4. Supporting evidence
4.3 GIS evidence
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4.3 GIS evidence
Regarding the areal distribution, we provide two sources of evidence: first we innovatively combine data from previous studies on GIS (Geographic Information System) display. It includes Aikhenvald (2000) on numeral classifiers and genders, with Haspelmath (2013) and Dryer (2013) on plural markers. As a reminder, previous studies only analyzed numeral classifiers, genders and plural markers in geographical terms separately but never combined them to analyze their interaction as language area. Filling this gap is one the main contribution of this thesis. The second evidence comes from our direct typological and geographical analysis via our database of 155 languages. As displayed in Map 9, the team of genders and plural markers (black dots) is concentrated in Africa, Europe and part of West-Asia while pure numeral classifier languages (white dots) are dominating in South-East Asia. The Americas display a mixed picture while the languages in Australia are mostly without numeral classifiers or plural markers, due to their limited numeral system. Most of our special cases and anomalies (gray dots) emerge at the intersection of the numeral classifier plate and gender plate. They are mainly located in India and the Assam region, where neighbor languages are indeed attested to behave in very different ways.
Map 9. Categories distribution of 155 languages in database (by dots)
Another evidence supporting our hypothesis would be the study of Her et al (2015), which investigated the six main language groups in the region of Assam and its surroundings: Sinitic, Miao-Yao, Austro-Asiatic, Tai-Kadai, Tibeto-Burman, and Indo-Aryan. Her et al (2015) explained the diversity of the numeral systems and numeral classifiers structure in this region via language contact: it is proposed that
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under the sandwich of two adjacent forces, contact would result in a change of the language system. This is what is happening for numeral and numeral classifier systems in this zone: languages from the West and the East tend to have a ‘classifier final’ word ordering (numeral classifier-numeral) while languages of the Tibeto-Burman group in the middle has the opposite ordering of ‘classifier initial’
(numeral classifier-numeral). However, under the pressure of languages from the West and the East, a large quantity of Tibeto-Burman languages switched their original ‘classifier initial’ ordering to ‘classifier final’. Nevertheless, some languages did not finish their conversion or did not choose a side yet, therefore they display mixed systems of word ordering. The same situation is occurring for numeral classifiers, genders and plural markers: under pressure of the combined system of genders and plural markers from the West and numeral classifiers from the East, languages of this zone would either choose a side or take from both, resulting in a mixed system (Aikhenvald, 2000:185).
As mentioned previously we display the languages of our database via two types of GIS display, the first one being one dot per language as in Map 9, the second being in terms of speaker coverage, as in Map 10. Similar to our previous map, category 1 with genders combined to plural markers is displayed in black, while numeral classifier languages are represented in white. Finally the mixed cases are displayed in gray.
Following our observation in Map 9, we also realize that the two forces have respectively their stronghold in Europe & Africa and South-East Asia, while the zones in between usually result in under-marked or over-marked systems.
Map 10. Categories distribution of 155 languages in database (by speaker coverage)
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This distribution is also indirectly supported by the two historical hypotheses that on one side, numeral classifiers originated from the Tai languages in South Asia (Jones, 1970; Hashimoto, 1977; Erbaugh, 1986; Peyraube, 1991) and expanded West to Europe and East to the Americas (Nichols, 1992). On the other side, genders could have expanded with the migration from Africa to the Caucasus and expanded to the North and the East, eventually reaching the Americas at a later time (Blench, 2006).
Overall these theories are also supported by the fact that the higher density and quantity of numeral classifiers are in South Asia, while it is in Africa and the Caucasus for genders (Nichols, 1989; Aikhenvald, 2000; Corbett, 2013).
4.3.1 Numeral classifiers and plural markers
A sample of our innovative combination of data from previous studies is displayed in Map 11, where we can observe a largely mutual exclusivity between numeral classifiers and plural markers, as expected by our hypothesis. Plural markers are generally found in Africa and Europe while numeral classifiers have their strongholds in Asia and parts of South America. India which is located at the collision point of the two forces, displays a mixed picture. The absence of color in other parts of the world does not imply that neither of the two elements are occurring, on the other hand they are not displayed here since they may be attested as isolated cases, being too disparate to represent a typological area on their own. For more precision, we may refer to the geographical distribution map displayed in Map 4 and Map 6 within the literature review section.
Map 11. Distribution of numeral classifiers and plural markers, adapted from Aikhenvald (2000:122) and Haspelmath (2013) & Dryer (2013)
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The l55 languages we gathered also display the same distribution, as demonstrated in Map 12. One major difference would be that our data shows in an even more obvious way a bridge between the two forces via Russian in the North of Europe and Asia.
Following the concept of Her (2015), we may observe a ‘typological sandwich’, where the Russian language is influenced by genders & plural markers system on one side and numeral classifiers on the other side.
Map 12. Distribution of numeral classifiers and plural markers in 155 languages
4.3.2 Numeral classifiers and genders
Similarly to previous analysis, our novel combination of previous studies is displayed in Map 13, where we can also observe a tendency not to co-occur between numeral classifiers and genders.
