Parametric versus functional explanations

of syntactic universals*

Martin Haspelmath

This paper compares the generative principles-and-parameters approach to

explaining syntactic universals to the func]tional-typological approach and
also discusses the intermediate approach of Optimality Theory. It identifies
some fundamental differences between generative parametric explanations and
functional explanations. Most importantly, generative explanations assume that
cross-linguistic generalizations are due to the innate Universal Grammar, whereas
functional explanations assume that language structure can be influenced by
regularities of language use through language change. Despite these differences,
both approaches to cross-linguistic similarities and differences seem to be guided
by a similar vision: That the superficial structural diversity of languages can be
reduced to a few basic patterns once one digs below the surface (macroparameters
or holistic types). Unfortunately, the evidence for such reductionist constructs
has never been very good, so more recently both generativists and functionalists
have shifted their interests away from these ambitious goals. However, I argue
that there is one type of cross-linguistic generalization for which there is very
good empirical evidence: intra-domain universals relating to prominence scales,
most of which are straightforwardly explained functionally in terms of processing
difficulty.

Keywords: syntactic universal; macroparameter; functional explanation;

optimality-theoretic syntax; holistic type; prominence scale

1.  Introduction: The relevance of observable universals

Many generative and functional linguists share a primary interest in understanding

structural similarities and differences between languages. It is clear that the ob-
served language structures represent only a tiny fraction of the logically possible

*I am grateful to Frederick J. Newmeyer, Bernhard Wälchli, and two anonymous referees for
useful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
 Martin Haspelmath

structures, and for a whole range of syntactic domains linguists have a good initial
idea of what the limits on structural variation (i.e., the syntactic universals) are.
But why should languages be limited in these particular ways in choosing their
structures? Generative and functional linguists have given very different answers
to this question, but these answers are rarely compared to each other, and the dif-
ferences in the methodological foundations of the two research programmes are
not well understood by most linguists. The present paper aims to elucidate this
situation. I will not attempt to hide my personal preference for the functional ap-
proach, but I will highlight strengths and weaknesses of both approaches.
I should note at the outset that the goal of explaining language universals is
not usually taken as the main goal of generative research. The following quotation
is typical:
The comparative approach in the generative tradition addresses the following
questions: (i) what is knowledge of language? (ii) how is this knowledge acquired?
. . . In order to answer these questions we have to identify which linguistic properties
can vary across languages and which are constant. (Haegeman 1997: 1)

According to this view, the identification of universals is a means to the central

goals of characterizing knowledge of language and understanding how it can
be acquired. In this contribution, I will not say anything on these more ambi-
tious goals, which I regard as beyond our reach at the moment, or at least as lying
outside the realm of linguistics proper. What linguists are primarily responsible
for is “observational adequacy”, i.e., descriptions of language systems that distin-
guish possible from impossible expressions in the language. The standard tools
of corpus analyses and acceptability judgements are apparently not sufficient to
even come close to “descriptive adequacy” (in Chomsky’s sense), i.e., descriptions
that reflect speakers’ mental patterns (their knowledge of language).1 This view,
which in its pessimism differs both from generative linguistics and from cognitive
linguistics (e.g., Croft & Cruse 2004), does not preclude the goal of identifying
syntactic universals and finding explanations for them.

.  The main reason for this assessment is the vast gulf separating linguists’ views, as reflected
in current textbooks on different cognitively oriented approaches to syntax, e.g., Taylor (2002)
(on Cognitive Grammar) and Adger (2003) (on generative grammar). It could, of course, turn
out that one of the two approaches is exactly on the right track and the other approach is totally
wrongheaded. But I find it much more likely that, while both capture a few aspects of the truth,
they are both groping in the dark, equally distant from their common goal of mentally realistic
description, which is simply too ambitious.
 Parametric versus functional explanations of syntactic universals 

It has sometimes been asserted that linguistic universals should not be con-
strued as properties of observable systems of speaker behaviour, but as properties
of mental systems. For example, Smith (1989: 66–67) writes:
Greenbergian typologists try to make generalizations about data, when what they
should be doing is making generalizations across rule systems.

This apparently means that Greenbergians generalize over abstract systems (regard-
less of their cognitive realization), whereas true universals will only be found by
generalizing over cognitive systems. It is easy to agree that a systematic comparison
of cognitive systems would be a worthwhile task, but unfortunately it is totally im-
practical, because we know so little about what these systems might be (see note 1).
Even for well-studied languages like English or Japanese, there are very few things
that cognitively oriented syntacticians agree about, and even within a single research
tradition (such as the Chomsykan tradition), there may be new guiding ideas every
10 years or so that lead linguists to very different analyses of basically the same data.
Thus, cross-linguistic generalizations over known cognitive systems do not seem to
be on the order of the day for the present generation of syntacticians.
Instead, what all comparative linguists do in practice is compare abstract
(Platonic) rule systems that approximately model the observed behavior of speakers
in spontaneous language use and acceptability judgements. This is a much more
tractable task that is clearly within our reach. There are hundreds of descriptions
of languages from around the world that are accessible to any linguist because they
only use widely understood theoretical vocabulary (“basic linguistic theory”), and
these are typically the basis for typological generalizations in the Greenbergian tra-
dition. In the Chomskyan tradition, too, almost all comparisons are based on (what
are openly acknowledged to be) provisional and largely conventional analyses.2
Such analyses may be claimed to be about cognitive rule systems, but in practice this
has little relevance for the comparative syntactician’s work. Those generative syn-
tacticians that are considering a fairly large number of languages have necessarily
based their conclusions also on secondary sources from outside the Chomskyan
tradition (e.g., Baker 1988, 1996; Ouhalla 1991; Freeze 1992; Cinque 1999, 2005;
Johannessen 1998; Julien 2002; Neeleman and Szendrői, this volume), and this kind
of work has not (at least not widely) been rejected by generative linguists.

.  The extent to which analyses are based on convention (rather than empirical or conceptual
motivation) is rarely explicitly recognized, but in private, many linguists will frankly say that the
theoretical framework they teach or work in is motivated as much by social convenience as by
their convictions. (A personal anecdote: When I was still a Ph.D. student, a well-known generative
linguist with an MIT background advised me to state my insights in generative terms, so that my
work would be more widely recognized.)
 Martin Haspelmath

Thus, while the relevance of abstract (non-cognitive) rule systems to cogni-

tively oriented linguistics has often been vigorously denied (e.g., Lightfoot 1999:
79–82), in practice the difference is not so great, and it makes perfect sense to
consider the contribution of generative syntax to the discovery and explanation of
phenomenological universals, i.e., universals of grammar as observed in speakers’
behaviour, regardless of what cognitive structures might underlie such behaviour
(see Haspelmath 2004a for the terminological distinction between “phenomeno-
logical” and “cognitive” descriptions and universals).
Many generative (and other cognitively oriented) linguists will immediately
object that they are not interested in phenomenological universals, only in the
subset of cognitive universals (note that all cognitive universals must be at the same
time phenomenological universals because structures that are not cognitively pos-
sible will not show up in speakers’ behaviour). There may be all kinds of phenom-
enological universals that have nothing to do with cognitive structures (e.g., on the
lexical level, the fact that all languages have a word for “moon”, which clearly has to
do with the fact that the moon is salient in all human habitats). But the problem is
that it is impossible to know in advance which of the phenomenological universals
are cognitive universals and which ones are not.3 It has been the uniform practice
of generative linguistics to simply assume by default that observed universals are
relevant theoretically, i.e., that they have a cognitive basis. Thus, I will assume here
that all phenomenological universals are interesting both for generative linguists
and for functional linguists, because all of them could turn out to be cognitively
based or functionally based. Which explanation is correct (the parametric or the
functional explanation) is precisely the issue that is the main topic of the paper.
Although the statement by Haegeman (1997) cited at the beginning of this
section, which gives primacy to the characterization and acquisition of knowledge
of language, is the more orthodox generative position, in practice many generative
comparative syntacticians seem to be just as interested in explaining syntactic uni-
versals. Even Noam Chomsky has occasionally highlighted the role of his theory
of Universal Grammar in explaining syntactic phenomena:
The next task is to explain why the facts are the way they are . . . Universal Gram-
mar provides a genuine explanation of observed phenomena.
 (Chomsky 1988: 61–62)

Most tellingly, generative linguists have usually not refrained from proposing
UG-based explanations for universals that are amenable to functional explanations.

