A statistical approach to African personal pronouns
Guillaume Segerer & Martine Vanhove - CNRS LLACAN, France

2. The WALS claims

Definitions
n-m languages have a form for 1st person sg with n or ɲ as first root consonant AND 2nd person sg with m as first root consonant.
m-T languages have a form for 1st person sg with m as first root consonant AND 2nd person sg with T (i.e. t, d, s, z, c, j) as first root consonant.
A distinction is made between paradigmatic (i.e. lgs where both forms appear in the same form class) and non-paradigmatic (i.e. lgs where forms belong to different form classes).

Nichols & Peterson (2008) [WALS]:
Both the m-T and the N-m paradigms are found in areas where spreads are known to have been centered − the Greater Silk Road and the Pacific Rim − and both appear to be the products of geographical spread rather than just universals or just inheritance.

2b. Our tests

  • are African m-T and N-m distributions significatively different from those shown in WALS, where only 30 lgs are surveyed?
  • are there any specifically African X-X systems?
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