In this interview, Martin Haspelmath talks about how he got started in linguistics, the rise of large-scale areal typology in the 1990s, language description vs language comparison, and the current state of the field.

Portrait of Martin Haseplmath — Photo: Swen Reichhold/Uni Leipzig

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Intro and outro: Bach, Cello Suite no. 1 in G major, Prelude. Recording from Wikipedia.

References for Episode 51

Dryer, M. S., et al. 2013. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. München: Max Planck Digital Library. http://wals.info/

Haspelmath, M. 1993. A Grammar of Lezgian. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Haspelmath, M. 2010. Comparative concepts and descriptive categories in crosslinguistic studies. Language, 86(3), 663-687. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/lan.2010.0021

Michaelis, S. M., Maurer, P., Haspelmath, M., & Huber, M., eds. 2013. The Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online. Leipzig: MPI für evolutionäre Anthropologie. http://apics-online.info

FULL SHOW: It was a fat sausage!!