.  See Kiparsky (2008) for an attempt to identify a number of properties that distinguish non-
cognitive universals (“typological generalizations”) from cognitive universals (“universals”).
 Parametric versus functional explanations of syntactic universals 

If their only real interest were the characterization of UG, one would expect them
to leave aside all those universals that look functional, and concentrate on those
general properties of language that seem arbitrary from a communicative point
of view. But this is not what is happening. For instance, as soon as topic and focus
positions in phrase structure had been proposed, generativists began exploring the
possibility of explaining information structure (“functional sentence perspective”)
in syntactic terms, rather than leaving this domain to pragmaticists. Particularly
telling is Aissen’s (2003) discussion of Differential Object Marking (DOM), which
is known to have a very good functional explanation (e.g., Comrie 1981; Bossong
1985; Filimonova 2005). Aissen does not consider the possibility that this functional
explanation makes an explanation in terms of UG superfluous, stating instead that
the exclusion of DOM from core grammar comes at a high cost, since it means
that there is no account forthcoming from formal linguistics for what appears to
be an excellent candidate for a linguistic universal. (Aissen 2003: 439)

Thus, the reason that DOM was not tackled seriously before by generativists
seems to be the fact that the generative tools did not seem suitable to handle it,
until Optimality Theory and harmonic alignment of prominence scales entered
the stage.
I conclude from all this that the topic of this paper, the explanation of ob-
servable (phenomenological) syntactic universals, is highly relevant to both main-
stream generative linguistics and mainstream functional linguistics.4

2.  The parametric approach to explaining syntactic universals

2.1  The basic idea: Principles and parameters

The principles-and-parameters (P&P) approach to cross-linguistic differences is
compelling in its simplicity and elegance:
We can think of the initial state of the faculty of language as a fixed network
connected to a switch box; the network is constituted of the principles of

.  A final potential objection from an innatist point of view should be mentioned: If one thinks
that “all languages must be close to identical, largely fixed by the initial state” (Chomsky 2000: 122),
then one should seek explanations for those few aspects in which languages differ, rather than
seeking explanations for those aspects in which languages are alike (see also Baker 1996: ch. 11).
Again, while such an approach may be attractive in theory, it is not possible in practice: While it
is a meaningful enterprise to list all known universals (as is attempted in the Konstanz Universals
Archive, http://ling.uni-konstanz.de/pages/ proj/sprachbau.htm), it would not be possible to list
all known non-universals, and one would not know where to begin explaining them.
 Martin Haspelmath

language, while the switches are the options to be determined by experience.

When the switches are set one way, we have Swahili; when they are set another
way, we have Japanese. Each possible human language is identified as a particu-
lar setting of the switches–a setting of parameters, in technical terminology.
(Chomsky 2000: 8)

This approach does two things at the same time: First, it explains how children
can acquire language (Haegeman’s second goal), because “they are not acquiring
dozens or hundreds of rules; they are just setting a few mental switches” (Pinker
1994: 112). Second, it offers a straightforward way of explaining implicational
universals, the type of universals that comparative linguists have found the most
intriguing, and that are attested the most widely. If a parameter is located at a
relatively high position in the network of categories and principles, it will have
multiple consequences in the observed system. The simplest example is the order
of verb and object, noun and genitive, adposition and complement, etc.: If the pa-
rameter is located at the higher level of head and complement (assuming that verb/
object, noun/genitive, adposition/complement can be subsumed under these cat-
egories), setting the head-ordering switch just once gives us the order of a range of
lower-level categories, thus accounting for the implicational relationships among
their orderings. Thus, “small changes in switch settings can lead to great apparent
variety in output” (Chomsky 2000: 8; see also Baker 2001a: ch.3 for extensive dis-
cussion of this point).
This research programme proved very attractive, and it is usually described as
“highly successful, leading to a real explosion of empirical inquiry into language
of a very broad typological range” (Chomsky 2000: 8; see also Newmeyer 2005: 40,
in an otherwise very critical context). One even reads occasionally that it provided
the solution for Plato’s Problem (the problem of language acquisition despite the
poverty of the stimulus), so that deeper questions can now be asked (Grewendorf
2002: 99; Chomsky 2004; Fukui & Zushi 2004: 11).5

2.2  Criteria for success

According to the principles-and-parameters vision, it should be possible at some
point to describe the syntax of a language by simply specifying the settings of all
syntactic parameters of Universal Grammar. We would no longer have any need
for thick books with titles like The syntax of Haida (cf. Enrico’s (2003) 1300-page
work), and instead we would have a simple two-column table with the parameters

.  But one also reads more cautious assessments. Chomsky (2000: 8) reminds the reader that
the P&P approach “is, of course, a program, and it is far from a finished product . . . one can
have no certainty that the whole approach is on the right track”.
 Parametric versus functional explanations of syntactic universals 

in the first column and the positive or negative settings in the second column.
There would not be many parameters (“a few mental switches”, Pinker 1994: 112,
“there are only a few parameters”, Adger 2003: 16), perhaps 20 (Fodor 2003: 734),
perhaps 50–100 (Roberts & Holmberg 2005), and at any rate a number compa-
rable to the number of chemical elements in the periodic table (Baker 2001a:
ch. 6). Reducing the description of the syntax of a language from 1300 pages to one
or two pages would truly be a spectacular success that is worth the effort.
Since carrying out the research programme is not an easy task, we may still be
a few decades (or more) away from this ultimate goal. But what progress has been
made over the last quarter century, since the P&P programme was inaugurated?
Certainly one might reasonably expect the following indications of progress:

i. More and more reductions of previously isolated phenomena to indepen-

dently known parameters;
ii.  more and more parameters for which there is a consensus in the field;
iii. parameters proposed on the basis of variation within one language family are
found to be sufficient to predict variation also in totally unrelated language
families and areas of the world;
iv. broad cross-linguistic research involving many languages is increasingly suc-
cessful, and generative typological research begins to converge with typolog-
ical research that does not share the P&P vision (cf. Haider 2001: 291–292).

Whether progress has indeed been made along these lines is not easy to say,
and one’s assessment will of course depend on one’s perspective. Baker (2001a)
offers a highly optimistic view of the progress of generative comparative syntax,
comparing it to the situation in chemistry just before the periodic table of elements
was discovered: “We are approaching the stage where we can imagine producing the
complete list of linguistic parameters, just as Mendeleyev produced the (virtually)
complete list of natural chemical elements” (p. 50). In the following subsection, I
will present a more sober assessment (see also Newmeyer 2004, 2005: 76–103).

