Universals of language have been studied extensively for the last four
decades, allowing fundamental insight into the principles and general
properties of human language. Only incidentally have researchers looked at
the other end of the scale. And even when they did, they mostly just noted
peculiar facts as "quirks" or "unusual behavior", without making too much
of an effort at explaining them beyond calling them "exceptions" to various
rules or generalizations.
Rarissima and rara, features and properties found only in one or very few
languages, tell us as much about the capacities and limits of human
language(s) as do universals. Explaining the existence of such rare
phenomena on the one hand, and the fact of their rareness or uniqueness on
the other, is a reasonable and interesting challenge to any theory of how
human language works.
The present volume for the first time compiles selected papers on the study
of rare linguistic features from various fields of linguistics and from a
wide range of languages.