Kaius Sinnemäki
Biographic Data
| ID | 1342288 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kaius Sinnemäki |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kaius |
| FAMILY NAME | Sinnemäki |
| SIGNATURE | SINNEMÄKI K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Helsinki |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6972-5216 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Replication, robustness and the angst of false positives
Article Replication, robustness and the angst of false positives: a timely target article and its multifaceted comments was published on October 1, 2025 in the journal Linguistic Typology (volume 29, issue 3)
Sampling matters
Article Sampling matters: commentary on “Replication and methodological robustness in quantitative typology” by Becker and Guzmán Naranjo was published on July 25, 2025 in the journal Linguistic Typology (volume 0, issue 0)
A typological approach to language change in contact situations
Language contact phenomena have increasingly been researched from different historical linguistic, sociolinguistic and areal-typological perspectives. However, since most of this research is based on case studies, an assessment of contact phenomena from a worldwide comparative perspective has been missing in the literature. In this article, we draw inspiration from historical linguistics and language typology to present a new typological approach…
Testing Inferences about Language Contact on Morphosyntax
When linguists make inferences about language contact, control data is required for reliable analysis. Historical data or reconstructions are typically used for that purpose. However, historical data is globally mostly unavailable, and reconstructions are laborious if comparing outcomes of language contact in a typological way. We assess a recent typological proposal (Di Garbo & Napoleão de Souza 2023) that argues that using a single language, ca…
Head and dependent marking and dependency length in possessive noun phrases
The interaction of morphosyntactic features has been of great interest in research on linguistic complexity. In this paper we approach such interactions in possessive noun phrases. First, we study the interaction of head marking and dependent marking in this domain with typological feature data and with multilingual corpus data. The data suggest that there is a clear inverse relationship between head and dependent marking in possessive noun phras…
Beyond Segment Inventories
This article has three goals. First, it provides a broad cross-linguistic survey of phonological change in contact situations focusing on the suprasegmental domain. The term suprasegmental refers here to syllable structure, stress patterns, tonal patterns, and vowel and nasal harmony systems. Secondly, it assesses phonological change to suprasegmental variables whereby external influence causes an increase in complexity in the recipient language’…
Drastic demographic events triggered the Uralic spread
The widespread Uralic family offers several advantages for tracing prehistory: a firm absolute chronological anchor point in an ancient contact episode with well-dated Indo-Iranian; other points of intersection or diagnostic non-intersection with early Indo-European (the Late Proto-Indo-European-speaking Yamnaya culture of the western steppe, the Afanasievo culture of the upper Yenisei, and the Fatyanovo culture of the middle Volga); lexical and …
Linguistic system and sociolinguistic environment as competing factors in linguistic variation
This paper brings together typological and sociolinguistic approaches to language variation. Its main aim is to evaluate the relative effect of language internal and external factors on the number of cases in the world’s languages. I model word order as a language internal predictor; it is well-known that, for instance, languages with verb-final word order (that is, languages in which both nominal arguments precede the main lexical verb) tend to …
Chield
Language is one of the most complex of human traits. There are many hypotheses about how it originated, what factors shaped its diversity, and what ongoing processes drive how it changes. We present the Causal Hypotheses in Evolutionary Linguistics Database (CHIELD, https://chield.excd.org/), a tool for expressing, exploring, and evaluating hypotheses. It allows researchers to integrate multiple theories into a coherent narrative, helping to desi…
A typological perspective on Differential Object Marking
Case marking of the object is often claimed to be driven specifically by two referential properties of the object, animacy and definiteness. Data from 744 languages, however, provide typological evidence that there is no universal preference for object case marking to be driven by these properties, but at the same time provide strong evidence that object case marking tends to be restricted in some way rather than be generalized across all objects…
The Genesis of Syntactic Complexity
Reviewed by: The Genesis of Syntactic Complexity: Diachrony, Ontogeny, Neuro-Cognition, Evolution by Talmy Givón Kaius Sinnemäki The Genesis of Syntactic Complexity: Diachrony, Ontogeny, Neuro-Cognition, Evolution. Talmy Givón. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2009. Pp. xviii + 366. $165.00, €110.00 (hardcover), $54.00, €36.00 (paper). In the volume under review, Talmy Givón, one of the foremost pioneers of functionalist linguistics, pulls together his…
Word order in zero-marking languages
It has often been argued that languages with no morphological marking of core arguments (referred to here as zero-marking languages) should prefer SVO word order. This correlation is tested here by studying the effects of word order, genealogical relatedness, and areal diffusion on the distribution of zero marking with multiple logistic regression. The possible confounding areal and genealogical factors are studied in multiple ways. The results, …
Word order in zero-marking languages. Appendix 4
It has often been argued that languages with no morphological marking of core arguments (referred to here as zero-marking languages) should prefer SVO word order. This correlation is tested here by studying the effects of word order, genealogical relatedness, and areal diffusion on the distribution of zero marking with multiple logistic regression. The possible confounding areal and genealogical factors are studied in multiple ways. The results, …
A typological perspective on Differential Object Marking
