summary basic order remark typology week ask reference discussion problem linguistic typology conflict ambiguous criterion decide whether particular language particular type respect feature word order clause alignment whatever one decide assign language thank follow helpful reply george huttar yehuda falk dan everett larry trask jon aske mike maxwell mark newson bill croft georgium green ingo plag randy harri andrew carstair mccarthy quite surprise small amount publish attention problem point short discussion couple page major work devote typology seminal greenberg paper comrie s language universal linguistic typology croft s typology universal hawkin word order universal suggest dori payne s pragmatic word order papers yagua payne dan everett tzotzil judith aissen prompt query read johanna nichol linguistic diversity space extremely impressive through uneasy feel cause pigeonholee language svo headmark activestative whatever since many language transparently one particular type surface wonder basis typecharacterization general answer question obvious reason neither nichol anyone else profound firsthand knowledge small handful language datum base suspect most case nichol criterion apply type language source consult many source insufficiently explicit point selfevident categorization another controversial simply wrong consider example type french vso sure case where nichol throw language sample particular feature obvious ambiguous status respect feature create problem solve both aske croft point posting language inconsistent respect particular feature too typological datum datum moreover highly relevant conclusion stability diversity over sample language misassignment several language within category division lead rather different conclusion likewise postulate different set category category specifically mix type begin sound critique nichol nt mean rather commentary shaky art typological pigeonholee underlie conclusion language prehistory much functionalist theorize increasingly generative theorize question sample size typologist strive quite reasonably correct genetic areal bias sample most heroic effort along line dryer s work confident attempt eliminate bias sample nichol conclusion influence extend halfway around globe nt present challenge purport explanation relative frequency typological feature common functionalist literature increasingly generative much result historical accident one hand contact descent rather product external functional force design ug smaller sample language where mutual influence common descent possibility likely implicational typological relation artifactual reason lot typologically possible purely chance nonexist language fritz newmeyer fjn u washington edu ps respect point alan bell show feature appear world s language language show random sample language d need sample over language before count show assume here utterly counterfactually genetic relation areal influence between language 