2.3  Assessment of success

It is certainly the case that more and more phenomena have been studied from a
P&P point of view over the last 25 years: the Chomskyan approach has been con-
sistently popular in the field, and a large number of diverse languages have been ex-
amined by generative syntacticians. But to what extent the observed variation has
been reduced to previously known parameters is difficult to say. One might expect
someone to keep a record of the parameters that have been proposed (analogous
to the Konstanz Universals Archive, which records proposed universals), or at
 Martin Haspelmath

the very least one might expect handbooks or textbooks to contain lists of well-
established parameters. But the voluminous Oxford Handbook of Comparative
Syntax (Cinque & Kayne 2005, 977 pages) contains no such list. It has language,
name and subject indexes, but no parameter index. The subject index just allows
one to find references to a handful of parameters. Likewise, textbooks such as
Culicover 1997, Biloa 1998, Ouhalla 1999 (all of them with “parameter” in their
title) do not contain lists of parameters. The only laudable exception is Roberts
(1997), who gives a short list of parameters at the end of each chapter. But in
general it is very difficult even to find out which parameters have been proposed
in the literature.
It seems to me that one reason for this lack of documentation of proposed
parameters is that most of them are not easy to isolate from the assumptions about
UG in which they are embedded, and these differ substantially from author to
author and from year to year. Even if all works stated the parameters they propose
explicitly in quotable text (many do not), these proposals would be difficult to
understand without the context. The highly variable and constantly shifting as-
sumptions about UG are thus a serious obstacle for a cumulative process of acqui-
sition of knowledge about parameters. One would hope that in general the best
proposals about UG are adopted, and that the general changes in assumptions
are in the right direction. But so far it seems that there is too little stability in our
picture of UG to sustain a cumulative process of parameter detection, where one
linguist can build on the discoveries (not merely on the generalizations and ideas)
of another linguist.
It is also not clear whether there are more and more parameters for which
there is a consensus in the field. In the absence of an authoritative list, I examined
16 textbooks, overview books and overview articles of generative syntax for the
parameters that they mention or discuss (Atkinson 1994; Biloa 1998; Carnie 2002;
Culicover 1997; Fanselow & Felix 1987; Freidin 1992; Fukui 1995; Haegeman 1997;
Haider 2001; Lightfoot 1999; Jenkins 2000; McCloskey 1988; Ouhalla 1999; Pinker
1994; Radford 2004; Smith 1989). The result is shown in Table 1.
There are only 7 parameters which are mentioned in these works, presum-
ably because the textbook and overview authors sensibly limited themselves to
less controversial parameters. However, it is difficult to argue that the number of
parameters for which there is a consensus has increased over the years. Let us look
at the main parameters in Table 1 one by one.
The head-directionality parameter is the easiest parameter to explain to
readers with little background knowledge, so it is the most widely used example
for parameters. However, since Travis’s work of the 1980s (e.g., Travis 1989) it has
been clear that the simplistic version of the parameter that the textbooks mention
can at best be part of the story, and Kayne’s (1994) wholesale attack on it has been
 Parametric versus functional explanations of syntactic universals 

Table 1.  Some prominent examples of parameters

Head-directionality parameter Smith 1989: 69–71, Freidin 1992: 118–120,
(“Heads uniformly precede complements or Chomsky & Lasnik 1993: 518, Atkinson
complements uniformly precede heads.”) 1994, Pinker 1994: 111–112, Fukui 1995: 329,
Culicover 1997: 160, Haegeman 1997, Biloa
1998: 20, Lightfoot 1999: 59, Ouhalla 1999:
298ff., Jenkins 2000: 77, Carnie 2002: 18, 130,
Radford 2004: 16–25
Pro-drop parameter Fanselow & Felix 1987: 139–140, Freidin
(“The subject position may be empty or 1992: 118–120, Atkinson 1994, Fukui 1995:
must be filled by a subject pronoun.”) 3334, Haegeman 1997, Ouhalla 1999:ch.
12, Jenkins 2000: 77, Haider 2001: 285–287,
Radford 2004: 16–25
Subjacency parameter Fanselow & Felix 1987: 138, McCloskey
(“Different boundary nodes determine 1988: 25, Freidin 1992: 118–120, Atkinson
locality of extraction.”) 1994, Fukui 1995: 333, Ouhalla 1999: 298ff.,
Haider 2001: 284–285
Wh-movement parameter Chomsky & Lasnik 1993: 513, Fukui 1995:
(“Wh-phrases may be fronted or stay in situ.” 332–333, Ouhalla 1999: 298ff., Haider 2001:
289–290, Radford 2004: 16–25
Verb-movement parameter Hageman 1997, Ouhalla 1999: ch. 16,
(“The finite verb moves to a higher Radford 2004: 164
functional position or stays in situ.”)
Verb-second parameter Lightfoot 1999: 83, Ouhalla 1999: ch. 13,
(“The finite verb moves to second position Haider 2001: 287–288
or not.”)
Configurationality parameter Fukui 1995: 330, Haider 2001: 288
(“Clause structure is determined by
phrase-structure configurations or not.”)

very influential. A big problem is that the Greenbergian word order generaliza-
tions are only tendencies, and parameters can only explain perfect correlations,
not tendencies (Baker & McCloskey 2005). Another problem is that assumptions
about heads and dependents have varied. Determiners used to be considered
specifiers (i.e., a type of dependent), but now they are mostly considered heads.
Genitives used to be considered complements, but now they are generally con-
sidered specifiers. And since the 1990s, almost all constituents are assumed to
move to another position in the course of the derivation, so that it is the landing
sites, not the underlying order of heads and nonheads that determines word order.
Finally, Dryer (1992) and Hawkins (1994, 2004) provided strong arguments that
the factor underlying the Greenbergian correlations is not head-nonhead order,
but branching direction. As a result of all this, not many generative linguists seem
to be convinced of this parameter.
 Martin Haspelmath

The pro-drop parameter (or null-subject parameter) is not a good example

of a successful parameter either, because the various phenomena that were once
thought to correlate with each other (null thematic subjects; null expletives; subject
inversion; that-trace filter violations; Rizzi 1982) do not in fact correlate very well
(see Newmeyer 2005: 88–92). Haider (1994: 383) notes in a review of Jaeggli and
Safir (1989): “The phenomenon “null subject” is the epiphenomenon of diverse
constellations of a grammar that are independent of each other.  . . . The search
for a unitary pro-drop parameter therefore does not seem to be different from the
search for a unitary relative clause or a unitary passive.” Roberts and Holmberg
(2005: [7]) are more optimistic than Haider: In their rebuttal of Newmeyer (2004),
they state that they find Gilligan’s (1987) result of four valid implications (out of 24
expected implications) “a fairly promising result”. However, as Newmeyer notes,
three of these four correlations are not noticeably different from the null hypoth-
esis (the absence of overt expletives would be expected anyway because they are
so rare), and for the remaining correlation (subject inversion implying that-trace
filter violations), Gilligan’s numbers are very small.
The subjacency parameter was famous in the 1980s, but it seems that it always
rested exclusively on a contrast between English and Italian. It has not apparently
led to much cross-linguistic research. According to a recent assessment by Baltin
(2004: 552), “we have no clear account of the parameter, much less whether the
variation that is claimed by the positing of the parameter exists.”
The configurationality parameter is the only other parameter that is a “deep”
parameter in the sense that its setting can “lead to great apparent variety in the
output”. As with the other parameters, there is a great diversity of approaches
among generative linguists (see Hale 1983; Jelinek 1984; the papers in Marácz &
Muysken 1989, as well as Baker 2001b for an overview). The lack of consensus for
this parameter is perhaps less apparent than in the case of the head-directionality
and pro-drop parameters, but this also has to do with the fact that far fewer lin-
guists work on languages that are relevant to this parameter.6
The wh-movement parameter is not a deep parameter and does not entail
correlations, so it is not relevant to the explanation of universals. Likewise, the
verb movement parameters do not entail correlations, unless one assumes that
verb movement is conditioned by particular morphological properties of the verb

.  The polysynthesis parameter, Baker’s (1996) prime example of a macroparameter, did not
make it on the list because it is hardly discussed in the literature apart from Baker’s work. This
is a great pity, because in my view, the correlations reported by Baker in his ch. 11 constitute the
most interesting typological hypothesis in the entire generative literature.
 Parametric versus functional explanations of syntactic universals 