Case marking of the object is often claimed to be driven specifically by two referential properties of the object, animacy and definiteness. Data from 744 languages, however, provide typological evidence that there is no universal preference for object case marking to be driven by these properties, but at the same time provide strong evidence that object case marking tends to be restricted in some way rather than be generalized across all objects…
Word order in zero-marking languages
It has often been argued that languages with no morphological marking of core arguments (referred to here as zero-marking languages) should prefer SVO word order. This correlation is tested here by studying the effects of word order, genealogical relatedness, and areal diffusion on the distribution of zero marking with multiple logistic regression. The possible confounding areal and genealogical factors are studied in multiple ways. The results, …
Word order in zero-marking languages. Appendix 4
It has often been argued that languages with no morphological marking of core arguments (referred to here as zero-marking languages) should prefer SVO word order. This correlation is tested here by studying the effects of word order, genealogical relatedness, and areal diffusion on the distribution of zero marking with multiple logistic regression. The possible confounding areal and genealogical factors are studied in multiple ways. The results, …
The Genesis of Syntactic Complexity
Reviewed by: The Genesis of Syntactic Complexity: Diachrony, Ontogeny, Neuro-Cognition, Evolution by Talmy Givón Kaius Sinnemäki The Genesis of Syntactic Complexity: Diachrony, Ontogeny, Neuro-Cognition, Evolution. Talmy Givón. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2009. Pp. xviii + 366. $165.00, €110.00 (hardcover), $54.00, €36.00 (paper). In the volume under review, Talmy Givón, one of the foremost pioneers of functionalist linguistics, pulls together his…
A typological perspective on Differential Object Marking
Case marking of the object is often claimed to be driven specifically by two referential properties of the object, animacy and definiteness. Data from 744 languages, however, provide typological evidence that there is no universal preference for object case marking to be driven by these properties, but at the same time provide strong evidence that object case marking tends to be restricted in some way rather than be generalized across all objects…
Linguistic system and sociolinguistic environment as competing factors in linguistic variation
This paper brings together typological and sociolinguistic approaches to language variation. Its main aim is to evaluate the relative effect of language internal and external factors on the number of cases in the world’s languages. I model word order as a language internal predictor; it is well-known that, for instance, languages with verb-final word order (that is, languages in which both nominal arguments precede the main lexical verb) tend to …
Chield
Language is one of the most complex of human traits. There are many hypotheses about how it originated, what factors shaped its diversity, and what ongoing processes drive how it changes. We present the Causal Hypotheses in Evolutionary Linguistics Database (CHIELD, https://chield.excd.org/), a tool for expressing, exploring, and evaluating hypotheses. It allows researchers to integrate multiple theories into a coherent narrative, helping to desi…
Drastic demographic events triggered the Uralic spread
The widespread Uralic family offers several advantages for tracing prehistory: a firm absolute chronological anchor point in an ancient contact episode with well-dated Indo-Iranian; other points of intersection or diagnostic non-intersection with early Indo-European (the Late Proto-Indo-European-speaking Yamnaya culture of the western steppe, the Afanasievo culture of the upper Yenisei, and the Fatyanovo culture of the middle Volga); lexical and …
Testing Inferences about Language Contact on Morphosyntax
When linguists make inferences about language contact, control data is required for reliable analysis. Historical data or reconstructions are typically used for that purpose. However, historical data is globally mostly unavailable, and reconstructions are laborious if comparing outcomes of language contact in a typological way. We assess a recent typological proposal (Di Garbo & Napoleão de Souza 2023) that argues that using a single language, ca…
Head and dependent marking and dependency length in possessive noun phrases
The interaction of morphosyntactic features has been of great interest in research on linguistic complexity. In this paper we approach such interactions in possessive noun phrases. First, we study the interaction of head marking and dependent marking in this domain with typological feature data and with multilingual corpus data. The data suggest that there is a clear inverse relationship between head and dependent marking in possessive noun phras…
Beyond Segment Inventories
This article has three goals. First, it provides a broad cross-linguistic survey of phonological change in contact situations focusing on the suprasegmental domain. The term suprasegmental refers here to syllable structure, stress patterns, tonal patterns, and vowel and nasal harmony systems. Secondly, it assesses phonological change to suprasegmental variables whereby external influence causes an increase in complexity in the recipient language’…
A typological approach to language change in contact situations
Language contact phenomena have increasingly been researched from different historical linguistic, sociolinguistic and areal-typological perspectives. However, since most of this research is based on case studies, an assessment of contact phenomena from a worldwide comparative perspective has been missing in the literature. In this article, we draw inspiration from historical linguistics and language typology to present a new typological approach…
Replication, robustness and the angst of false positives
Article Replication, robustness and the angst of false positives: a timely target article and its multifaceted comments was published on October 1, 2025 in the journal Linguistic Typology (volume 29, issue 3)
Sampling matters
Article Sampling matters: commentary on “Replication and methodological robustness in quantitative typology” by Becker and Guzmán Naranjo was published on July 25, 2025 in the journal Linguistic Typology (volume 0, issue 0)
Computer Science (10 works) · Linguistics (10 works) · Language and cultural evolution (7 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Artificial Intelligence (5 works) · Biology (5 works) · Mathematics (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Sociology (5 works)