Map 13. Distribution of numeral classifiers and genders, adapted from Aikhenvald (2000:78,122)
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The results are also in accordance with our hypothesis: numeral classifiers and genders both fulfill the function of semantic classification, therefore they may occur together but over-marking is expected to occur in low frequency. By looking at the geographical details, we note that genders are mainly present in Africa and Europe along with few regions in the Americas, while numeral classifiers are based in South and South-East Asia and parts of South America. The rest of the world is attested as isolated cases zone, whether for numeral classifiers or genders, therefore besides covering these hot spots area to verify the actual tendency of numeral classifiers and genders, our data also aims at including the zone with isolated cases, e.g. North America, North Asia and Australia. The result of our 155 languages database is displayed in the next map.
When looking at our database in Map 14, Africa, Europe and Asia do follow the expected tendency of not to co-occur in general, but for the Americas we do not see the numeral classifier systems attested by Aikhenvald. The main reason for this divergence is that to avoid confusion we did not include languages with multiple classifiers systems in our data. This part is further mentioned in the limitation section.
Map14. Distribution of numeral classifiers and genders in 155 languages
4.3.3 Genders and plural markers
Finally, the same methodology is applied for genders and plural markers to show our observation in Map 15, displaying the high geographical co-occurrence of genders and plural markers in Africa and Europe, as expected by our hypothesis. For other parts of the world, the presence of different systems is still attested however the available data is not sufficient to propose their continuity.
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Map15. Distribution of genders and plural markers, adapted from Aikhenvald (2000:78) and Haspelmath (2013) & Dryer (2013)
On the other hand in Map 16 with the data of our l55 languages, the general tendency not only follows our hypothesis with most of the languages showing co-occurrence of genders and plural markers, but also expands to the Americas and Australia, which were not covered by previous studies. We may observe that for the Americas the mixed language system is almost covering the entire continent, while for Australia the regions we covered also show the similar structure. Nevertheless some central parts of Africa and Australia still need improvement.
Map16. Distribution of genders and plural markers in 155 languages
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4.3.4 Summary
Through GIS display of previous studies and our own data, we provide further evidence for our theoretical discussions and typological observations. In general, languages with numeral classifiers are present in South-East Asia while the team of genders and plural markers are based in Europe, Africa, the Americas and parts of Australia. The languages caught in the sandwich of these two forces display mixed language structure.
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Chapter 5 Limitations
The main limitations unsolved during the completion of this study are: first, in terms of language coverage, improvement is needed for South America, Central Africa and North Australia, since we only have partial presence in language quantity and speaker coverage. Nevertheless it is still estimated sufficient for our primary analysis. Second, our main hypothesis of countability marking and noun classification is supported by our data and previous studies. However, we only include numeral classifiers, genders and plural marker. The next necessary step would be to add into the database other language systems which could carry the same functions, e.g. noun classifiers, verb classifiers among others. Our 155 languages do contain few samples of this category and they apparently support our theory, since they are all occurring at the clashing point of the two forces of numeral classifiers versus genders & plural markers. To increase their quantity would at the same time be in accordance with our first limitation, since the required zones such as South America and Australia are precisely within these conflict regions.
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Chapter 6 Conclusion
As a summary, in geographical terms, it appears that the presence of numeral classifiers in a language coincide with the absence of grammatical genders and grammatical plural markers. As an example, South-East Asia is a hot spot for numeral classifier languages, which usually do not have genders or grammatical plural markers systems. We expect that the two functions of countability (mass/count) and classification may explain this distribution.
First, countability marking is syntactic therefore it is not possible to experience stacking. Following this logic, numeral classifiers and grammatical plural markers should be mutually exclusive. Second, noun classification is semantic thus it is possible to be represented in more than one form nevertheless it would still be dispreferred, so that we avoid losing the function of highlighting a noun’s feature.
Under this hypothesis, numeral classifiers and grammatical genders are expected to show the tendency of not co-occuring. Finally, since grammatical genders and grammatical plurals separately fulfill countability and noun classification, they are not affecting each other and are expected to co-occur.
Our results show that 87% (135/155) of the languages within our data corresponds to our prediction. Moreover, explanation is provided for the other 13% (20/155):
regarding under-marking, the lack of numeral classifiers or genders fulfilling noun classification is speculated to be caused by the occurrence of other elements carrying this function, e.g. case marking, noun classifiers, verb classifiers. On the other hand, we propose that the absence of countability marking via numeral classifiers or grammatical plurals is due to the restricted numeral systems in the languages involved.
Regarding over-marking we hypothesize that the languages attested are in the middle of a competition between different systems fulfilling the same function such as genders and numeral classifiers or numeral classifiers and plural markers. Since lexical diffusion (Wang, 1969, 1977) is occurring gradually rather than abruptly, we do expect to witness a co-occurrence of two different systems, until a balance is reached or one of them takes advantage over the other. Finally, an innovative overview via GIS display connects with previous studies and further supports our analysis.
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