(e.g., Vikner 1997). But this latter point is known to be very problematic and con-
troversial (see Roberts 2003 for an overview of verb movement).
The verb movement parameters also illustrate another widespread limitation
of parametric explanations: Very often the range of data considered come from a
single language family or subfamily, & there is no confirming evidence from other
families (this is also deplored in Baker & McCloskey 2005). Thus, Vikner (1997)
considers only Germanic languages plus French (another Indo-European lan-
guage with close historical ties to Germanic), and Roberts and Holmberg’s (2005)
showcase example of a parameter that captures valid cross-linguistic correlations
concerns exclusively the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic subfamily of Indo-
European. Kayne (2000) discusses a number of parameters that are relevant exclu-
sively to Romance.
Another widespread approach is to compare just two widely divergent lan-
guages, and to try to connect the differences observed between them by proposing
a small number of parameters. The most typical example of this approach is the
language pair Japanese/English (see, e.g., Kuroda 1988; Fukui 1995) (but also
French and English, Kayne 1981).
So far it seems that sophisticated parameters such as those that were devel-
oped on the basis of a single family or a pair of languages have rarely (if ever)
been confirmed by evidence coming from unrelated families in different parts of
the world.
Finally, I see no signs of an increasing amount of broad cross-linguistic re-
search in the principles-and-parameters approach. Works such as those by Johan-
nessen (1998), Julien (2002), and Cinque (2005) remain exceptional and have not
been particularly influential in the field. Baker (1988) was really the only truly
influential work that adopts a broad cross-linguistic approach, and although Baker
(1996) proposed a much more interesting parameterization hypothesis, it was
much less well received in the field.

2.4  Abandoning deep parameters

The divergence between the promises of the research programme as sketched in
§2.1 and the actual research results has not only been noticed by outside observers,
but also by practitioners of generative syntax. Baker (1996: 7) notes:
One might expect that more and more parameters comparable to the Pro-
Drop Parameter would be discovered, and that researchers would gradually
notice that these parameters . . . themselves clustered in nonarbitrary ways
. . . It is obvious to anyone familiar with the field that this is not what has
happened.
 Martin Haspelmath

Pica (2001: v–vi), in the introduction to a new yearbook on syntactic variation as

studied from a Chomskyan perspective, states quite bluntly:7
Twenty years of intensive descriptive and theoretical research has shown, in our
opinion, that such meta-parameters [e.g., the Null-Subject Parameter, or the
Polysynthesis Parameter] do not exist, or, if they do exist, should be seen as arte-
facts of the ‘conspiracy’ of several micro-parameters.

Kayne (1996) justifies his shift to microparameters on somewhat different grounds:

He does not explicitly doubt the existence of macroparameters, but he simply finds
small-scale comparative syntax studying closely related languages "more manage-
able" because the space of hypotheses is smaller.8 And Newmeyer (2004, 2005)
advocates abandoning parameters altogether.
The shift from macroparameters that explain clusterings of properties to mi-
croparameters is often connected with the claim that parameters are exclusively
associated with lexical items, or with functional categories, and this is regarded as
a virtue, because it restricts the range of possible parameters and thus reduces the
burden of the language learner (see Baker 1996: 7–8 and Newmeyer 2005: 53–57
for discussion). According to Chomsky (1991: 26), this view opens up the pos-
sibility that “in an interesting sense, there is only one possible human language”.
This conclusion may be welcome from the point of view of learnability, but it also
ultimately means that generative syntax abandons the claim that it can contribute
to understanding cross-linguistic diversity and regularity.
Of course, not everyone in the field shares this approach (see Baker, this
volume), but it seems fair to say that the enthusiasm for parameters that was wide-
spread in the 1980s has been replaced by a more sober attitude, and that this is
not only due to the fact that Chomsky has lost interest in them, but also to the fact
that the results of parametric research over the last two decades were much more
modest than had been hoped.

2.5  UG-based explanation without parameters

Deep parameters are not the only way in which explanations for syntactic uni-
versals can be formulated in a generative approach that assumes a rich Universal

.  A similar quote can be found in Baltin (2004: 551): “I have never seen convincing evidence for
macroparameters.” And in a personal e-mail (May 2006), David Adger says: “. . . macroparameters
. . . nice idea but doesn’t seem to work.”
.  Curiously, Kayne does not seem to be concerned that by limiting himself to closely related
languages, he runs the risk that he will discover shared innovations that have a purely historical
explanations, rather than properties that are shared because of the same parameter setting.
 Parametric versus functional explanations of syntactic universals 

Grammar. Syntactic universals could of course be due to nonparameterized prin-

ciples of UG. For instance, it could be that all languages have nouns, verbs and
adjectives because UG specifies that there must be categories of these types (Baker
2003). Or it could be that syntactic phrases can have only certain forms because
they must conform to an innate X-bar schema (Jackendoff 1977). Or perhaps
all languages conform to the Linear Correspondence Axiom (dictating uniform
specifier-head-complement order), so that certain word orders cannot occur
because they cannot be generated by leftward movement (Kayne 1994).
Such nonparametric explanations are appropriate for unrestricted universals,
whereas (deep) parameters explain implicational universals. What both share is the
general assumption that empty areas in the space of logically possible languages
should be explained by restrictions that UG imposes on grammars: Nonexisting
grammars are not found because they are in conflict with our genetic endowment
for acquiring grammars. They are computationally impossible, or in other words,
they cannot be acquired by children, and hence they cannot exist. This widespread
assumption has never been justified explicitly, as far as I am aware, but it has rarely
been questioned by generative linguists (but see now Hale & Reiss 2000; and
Newmeyer 2005). We will see in §4 that it is not shared by functionalists.
But before moving on to functionalist explanations of universals, I will discuss
Optimality Theory, which is in some ways intermediate between the Chomskyan
P&P approach and functionalist approaches.

3.  The constraint-ranking approach to explaining syntactic universals

3.1  Constraint-ranking vs. parameters

What standard Optimality Theory (OT) shares with the Chomskyan principles-
and-parameters approach is the idea that universals should fall out from the
characterization of UG: Unattested languages do not exist because they are in-
compatible with UG and cannot be acquired. Observed universals are assumed to
be cognitive universals. Instead of principles, OT has constraints, and instead of
open parameters, OT has cross-linguistically variable ranking of constraints. Thus,
the difference between English it rains (*rains) and Italian piove (*esso piove) can
be explained by different rankings of the same universal constraints Subject (“the
highest specifier position must be filled”) and FullInt(erpretation) (“lexical
items must contribute to the interpretation of the structure”) (Grimshaw &
Samek-Lodovici 1998; Legendre 2001). In English, Subject is ranked above
FullInt (so that the expletive it is allowed and required), while in Italian, FullInt
is ranked higher than Subject (so that the expletive esso is disallowed and the
sentence can remain subjectless).
 Martin Haspelmath

The possible objection that OT is thus not radically different from P&P is
countered by advocates of OT by pointing out that “a parameter that is “off ” is
completely inactive. But a constraint that is crucially dominated can still be active”
(McCarthy 2002: 242). For example, in Italian the dominated constraint Subject is
not always irrelevant: When a subject does not have a topic antecedent, the subject
appears overtly to satisfy the constraint Subject. Thus, OT constraints can account
for between-language variation and for within-language variation, unlike param-
eters, which only govern between-language variation (McCarthy 2002: 110).
A big difference in practice between OT and P&P is that OT analyses must be
explicit about which constraints are assumed and how they are ranked. The con-
straints are given catchy names (to fit the column heading of a constraint tableau),
and their content is typically spelled out in a separate paragraph of the text, as in (5)
(from Legendre 2001: 5):
(5) FullInt: Lexical items must contribute to the interpretation of a structure.

