Abstract
In Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time by JohannaNichols (1992), typology as a discipline is given a new turn. Instead of interpreting typological clusters as an indication of a universal property of human language, Nichols interprets crosslinguistic patterns as indications of particular historical coincidences. In this paper, I criticise the method she uses to interpret her data. It turns out that her main conclusions are still valid, although she reaches them not through but notwithstanding her method. SpeciÞcally, the claim that there is a universal opposition between typically head-marking and typically dependent-marking languages cannot be based on her data. In contrast, the large-areal coherence which she observes can be deduced from her data with more detail in a new graphical type of analysis.
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