Startseite Estimating areal effects in typology: a case study of African phoneme inventories
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Estimating areal effects in typology: a case study of African phoneme inventories

  • Matías Guzmán Naranjo EMAIL logo und Miri Mertner
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 20. Dezember 2022

Abstract

In this paper, we combine several statistical techniques (multivariate probit models, Gaussian processes, and phylogenetic regression) into a new approach for exploring the areal patterns associated with the presence and absence of typological features. This model allows us to estimate and control for areal and genetic effects, the correlations between features, and their expected frequency of occurrence in the data. We use this model to explore the distribution of consonants in African languages, inferring several linguistic areas which have been proposed in the literature. Our results suggest that the combination of these methods is a promising new way of approaching language contact.


Corresponding author: Matías Guzmán Naranjo [matias gusman naranxo], Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, E-mail:

Funding source: European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme

Award Identifier / Grant number: (Grant agreement 834050)

Funding source: DFG Center for Advanced Studies ‘Words, Bones, Genes, Tools’, and the Emmy Noether project ‘Bayesian modelling of spatial typology’

Award Identifier / Grant number: (project number 504155622)

  1. Research funding: This research was funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement 834050), the DFG Center for Advanced Studies ‘Words, Bones, Genes, Tools’, and the Emmy Noether project ‘Bayesian modelling of spatial typology’ (project number 504155622).

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Supplementary Material

The online version of this article offers Supplementary Material (https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2022-0037).


Received: 2022-06-29
Accepted: 2022-11-20
Published Online: 2022-12-20
Published in Print: 2023-07-26

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Heruntergeladen am 7.9.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/lingty-2022-0037/pdf
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