Since the constraints have conveniently short (and typographically highlighted)

names, it is easy to list them and index them, and some books even have a separate
index of constraints (e.g., Kager 1999; Müller 2000). Thus, it is relatively straight-
forward to determine how many and which constraints have been posited. This is
in contrast to parameters, which as we saw in §2.3, are rarely listed, and often not
even explicitly spelled out.
The forced explicitness of OT about its constraints reveals that a very large
number of them are apparently needed: certainly many hundreds, if not many
thousands. This is in striking contrast with low estimates for parameters (“a few
mental switches”), though it has been observed that the literature on parameters
also contains a fairly large number of them.9 Perhaps the OT approach simply
forces its practitioners to be more honest about the assumptions they make
about UG.
According to McCarthy (2002: 1), “one of the most compelling features of
OT . . . is the way that it unites description of individual languages with expla-
nation of language typology”. It is standardly assumed that the constraints are
universal, and that cross-linguistic variation exclusively derives from variation
in constraint ranking. Thus, “if the grammar of one language is known exhaus-
tively, then in principle the grammars of all possible human languages are known.
Analysis of one language can never be carried out without consideration of the

.  According to Lightfoot (1999: 259), “if there are only 30–40 structural parameters, then
they must look very different from present proposals . . . a single issue of the journal Linguistic
Inquiry may contain 30–40 proposed parameters” (see also Newmeyer 2005: 81–83).
 Parametric versus functional explanations of syntactic universals 

broader typological context” (McCarthy 2002: 108). This is actually quite similar
in spirit to the P&P approach, whose vision is the exhaustive description of a lan-
guage by simply determining the settings of all the parameters, once they have
been discovered (see §2.2). The difference is that P&P has never come particularly
close to this vision, not even in the description of small fragments of a grammar,
and it is common to find P&P works that make very little reference to parameters.
Although in principle every P&P analysis of a particular language makes predictions
about other possible languages, the analyses are typically so complicated that it is
difficult to see what exactly is predicted. OT is more straightforward: “To propose
a constraint ranking for one language in OT is to claim that all possible rerankings
of these constraints yield all and only the possible human languages” (Legendre
2001: 15).
However, in practice this has not led to a large number of broad cross-
linguistic syntactic studies in the OT framework, so the success of this approach
is not yet apparent. Legendre (2001: 15), in the introduction to Legendre et al.
(eds.) 2001, mentions only a single paper in the entire volume as an example of
“typology by reranking”. And Sells (2001: 10–11), in the introduction to Sells
(ed.) (2001), states: “Typological predictions are brought out most directly in the
papers here by Choi, Morimoto and Sharma, but are implicit in most of them.” So
in actual practice, OT tends to be like P&P in that authors mostly aim at insightful
descriptions of particular languages. There is of course nothing bad about lim-
iting oneself to a language one knows well, but the skeptical reader cannot help
being struck by the contrast between the ambitious rhetoric and the typically
much more modest results.

3.2  Towards functionalism

There are, however, two ways in which OT approaches have gone beyond the
Chomskyan thinking and practice, and have moved towards the functionalist ap-
proach that will be the topic of §4. One is that they have sometimes acknowledged
the relevance of discoveries and insights coming from the functional-typological
approach. Thus, Legendre et al. (1993) refer to Comrie, Givón, and Van Valin;
Aissen (1999) refers to Chafe, Croft, Kuno and Thompson; and Sharma (2001)
refers to Bybee, Dahl, Greenberg, and Silverstein. Such references are extremely
rare in P&P works. Thus in OT syntax, one sometimes gets the impression that
there is a genuine desire for a cumulative approach to explaining syntactic univer-
sals, i.e., one that allows researchers to build on the results of others, even if these
do not share the same outlook or formal framework.
More importantly, the second way in which some OT authors have moved
towards functionalists is that they have allowed functional considerations to play a
 Martin Haspelmath

role in their theorizing. For instance, Bresnan (1997: 38) provides a functional mo-
tivation for the constraint ProAgr (“Pronominals have agreement properties”):
“The functional motivation for the present constraint could be that pronouns . . .
bear classificatory features to aid in reference tracking, which would reduce the
search space of possibilities introduced by completely unrestricted variable refer-
ence.” Aissen (2003) explicitly links the key constraints needed for her analysis
to two of the main factors that functionalists have appealed to: iconicity and
economy. The idea that OT constraints should be “grounded” in functional con-
siderations is even more widespread in phonology (e.g., Boersma 1998; Hayes
et al. 2004), but the trend can be seen in syntax, too. Another reflection of this
trend is the appearance of papers that explicitly take a functionalist stance and use
OT just as a formalism, without adopting all the tenets of standard generative OT
(e.g., Nakamura 1999; Malchukov 2005).
I believe that the affinity between OT and functionalist thinking derives
from the way in which OT accounts for cross-linguistic differences: through the
sanctioning of constraint violations by higher-ranked constraints. The idea that
cross-linguistic differences are due to different weightings of conflicting forces
has been present in the functionalist literature for a long time (cf. Haspelmath
1999a: 180–181). OT’s contribution is that it turned these functional forces into
elements of a formal grammar and devised a way of integrating the idea of conflict
and competition into the formal framework.

3.3  Explaining the constraints

However, an important question has not been properly answered by OT propo-
nents: Why are the constraints the way they are? Or in other words: What are
the constraints on the constraints? After all, only a small part of the logical pos-
sibilities seem to be realized as constraints. For example, the set of constraints
does not seem to contain the constraints EmptyInt (“Lexical items must not
contribute to the interpretation”) or Object (“The complement of the V position
must be filled”). One possible answer is given by McCarthy (2002: 240): “If the
constraints are universal and innate, we cannot presuppose that there are “con-
straints on constraints”, except for physical limitations imposed by human biology
and genetics.” This is similar to classical P&P, where no strong need was felt to
explain why the principles of UG are the way they are (at least until Chomsky in-
augurated the Minimalist Program). But the P&P principles were conceived of as
few in number and highly abstract, whereas OT constraints are numerous and
often fairly concrete. Moreover, it is not uncommon for OT authors to explicitly
justify constraints by external (sometimes functional) considerations. But if it is
 Parametric versus functional explanations of syntactic universals 

simultaneously assumed that constraints are part of UG and externally condi-

tioned, then something crucial is missing: an account of how the external factors
can impinge on UG, which is presumably part of the human genotype (see
Haspelmath 1999a for further discussion).
Moreover, if the constraints can be explained functionally, one wonders what
the relation is between functional explanation and explanation by the formal
system. A striking example of a certain kind of incoherence of argumentation
is found in Aissen (2003), one of the most widely cited papers in OT syntax, which,
as noted above, deals with Differential Object Marking (DOM). Aissen assumes
an elaborate system of constraints that she associates with concepts derived
from functional linguistics: the animacy and definiteness scales, iconicity, and
economy. The animacy constraints are *Oj/Hum (“an object must not be human”),
*Oj/Anim (“an object must not be animate”), and so on. The iconicity constraint
is *Øc (or Star Zero Case): “A value for the feature case must not be absent”,
and the economy constraint is *Strucc (or Star Structural Case): “A value
for the morphological category case must not be present.” Now to get her system
to work, Aissen needs to make use of the mechanism of local constraint conjunc-
tion, creating constraints such as *Oj/Hum & *Øc (“a human object must not
lack a value for the feature case”). However, as she acknowledges herself (in
note 12, p. 447–448), unrestricted constraint conjunction can generate “undesir-
able” constraints such as *Oj/Hum & *Strucc (“a human object must lack a value
for the feature case”). If such constraints existed, they would wrongly predict the
existence of languages with object marking only on nonhuman objects. If they
cannot be ruled out, this means that the formal system has no way of explaining
the main explanandum, the series of DOM universals (“Object marking is the
more likely, the higher the object is on the animacy and definiteness scales”).
Aissen is aware of this, and she tries to appeal to functional factors outside the
formal system:

Although constraints formed by conjunction of the subhierarchies with

*Strucc might exist, grammars in which they were active would be highly
dysfunctional since marking would be enforced most strenuously exactly
where it is least needed.

