus of marking NPs: mostly dependent-marking Clause: frequent double-marking

Basic characteristics: locus of marking But head-marking / double-marking in NPs? German “dialects”, e.g., Low Saxon (Strunk 2006): Bulgarian, Macedonian. Macedonian (Pancheva 2002): Cliticization of pronominal possessors Clear head-marking / double-marking: Finnish, Hungarian, Turkic (+Armenian)

Basic characteristics: word order Word order: Indo-European languages of Europe: mostly SVO, but Insular Celtic languages – VSO German, Dutch – SVO in independent clauses, SOV in dependent clauses Turkic (except Gagauz), Basque, the Caucasian area – SOV Hungarian as a discourse configurational language

Basic characteristics: word order Word order in NPs varies considerably. Matthew Dryer: a hierarchy of VO languages from most heavily “Noun-Modifier” to most heavily “Modifier-Noun” Celtic N Dem N Adj N Gen Albanian, RomanceDem N N Adj N Gen Greek, SlavicDem N Adj N N Gen Germanic Dem N Adj N N Gen/Gen N Baltic, FinnicDem N Adj N Gen N

Basic characteristics: alignment For the most part, accusative alignment Basque (Hualde & de Urbina, eds, 2003): Ergative alignment Some semantically intransitive verbs, which cannot combine with patients, require the ergative case.

Grouping the European languages together Originally: other languages are contrasted with the “core” European languages. Benjamin Whorf: Standard Average European (SAE) 1990s and 2002s: looking for common typological features of the SAE languages (Eurotyp) O. Dahl: SAE as an exotic language J. Van der Auwera, M. Haspelmath et al.: SAE as a linguistic area

SAE as a linguistic area (Haspelmath 2001) Definite and indefinite articles Relative clauses with relative pronouns ‘Have’-perfect Nominative experiencers Participial passives Dative external possessors Negative pronouns occurring without the verbal negation Obligatory subject NP even in the presence of subject agreement Intensifier-reflexive differentiation (сам vs себя) Anticausative prominence (вариться < варить)

Degrees of membership in SAE (Haspelmath 2001)

The most well-known sprachbunds in Europe Charlemagne Sprachbund – the SAE nucleus Balkan sprachbund Mediterranean linguistic area …

The most well-known sprachbunds in Europe Circumbaltic languages

Areal subgrouping in Europe? Тhomas Stolz (2006): The areal perspective is highly affected by the range of features which are considered relevant. Cf. clustering of isoglosses from the perspective of Russian.

Areal subgrouping in Europe? Stolz (2006): Europe is not a homogeneous linguistic area (pace SAE): “one and the same language may be part of residual or expansive areas, depending on the feature under review.” Europe is a superposition zone resulted from a number of different areal convergence processes.

Some conclusions The distribution of typological features may be highly based on geography and various historical processes. Many well-known features found in Europe are highly atypical in a broader perspective. Areal subgrouping still should be taken with care: The range of features used for establishing a linguistic area is often pre-established (so the area). Establishing areal subgroupigs on the basis of features often results in a more complex picture, with various areas beings superposed.