UC Santa Barbara

Abstract A central issue in typology is the role of implicational hierarchies in shaping individual languages. One view is that the hierarchies guide language change, or at least constrain it: “Since a hierarchy constrains what is a possible language, it is also a constraint on language change, because languages move from one possible state to another” ( Corbett 2011 ). Other approaches take a different perspective: “Hierarchies simply capture the outputs of independent diachronic processes” ( Cristofaro & Zúñiga this volume ). Here the relationship between typology and diachrony is examined with respect to the most frequently-cited hierarchies, the cluster of Referential/Topicality/Animacy/Empathy hierarchies. While such hierarchies might appear to drive diachronic development in some single-step changes, multi-step developments are a different matter.