Johanna Nichols

Grünthal, Riho, Volker Heyd, Sampsa Holopainen, Juha A. Janhunen, Olesya Khanina, Matti Miestamo, Johanna Nichols, Janne S. Saarikivi and Kaius Sinnemäki 2022 Drastic demographic events triggered the Uralic spread Diachronica 39:4, pp. 490–524 | Article

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… read more

Nichols, Johanna 2019 Suppletion or illusion? The diachrony of suppletive derivation Perspectives on Language Structure and Language Change: Studies in honor of Henning Andersen, Heltoft, Lars, Iván Igartua, Brian D. Joseph, Kirsten Jeppesen Kragh and Lene Schøsler (eds.), pp. 345–356 | Chapter

Constructing a typology and cross-linguistic survey for Aktionsart, actionality, and related notions is largely infeasible at present because so few Aktionsart systems have been fully described, they are typically complex and intricately dependent on verbal semantics and classification, and despite… read more

Nichols, Johanna 2017 Noun-modifying constructions and relativization in the central and western Caucasus Noun-Modifying Clause Constructions in Languages of Eurasia: Rethinking theoretical and geographical boundaries, Matsumoto, Yoshiko, Bernard Comrie and Peter Sells (eds.), pp. 179–201 | Article

Languages of the Nakh-Daghestanian family in the central and eastern Caucasus uniformly use gap strategies for relativization and GNMCC’s, despite different contact histories. Languages to the west and southwest (West Caucasian, Kartvelian) are very different, using relative pronouns and finite… read more

Nichols, Johanna 2015 Chapter 10. Types of spread zones: Open and closed, horizontal and vertical Language Structure and Environment: Social, cultural, and natural factors, De Busser, Rik and Randy J. LaPolla (eds.), pp. 261–286 | Article

Spread zones are areas where any resident language is likely to spread out widely, so overall linguistic diversity is low at any time (though over time different languages spread out, giving the area a diverse diachronic profile). This chapter subclassifies spread systems into four types: (1)… read more

Nichols, Johanna 2014 Chapter 3. Derivational paradigms in diachrony  and comparison Paradigm Change: In the Transeurasian languages and beyond, Robbeets, Martine and Walter Bisang (eds.), pp. 61–88 | Chapter

Wordlists used for subgrouping and long-range comparison under-utilize the verbal lexicon, and comparative work of all kinds makes more use of lexical roots and inflectional morphology than word formation. This chapter is a first attempt to utilize derivational morphology of verbs, in particular… read more

Nichols, Johanna 2010 Chapter 2. Indeterminate motion verbs are denominal New Approaches to Slavic Verbs of Motion, Hasko, Victoria and Renee Perelmutter (eds.), pp. 47–65 | Article

Slavic indeterminate verbs of motion are better analyzed as denominal verbs than as causatives. They owe their *-o- vocalism, their *-i- stem suffixes, and their indeterminate aspectuality to their denominal origin. Some of them may originally have been Indo-European causatives, but were reanalyzed… read more

Nichols, Johanna 2008 Case in Ingush syntax Case and Grammatical Relations: Studies in honor of Bernard Comrie, Corbett, Greville G. and Michael Noonan (eds.), pp. 57–74 | Article

This paper reviews the morphological and syntactic patterns and the patterns of lexical derivation in Ingush (Nakh-Daghestanian, Caucasus) in pursuit of a typological generalization about alignment in the language. Morphological case paradigms are almost entirely ergative. Simple clause alignment… read more