This chapter introduces the book and its viewpoint that to understand language, we must adopt the same methodology successfully applied to other faculties of the human mind. To do so, we must recognize how minoritized languages – languages spoken by smaller populations, or languages that are not even official national languages – nonetheless have transformative effects on our understanding of the human language faculty.

In this chapter, we see how our understanding of verbal argument structure (the relation of multiple objects to the verb) is in fact determined in large part by event structure: how non-core individuals may be related (benefactively, malefactively) to core verbal events. The empirical findings from Bantu languages have been so transformative for linguistic theory that they allow for unexpected consequences in languages traditionally thought to be ‘nonconfigurational’, such as Warlpiri.

In this chapter, two languages spoken far apart from one another – Basque and Ch’ol – jointly show that once one considers sentences expressed in the progressive aspect, the entire theory of ergative case as lexically determined begins to unravel. In particular, verbs that are not supposed to be lexically assign ergative end up with ergative-marked subjects (and vice versa) as a result of the larger clausal structure. Ergative case cannot solely be chalked up to a semantic encoding of agentivity or volitionality of the predicates involved. It is the details of the structure wrought around such predicates that will predestine their arguments to be ergative or not.

This chapter summarizes the book overall, as well as mentioning case studies that were not covered in previous chapters. It concludes by reinforcing the importance of native speaker linguists and inclusiveness in the language sciences.

In this chapter, the contributions of teams working together on South Slavic and Southern Bantu languages, many of which began specifically as new research partnerships forged after the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia and the end of apartheid, provide compelling evidence that syntactic processes must include reference to linear order. Syntax may not be just a spinning Calderian mobile: Agreement in gender for cases of conjoined NP subjects (and possibly objects) refers to the NP linearly closest to the verb.

This chapter examines number-marking in suppletive verbs in Hiaki, with pluractionality in Chechen, and without an overt mass/count distinction in Dëne Suliné. The grammatical encoding of number is one of the most varied areas of all cross-linguistic variation, and our syntax–semantics models cannot restrict themselves to limited samples of a handful of nonminoritized languages if our aim is to develop nonbrittle theories and truly challenge the view that English is as ‘equally’ representative of the human language faculty as any other language we choose to start from.

This chapter looks at sociolinguistic variation (resulting from sociohistorical factors that differentiate people into groups) and how it interfaces with phonological differences. The specific phonological difference under study is the use of the two hands versus the use of only one as an aspect of sublexical structure (i.e., as a phonological feature) in individual signs, and their overall patterning throughout the lexicon and morphophonology. We examine how Black ASL demonstrates the distribution of allophony in two-handed vs. one-handed lexical variants of signs.

In this chapter, the contributions of the minoritized languages Zazaki and Uyghur shore up a theoretical battle for philosophical ‘monsters’, specifically introducing radical revisions to semantic models of reported speech and attitude reports. In particular, these languages exhibit the phenomenon of indexical shift, whereby elements such as first-person pronouns in indirect quotations can refer to the matrix subject (and not the speaker themself), although with highly intricate constraints on when, some language-specific and some apparently universal.

This chapter explores the contributions of two minoritized indigenous languages of Brazil, Maxakalí and Kaingang, to representations of nasality gestures akin to musical scores, as well as the right way to frame the universality of the kinship terms (and ideal universal syllables)' mama’ and ‘papa’ in light of a phonetic model called Enhancement Theory. These languages have either the consonants /m/ and /p/, but not /b/, or /b/ and /p/, but not /m/, and the allophonic environments in which this available phonetic space is used are organized around perceptual and articulatory optimization.