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

Marc Allassonnière-Tang (), Olof Lundgren, Maja Robbers, Sandra Cronhamn, Filip Larsson, One-Soon Her, Harald Hammarström and Gerd Carling
Additional contact information
Marc Allassonnière-Tang: EA UMR 7206 - MNHN/ CNRS/ Université de Paris
Olof Lundgren: Lund University
Maja Robbers: Uppsala University
Sandra Cronhamn: Lund University
Filip Larsson: Lund University
One-Soon Her: Tunghai University
Harald Hammarström: Uppsala University
Gerd Carling: Lund University

Palgrave Communications, 2021, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-6

Abstract: 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.

Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41599-021-01003-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palcom:v:8:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-021-01003-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/palcomms/about

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-021-01003-5

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Palgrave Communications from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().