%0 Journal Article
%A Haspelmath, Martin
%+ Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society
%T Explaining grammatical coding asymmetries: Form–frequency correspondences and predictability  : 
%G eng
%U https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0008-21C5-4
%R 10.1017/S0022226720000535
%7 2021-01-08
%D 2021
%* Review method: peer-reviewed
%X This paper claims that a wide variety of grammatical coding asymmetries can be explained as adaptations to the language users’ needs, in terms of frequency of use, predictability and coding efficiency. I claim that all grammatical oppositions involving a minimal meaning difference and a significant frequency difference are reflected in a universal coding asymmetry, i.e. a cross-linguistic pattern in which the less frequent member of the opposition gets special coding, unless the coding is uniformly explicit or uniformly zero. I give 25 examples of pairs of construction types, from a substantial range of grammatical domains. For some of them, the existing evidence from the world’s languages and from corpus counts is already strong, while for others, I know of no counterevidence and I make readily testable claims. I also discuss how the functional-adaptive forces operate in language change, and I discuss a number of possible alternative explanations.
%K asymmetric coding, markedness, morphological universals, predictability, token frequency
%J Journal of Linguistics
%V 57
%N 3
%& 605
%P 605 - 633
%I Cambridge University Press / UK
%@ 0022-2267