But if certain nonoccurring languages are ruled out directly by non-formal func-
tional considerations, then it is unclear why the elaborate system of indirectly
functionally derived constraints is needed in the first place (see also Newmeyer
2005: 223–224). The DOM universals are amenable to a straightforward and com-
plete explanation in functional terms, so adopting a UG-based explanation instead
only makes sense if one takes an antifunctionalist stance for independent reasons.
 Martin Haspelmath

Aissen’s intermediate approach, with some formalist (though functionally-derived)

elements and some direct functionalist components, seems unmotivated.10
In the next section, we will see what a fully functionalist approach to the ex-
planation of syntactic universals looks like.

4.  The functionalist approach to explaining syntactic universals

There are many different authors who use the label “functionalist”, so I will con-
centrate on my own approach here (e.g., Haspelmath 1999a, 2004b, 2005, 2008),
which is largely compatible with the approaches of other authors such as Green-
berg (1966), Comrie (1981), Givón (1995), Dryer (1992, 2006), Stassen (1997),
Croft (2001, 2003), Cristofaro (2003, to appear), Hawkins (2004). I will also discuss
other nongenerative approaches to typology here that do not necessarily claim to
have explanations for universals.

4.1  Th
 e fundamental difference between the functionalist
and the generative approach
The difference between functional and generative linguistics has often been framed
as being about the issue of autonomy of syntax or grammar (Croft 1995; New-
meyer 1998), but in my view this is a misunderstanding (see Haspelmath 2000).
Instead, the primary difference (at least with respect to the issue of explaining uni-
versals) is that generative linguists assume that syntactic universals should all be
derived from UG, i.e., that unattested language types are computationally (or bio-
logically) impossible (cf. §2.5), whereas functionalists take seriously the possibility
that syntactic universals could also be (and perhaps typically are) due to general
ease of processing factors. For functionalists, unattested languages may simply
be improbable, but not impossible (see Newmeyer 2005, who in this respect has
become a functionalist).
This simple and very abstract difference between the two approaches has
dramatic consequences for the practice of research. Whereas generativists put
all their energy into finding evidence for the principles (or constraints) of UG,
functionalists invest a lot of resources into describing languages in an ecumenical,

.  Aissen also refers to Jäger (2004), noting that his evolutionary approach “may explain more
precisely why such grammars are dysfunctional and unstable”. But Jäger’s functionalist approach
entirely dispenses with the formalist elements of Aissen’s system and is thus not compatible with
her analysis.
 Parametric versus functional explanations of syntactic universals 

widely understood descriptive framework (e.g., Givón 1980; Haspelmath 1993),

and into gathering broad cross-linguistic evidence for universals (e.g., Haspelmath
et al. 2005). Unlike generativists, functionalists do not assume that they will find
the same syntactic categories and relations in all languages (cf. Dryer 1997a; Croft
2000b, 2001, Cristofaro to appear), but they expect languages to differ widely and
show the most unexpected idiosyncrasies (cf. Dryer 1997b; Plank 2003). They thus
tend to agree with Joos’s (1957: 96) notorious pronouncement that “languages can
differ from each other without limit and in unpredictable ways”. However, some
of these ways are very unlikely, so strong probabilistic predictions are possible
after all.
Since for functionalists, universals do not necessarily derive from UG, they
do not regard cross-linguistic evidence as good evidence for UG (cf. Haspelmath
2004a: §3), and many are skeptical about the very existence of UG (i.e., the exis-
tence of genetically fixed restrictions specifically on grammar). For this reason,
they do not construct formal frameworks that are meant to reflect the current hy-
potheses about UG, and instead they only use widely understood concepts in their
descriptions (“basic linguistic theory”, Dixon 1997) The descriptions provided by
functionalists are not intended to be restrictive and thus explanatory. Description
is separated strictly from explanation (Dryer 2006).

4.2  “Deep” implicational universals

Implicational universals, which describe correlations between features, were first
highlighted in Greenberg’s (1963) work on word order universals and other gram-
matical correlations. But they were implicit in many earlier writings on holistic
“language types”, going back to 19th century authors such as Humboldt, Schle-
icher and Müller. Saying that a language is “agglutinating” means that this trait
permeates its entire grammar, so that not only its verb inflection, but also its
noun inflection is agglutinating (Plank 1999). Languages that show agglutinating
verb inflection but flectional noun inflection are unexpected on this view, and
implicitly a bidirectional implicational universal is posited (“If a language has
agglutinating verb inflection, it will (tend to) have agglutinating noun inflection,
and vice versa”).
Until Greenberg started working with systematic language sampling, hy-
potheses about typological correlations were typically formulated implicitly in
terms of idealized holistic language types (e.g., Finck 1909; Sapir 1921; Skalička
1966), and sometimes fairly strong hypotheses about correlations were made. The
idea was that languages are systems où tout se tient (“where everything hangs to-
gether”, Meillet 1903: 407), so that connections between quite different parts of
the grammar can be discovered by linguists. This view is expressed in very poetic
 Martin Haspelmath

terms by Georg von der Gabelentz (1901: 481), in the passage that contains the
first mention of the term typology:11
Aber welcher Gewinn wäre es auch, wenn wir einer Sprache auf den Kopf zusa-
gen dürften: Du hast das und das Einzelmerkmal, folglich hast du die und die
weiteren Eigenschaften und den und den Gesammtcharakter! – wenn wir, wie es
kühne Botaniker wohl versucht haben, aus dem Lindenblatte den Lindenbaum
construiren könnten. Dürfte man ein ungeborenes Kind taufen, ich würde den
Namen Typologie wählen.

Plank (1998) documents a large number of mostly forgotten early attempts to link
phonological properties of languages with nonphonological (morphological and
syntactic) properties. Klimov (1977, 1983) (summarized in Nichols 1992: 8–12)
proposed a typology that links a large number of diverse lexical, syntactic and
morphological properties. And while Greenberg (1963) was conservative in the
kinds of implications that he proposed, others following him made bolder claims
on correlations involving word order patterns. Thus, Lehmann (1973, 1978) links
“the VO/OV distinction to phonological properties. For example, he claims that
the effect of phonological processes is “progressive” in OV languages, “anticipa-
tory” in VO. OV languages tend to have vowel harmony and progressive assimila-
tion; VO languages tend to have umlaut and anticipatory assimilation” (Lehmann
1978: 23).
Thus, quite analogously with the generative notion of “deep” parameters (or
“macroparameters”), the nongenerative literature is full of claims of “deep” impli-
cational universals. While the nongenerative literature does not make a connec-
tion to ease of language acquisition, it seems that the idea that there are just a few
basic blueprints of human languages, and that linguists could discover the key to
all the tight interconnections between structural features, is attractive and hard to
resist independently of the Chomskyan way of thinking about language.

