The evolutionary dynamics of how languages signal who does what to whom

Abstract Languages vary in how they signal “who does what to whom”. Three main strategies to indicate the participant roles of “who” and “whom” are case, verbal indexing, and rigid word order. Languages that disambiguate these roles with case tend to have either verb-final or flexible word order. Mo...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Olena Shcherbakova, Damián E. Blasi, Volker Gast, Hedvig Skirgård, Russell D. Gray, Simon J. Greenhill
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Nature Portfolio 2024-03-01
Series:Scientific Reports
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-51542-5