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Expansion by migration and diffusion by contact is a source to the global diversity of linguistic nominal categorization systems

Allassonnière-Tang, Marc ; Lundgren, Olof LU orcid ; Robbers, Maja ; Cronhamn, Sandra LU ; Larsson, Filip LU orcid ; Her, One-Soon ; Hammarström, Harald and Carling, Gerd LU (2021) In Humanities & Social Sciences Communications 8. p.1-6
Abstract
Languages of diverse structures and different families tend to share common patterns if they are spoken in geographic proximity. This convergence is often explained by horizontal diffusibility, which is typically ascribed to language contact. In such a scenario, speakers of two or more languages interact and influence each other’s languages, and in this interaction, more grammaticalized features tend to be more resistant to diffusion compared to features of more lexical content. An alternative explanation is vertical heritability: languages in proximity often share genealogical descent. Here, we suggest that the geographic distribution of features globally can be explained by two major pathways, which are generally not distinguished within... (More)
Languages of diverse structures and different families tend to share common patterns if they are spoken in geographic proximity. This convergence is often explained by horizontal diffusibility, which is typically ascribed to language contact. In such a scenario, speakers of two or more languages interact and influence each other’s languages, and in this interaction, more grammaticalized features tend to be more resistant to diffusion compared to features of more lexical content. An alternative explanation is vertical heritability: languages in proximity often share genealogical descent. Here, we suggest that the geographic distribution of features globally can be explained by two major pathways, which are generally not distinguished within quantitative typological models: feature diffusion and language expansion. The first pathway corresponds to the contact scenario described above, while the second occurs when speakers of genetically related languages migrate. We take the worldwide distribution of nominal classification systems (grammatical gender, noun class, and classifier) as a case study to show that more grammaticalized systems, such as gender, and less grammaticalized systems, such as classifiers, are almost equally widespread, but the former spread more by language expansion historically, whereas the latter spread more by feature diffusion. Our results indicate that quantitative models measuring the areal diffusibility and stability of linguistic features are likely to be affected by language expansion that occurs by historical coincidence. We anticipate that our findings will support studies of language diversity in a more sophisticated way, with relevance to other parts of language, such as phonology. (Less)
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author
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organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
in
Humanities & Social Sciences Communications
volume
8
article number
331
pages
6 pages
publisher
Springer Nature
external identifiers
  • scopus:85121508026
ISSN
2662-9992
DOI
10.1057/s41599-021-01003-5
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
f660f2e0-7e8c-490d-969f-c0c8f1e8af33
date added to LUP
2022-01-24 12:04:52
date last changed
2023-11-21 02:33:40
@article{f660f2e0-7e8c-490d-969f-c0c8f1e8af33,
  abstract     = {{Languages of diverse structures and different families tend to share common patterns if they are spoken in geographic proximity. This convergence is often explained by horizontal diffusibility, which is typically ascribed to language contact. In such a scenario, speakers of two or more languages interact and influence each other’s languages, and in this interaction, more grammaticalized features tend to be more resistant to diffusion compared to features of more lexical content. An alternative explanation is vertical heritability: languages in proximity often share genealogical descent. Here, we suggest that the geographic distribution of features globally can be explained by two major pathways, which are generally not distinguished within quantitative typological models: feature diffusion and language expansion. The first pathway corresponds to the contact scenario described above, while the second occurs when speakers of genetically related languages migrate. We take the worldwide distribution of nominal classification systems (grammatical gender, noun class, and classifier) as a case study to show that more grammaticalized systems, such as gender, and less grammaticalized systems, such as classifiers, are almost equally widespread, but the former spread more by language expansion historically, whereas the latter spread more by feature diffusion. Our results indicate that quantitative models measuring the areal diffusibility and stability of linguistic features are likely to be affected by language expansion that occurs by historical coincidence. We anticipate that our findings will support studies of language diversity in a more sophisticated way, with relevance to other parts of language, such as phonology.}},
  author       = {{Allassonnière-Tang, Marc and Lundgren, Olof and Robbers, Maja and Cronhamn, Sandra and Larsson, Filip and Her, One-Soon and Hammarström, Harald and Carling, Gerd}},
  issn         = {{2662-9992}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{12}},
  pages        = {{1--6}},
  publisher    = {{Springer Nature}},
  series       = {{Humanities & Social Sciences Communications}},
  title        = {{Expansion by migration and diffusion by contact is a source to the global diversity of linguistic nominal categorization systems}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-01003-5}},
  doi          = {{10.1057/s41599-021-01003-5}},
  volume       = {{8}},
  year         = {{2021}},
}