4.3  Assessment of success; abandoning deep implications

The deep implications mentioned in the preceding subsection have not been more
successful than the deep parameters discussed in §2. Most claims of holistic types
from the 19th century and the pre-Greenbergian 20th century have not been
substantiated and have fallen into oblivion. In many cases these holistic types were

.  “But what an achievement it would be if we were able to confront a language and say to it:
“You have such and such a specific property and hence also such further properties and such
and such an overall character” – were we able, as daring botanists must have tried, to construct
the entire lime tree from its leaf. If an unborn child could be baptized, I would choose the name
typology.”
 Parametric versus functional explanations of syntactic universals 

set up on the basis of just a few languages and no serious attempt was made to justify
them by means of systematic sampling. When systematic cross-linguistic research
became more common after Greenberg (1963) (also as a result of the increasing
availability of good descriptions of languages from around the world), none of the
holistic types were found to be supported. For example, the well-known morpho-
logical types (agglutinating/flectional) were put to a test in Haspelmath (1999b),
with negative results. It is of course possible that we have simply not looked hard
enough. For example, I am not aware of a cross-linguistic study of vowel harmony
and umlaut whose results could be correlated with word order properties (VO/OV)
of the languages.
But there does seem to be a widespread sense in the field of (nongenerative)
typology that cross-domain correlations do not exist and should not really be
expected. After the initial success of word order typology, there have been many
attempts to link word order (especially VO/OV) to other aspects of language struc-
ture, such as comparative constructions (Stassen 1985: 53–56), alignment types
(Siewierska 1996), indefinite pronoun types (Haspelmath 1997: 239–241), and
(a)symmetric negation patterns (Miestamo 2005: 186–189). But such attempts have
either failed completely or have produced only weak correlations that are hard
to distinguish from areal effects. Nichols’s (1992) large-scale study is particularly
telling in this regard: While she starts out with Klimov’s hypotheses about cor-
relating lexical and morphosyntactic properties, she ends up finding geographical
and historical patterns instead, rather than particularly interesting correlations.
The geographical patterning of typological properties was also emphasized by
works such as Dryer (1989), Dahl (1996), and Haspelmath (2001), and the publica-
tion of The World Atlas of Language Structures (Haspelmath et al. 2005) documents
the shift of interest to geographical patterns. According to a recent assessment by
Bickel (2005), typology has turned into

a full-fledged discipline, with its own research agenda, its own theories, its own
problems. The core quest is no longer the same as that of generative grammar,
the core interest is no longer in defining the absolute limits of human language.
What has taken the place of this is a fresh appreciation of linguistic diversity in
its own right . . . Instead of asking “what’s possible?”, more and more typologists
ask “what’s where why?”.

In Bickel’s formulation, this shift is entirely positive. The rhetoric is reminiscent of

what one hears from Minimalist critics of macroparameters. Pica (2001: vi), quoted
in §2.4, continues: “This move [i.e., the Minimalist abandonment of macroparam-
eters] allows a radical simplification of the nature and design of UG . . .” It is not
easy to admit defeat, but I believe that in both cases the primary motivation for
the shift of interests was the realization that the earlier goals were not reachable.
 Martin Haspelmath

It is illusory to think that linguistic diversity can be captured by a few holistic

types, or a few word-order types, or a few parametric switches. Languages are not
neat systems où tout se tient. Like biological organisms, they have a highly diverse
range of mutually independent properties, many of which are due to idiosyncratic
factors of history and geography.
However, as we will see in the next subsection, this does not mean that there
are no typological implications at all.

4.4  Intra-domain implications

In generative grammar, the distinction between “deep” (or macro-) parameters
and more shallow (or micro-) parameters is now widely known, but there is no
widespread corresponding nongenerative terminology for typological correlations
or implications. In the preceding two subsections, I used the terms “deep implica-
tions” and “holistic types”. Only the latter has antecedents in the earlier literature
(e.g., Comrie 1990). I now want to introduce a new term pair: cross-domain im-
plications and intra-domain implications. The term “domain” is somewhat vague,
but I mean it in a narrower sense than “level” (phonology, morphology, syntax),
approaching the sense of “construction”. There is obviously a continuum from the
most extreme cross-domain implications (e.g., semantic organization of kinship
terms correlating with the allophonic realization of trill consonants) to the most
extreme intra-domain implications (e.g., a velar voiced plosive implying a labial
voiced plosive, or trial number in personal pronouns implying dual number).
Since my claims about the nature of these two types of implications are not very
precise and are not based on systematic evidence, there is no need to define the
two types in a more precise fashion.
My basic claim is this: Since languages are not systems où tout se tient, we
hardly find cross-domain implications. However, a large number of intra-domain
implications have been found, and they are usually amenable to functional expla-
nation. Let me give a few examples of such implications.

1. If a language lacks overt coding for transitive arguments, it will also lack overt
coding for the intransitive subject (Greenberg 1963, Universal 38).
2. Grammatical Relations Scale: subject > object > oblique > possessor If a lan-
guage can relativize on a given position on the Grammatical Relations Scale, it can
also relativize on all higher positions (Keenan & Comrie 1977).
3. Alienability Scale: kin terms/body-part terms > part-whole/spatial relations
> culturally basic items > others If a language allows juxtaposition to express a pos-
sessive relation with a possessed item from one of the positions on the Alienability
Scale, it also allows juxtaposition with all higher positions (Nichols 1988: 572)
 Parametric versus functional explanations of syntactic universals 

4. Animacy Scale: human > nonhuman animate > inanimate Definiteness

Scale: definite > indefinite specific > nonspecific If a language has overt case
marking for an object on a position on one of these scales, it also has overt object
case marking for all higher positions (Silverstein 1976; Comrie 1981; Bossong
1985; Aissen 2003).
5. Spontaneity Scale: transitive > unergative > unaccusative costly > unaccu-
sative automatic If a language has overt causative marking for noncausative bases
in one position of the scale, it also has overt causative marking for all higher posi-
tions (Haspelmath 2006a).
6. Ditransitive Person-Role Scale: Recipient 1st/2nd + Theme 3rd > Recipient
1st/2nd + Theme 1st/2nd or Recipient 3rd + Theme 3rd > Recipient 3rd +
Theme 1st/2nd If a language has bound-pronoun combinations with one position
on this scale, it also has bound-pronoun combinations with all higher positions
(Haspelmath 2004b).
7. If a language uses a special reflexive pronoun for an adnominal possessor that
is coreferential with the subject, then it also uses a special reflexive pronoun for the
object. (Haspelmath to appear)

These implicational universals are all restricted to a single constructional domain:

relative clauses, adnominal possessive constructions, object case-marking, caus-
ative verb formation, ditransitive pronominal objects, reflexive marking. They
typically refer to prominence scales, often with more than two positions. Such
universals are very different from the universals discussed and explained by para-
metric approaches, which cannot easily accommodate scales, regardless of whether
they take a macro or a micro perspective.12
Scales have been adopted into generative approaches only by Optimality
Theory, starting with Prince and Smolensky’s (1993 [2004]) device of “harmonic
alignment” (originally introduced to capture sonority scale effects in syllable
structure). This formal device was prominently applied to syntax by Aissen (1999,
2003) and related work. In Aissen’s papers, prominence scales are taken over from

.  Another kind of universal syntactic generalization that has been explained functionally
is the Greenbergian word order correlations (see Hawkins 1994, 2004). These could be seen as
“cross-domain” in that they make generalizations between noun phrase and clause structure,
but the explanatory account provided by Hawkins makes crucial reference to the efficient use of
noun phrases in clauses. Similarly, as a reviewer notes, there are probably correlations between
word order and case-marking, e.g., a tendency for SVO languages to show less case-marking
that distinguishes subject and object than SOV or VSO languages. Again, these are explained
straightforwardly in functional terms. So larger correlations may exist, but they are found espe-
cially where the functional motivation is particularly clear.
 Martin Haspelmath

the functionalist and other nongenerative typological literature and are used to
create a series of constraints with fixed ranking that can describe all and only the at-
tested systems. However, as I pointed out in §3, OT cannot say why the constraints
are the way they are, and Aissen does not succeed in explaining how prominence
scales such as those in (1)–(7) come to play a role in the makeup of constraints.
One gets the impression that Aissen creates the constraints because they work, and
they work because they are derived from the valid intra-domain implications that
we have seen. Aissen’s approach does not bring us closer to understanding why the
implicational universals should hold.

