My indefinite-pronoun data from 1997 are now part of the CrossGram database – not the well-known "implicational maps" (as CrossGram does not store images), but all 140 indefinite pronoun markers from the core set of 40 languages (crossgram.clld.org/contribution...), plus all 433 glossed examples.
Профиль
Martin Haspelmath
Профиль Vivelycomparative linguist, MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig); https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath
Edward Gibson's new book has arrived on my desk – 350 pages on cognitively-oriented dependency syntax from MIT Press! mitpress.mit.edu/978026255357... For me, this is an exciting development, as I came to love dependency syntax in the 1980s, through European authors such as Tesnière and Mel'čuk.
New paper (open access): revistes.uab.cat/isogloss/art...
In this blogpost (on the occasion of reading Caha 2019), I make some comments on the "accidental vs. systematic syncretism" distinction, which seems to be unnecessary: dlc.hypotheses.org/4188
Biases are everywhere. We really need to work hard to avoid them – not only our political biases, but also our biases toward a particular favoured theory. www.science.org/doi/epdf/10....
New CrossGram contribution by Kumari Mamta: Special numerals in South Asian languages. crossgram.clld.org/contribution...
The replication/reproducibility crisis is hitting biologists... www.science.org/content/arti...
Congratulations to my Leipzig colleague Lars Meyer on being awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant ("Language in Balance: an Imprint of Brain Electrophysiology? (BALANG)”) cbs.mpg.de/2425446/2025...
Conference (Valenciennes) "La possession et ses expressions" (possession.sciencesconf.org/resource/pag...). My handout (invited talk) is here: zenodo.org/records/1779...
More comments on Creissels et al. (2026), this time on the notion of "identity predication" (the preferred term in my 2025 paper is "equational clause"). dlc.hypotheses.org/4009
Over the last 5 years, I proposed more and more retro-definitions of traditional terms. But why am I doing this? Are these definitions driven by their "usefulness"? This new blogpost gives an answer. dlc.hypotheses.org/3975
A brief summary of Verkerk et al. (2025) (the Grambank universals paper): www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Morphology conference rescheduled (because the original date collided with the Champions League final): nytud.hu/esemeny/22nd...