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

5b. m-T systems in Africa



  • Statistically based predictions:

    •   65% of the languages have an m for 1st person in at least one paradigm.
      17% of the languages have an T (i.e. t, d, s, z, c, j) for 2nd person in at least one paradigm.
    In the 738-lgs sample, if the presence of m in 1st p. and T in 2nd p. are independant from each other, there should be 738*0.65*0.17 = 83 languages showing the m-T pattern. There are actually only 24 lgs showing this pattern, which is 71% less than expected.
     <  ALT8 (8th Biennial Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology), University of California, Berkeley, July 23-26, 2009  >