Chapter Quantitative explorations of the worldwide distribution of rare characteristics, or the exceptionality of northwestern European languages

• Main Author: Cysouw, Michael (auth)
• Other Authors: Wiese, Heike (Editor), Simon, Horst J. (Editor)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Boston De Gruyter 2011
• Subjects: linguistics; Philosophy of language; General Linguistics
• Online Access: OAPEN Library: download the publication; OAPEN Library: description of the publication

In this article, the distribution of rare features among the world's languages is investigated based on the data from the World Atlas of Language Structures (Haspelmath et al. 2005). A Rarity Index for a language is defined, resulting in a listing of the world's languages by mean rarity. F...