4.5  Functional explanations of intra-domain implications

In my view, the most interesting and convincing functional explanations are
those that derive universal implications in language structure from scales of pro-
cessing difficulty, and I will limit myself to such explanations here. In phonology,
such functional explanations are straightforward and no longer controversial:
Labial voiced plosives are easier to produce than velar voiced plosives because
there is more space between the larynx and the lips for airflow during the oral
closure. Thus, it is not surprising that in language structure, too, there is a pref-
erence for labial voiced plosives, and many languages lack velar voiced plosives
(Maddieson 2005).
In morphology and syntax, processing difficulty plays a role in various ways.
Perhaps the most straightforward way is the Zipfian economy effect of frequency
of use: More frequent items tend to be shorter than rarer items, and if one member
of an opposition is zero, processing ease dictates that it should be the more fre-
quent one. Such a simple Zipfian explanation applies in the case of (1), (3), (4) and
(5) above. The case of the intransitive subject is more frequent than the case of the
transitive subject or object,13 so it tends to be zero-coded (Comrie 1978). Inalien-
able nouns such as body-part terms and kinship terms tend to occur with a pos-
sessor, so languages often restrict possessive marking to other possessed nouns,
which occur with a possessor much more rarely. Objects tend to be inanimate
and indefinite, so languages tend to restrict overt case marking to the rarer cases,
definite and human objects.
Another general effect of frequency that is ultimately due to processing con-
straints is compact expression as a bound form (see Bybee 2003). This explains (6)

.  In many texts, the number of intransitive and transitive clauses is about equal. But the case
of the intransitive subject (nominative or absolutive) is virtually always also used for one of the
transitive arguments, so it is always more frequent than the case used for the other transitive
argument.
 Parametric versus functional explanations of syntactic universals 

above: The more frequent person-role combinations (especially Recipient 1st/2nd +

Theme 3rd) tend to occur as bound forms, whereas the rarer combinations often
do not (see Haspelmath 2004b for frequency figures).
Rarity of use may also lead to the need for a special form to help the hearer in
the interpretation. Thus, the object of a transitive verb is relatively rarely coreferen-
tial with the subject, so many languages have a special reflexive pronoun signaling
coreference. But an adnominal possessor is far more often coreferential with the
subject, so there is less of a need for a special form, and many languages (such as
English) that have a special object reflexive pronoun lack a special possessive re-
flexive pronoun (see Haspelmath 2008).
The universal in (2) is explained in processing terms in Hawkins (2004: ch. 7),
who invokes a general domain minimization principle for filler-gap dependencies.
In comparing these functional explanations of syntactic universals to genera-
tive explanations, several points can be made:

i.  The functional explanations have nothing to do with the absence of an au-
tonomy assumption. Syntax and grammar are conceived of as autonomous, and
a strict competence-performance distinction is made. But there is no assumption
that competence grammars are totally independent and isolated: Grammars can
be influenced by performance.
ii.  The functional explanations do not contradict the idea that there is a Uni-
versal Grammar, even though they do not appeal to it. Functional explanation and
Universal Grammar are largely irrelevant to each other.14
iii.  The functional explanations do not presuppose a cognitively real (i.e., de-
scriptively adequate) description of languages. Phenomenological (i.e., observa-
tionally adequate) descriptions of languages are sufficient to formulate and test the
universals in (1)–(7) (Haspelmath 2004a).

.  A reviewer comments that the scales in §4.4 are formulated in terms of categories, and
that these categories must come from UG, so that implicitly, the functional explanations, too,
appeal to UG. However, notice that with the exception of the scale in (2), all of the categories
are semantic, or can easily be defined as semantic categories. (For the scale in (2), a redefini-
tion in terms of semantic categories should be on the functionalists’ agenda.) That semantic
or conceptual categories must be universal at some level is clear from the fact that translation
between languages is in principle possible. Recognizing that conceptual structure is to some
extent universal does not amount to claiming that there is a Universal Grammar that is specific
to language. Some universality of conceptual (and phonetic) categories is also necessary to be
able to compare languages, but universality of strictly linguistic (morphosyntactic and phono-
logical categories) is not necessary (see Haspelmath 2006b).
 Martin Haspelmath

iv.  The explanations do not involve the notion of “restrictiveness” of the descrip-
tive framework, appealing instead to factors external to the description and the
framework (cf. Newmeyer 1998: ch. 3 on external vs. internal explanations).
v.  The functional explanations have no direct implications for language
acquisition,15 but otherwise they are more easily tested than the generative
explanations.

While functional explanations avoid the assumption of a hypertrophic Uni-

versal Grammar that contains a vast number of innate principles and parameters
or OT constraints, they do presuppose a mechanism for incorporating processing
preferences into grammars. It is generally recognized that this mechanism lies in
diachronic change (Bybee 1988; Keller 1994; Kirby 1999; Nettle 1999; Haspelmath
1999a, 2008; Croft 2000a), even though the precise way in which processing pref-
erences become grammatical rules is perhaps not totally clear yet. Here is not the
place for an in-depth discussion of this question, but the basic idea is that novel
structures always arise through language change, and language change is influ-
enced by language use. When novel variants are created unconsciously in language
use, the easily processable variants are preferred (Croft 2000a); when innovations
spread, the easily processable structures are preferred (Haspelmath 1999a); and
when language is acquired, the easily processable stuctures are preferred (Kirby
1999). Not all of these hypotheses may be needed, and telling which ones are the
right ones is not easy, but there is a consensus among functionalists that lan-
guage change is the key mediating mechanism that allows performance factors to
shape grammars.
Thus, functional explanations in linguistics can be seen as parallel to func-
tional evolutionary explanations in biology (Haspelmath 1999a, 2004a: §2): Just
as the diachronic evolutionary Darwinian theory of variation and selection did
not presuppose detailed knowledge of the genetic basis for variation in organisms,
functionalism in linguistics does not presuppose cognitively real descriptions.
Phenomenological universals can be explained functionally.

5.  Summary

Explaining syntactic universals is a hard task on which there is very little agree-
ment among comparative syntacticians. I have reviewed two prominent approaches

.  Of course, the same functional factors that are responsible for adult systems are likely to
play a role in language acquisition, but this is quite independent of the functional explanation
of universals.
 Parametric versus functional explanations of syntactic universals 

to this task here, the generative parametric approach and the functionalist ap-
proach in the Greenbergian tradition (as well as the generative Optimality Theory
approach, which diverges in interesting ways from the parametric approach).
The disagreements between them start with the kinds of descriptions that form
the basis for syntactic universals: Generativists generally say that cognitively real
descriptions are required, whereas functionalists can use any kind of observation-
ally adequate description. Generativists work with the implicit assumption that all
universals will find their explanation in Universal Grammar, whereas functional-
ists do not appeal to UG and do not even presuppose that languages have some of
the same categories and structures (see Haspelmath 2006b). Functionalists attempt
to derive general properties of language from processing difficulty, whereas gen-
erativists see no role for performance in explaining competence.
But I have identified one common idea in parametric generative approaches
and nongenerative approaches to syntactic universals:16 the hope that the bewil-
dering diversity of observed languages can be reduced to very few fundamental
factors. These are macroparameters in generative linguistics, and holistic types
in nongenerative linguistics. The evidence for both of these constructs was never
overwhelming, and in both approaches, not only external critics, but also insiders
have increasingly pointed to the discrepancy between the ambitious goals and the
actual results. Generativists now tend to focus on microparameters (if they are
interested in comparative grammar at all), and nongenerative typologists now
often focus on geographical and historical particularities rather than world-
wide universals.
However, I have argued that there is one type of implicational universal that
is alive and well: intra-domain implications that reflect the relative processing
difficulty of different types of elements in closely related constructions. Such im-
plicational universals cannot be explained in terms of parameters, and the only
generative explanation is an OT explanation in terms of harmonic alignment of
prominence scales. However, this is a crypto-functionalist explanation, and unless
one is a priori committed to the standard generative assumptions, there is no
reason to prefer it to the real functional explanation.

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