a verbal category. They often appear attached to sentence-initial particles, sentence-initial recapitulative verbs, adverbial conjunctions ('when', 'because', etc.), or coordinators ('and' or 'but' though it seems never 'or'), relativizers ('which,'that'), or sentence complementizers ('that'). They can also appear as free morphemes or as differing agreement paradigms. However, most switch-reference languages are subject–object–verb languages, with verbs as well as complementizers and conjunctions coming at the end of clauses. Therefore, switch-reference often appears attached to verbs, a fact that has led to the common but erroneous claim that switch-reference is a verbal category. One certain typological fact about switch-reference is that switch-reference markers appear at the 'edges' of clauses. It is found at the edge of either a subordinate clause (referring to the matrix clause) or at the edge of a coordinate clause (referring to the previous clause). It is also very common in clause-chaining languages of New Guinea, where it is found at the edge of medial clauses. Switch-reference is also sensitive to syntactic structure. It can skip a clause that is string-adjacent (spoken one right after another) and refer to a matrix clause. For instance, in the configuration [A[B][C]], for which B and C are subordinate clauses to A, any switch-reference-marking on C refers to A, not B. Distribution of switch-reference It is found in hundreds of languages in North America, South America, Australia, New Guinea (particularly in the Trans-New Guinea phylum, but not in many Papuan language families of northern New Guinea), and the South Pacific. Typologies exist for North America (Jacobsen 1983), Australia (Austin 1981), and New Guinea (Roberts 1997). It spreads generally by areal diffusion, which accounts for the fact that the morphological marking varies from one language to the next. Notes References Austin, Peter. (1981). "Switch-Reference in Australia". Language 57. Farrell, Patrick; Stephen A. Marlett; & David M. Perlmutter. (1991). Notions of subjecthood and switch-reference: Evidence from Seri. Linguistic Inquiry 22:431-456. Finer, Daniel. (1985). "The syntax of switch-reference". Linguistic Inquiry 16: 35-55. Haiman, John, and Pamela Munro, eds. (1983). Switch Reference and Universal Grammar. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Jacobsen, William. (1983). "Typological and Genetic Notes on Switch-Reference in North American Languages". In Haiman and Munro. Mithun, Marianne (1999). The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marlett, Stephen A. (1984). '"Switch-reference and subject raising in Seri." Syntax and semantics 16: the syntax of Native American Languages, pp. 247–68, eds. E.-D. Cook & D. Gerdts. New York: