24.09.2024 - Matías Guzmán Naranjo

Abstract: In recent years there has been an increased interest in computational modeling of spatial phenomena in typology (Guzmán Naranjo & Becker 2022, Guzmán Naranjo & Mertner 2023, Hartmann 2022, Hartmann & Jäger 2023, Ranacher et al. 2021, Urban & Moran 2021). While the main focus of most work so far has been on direct language contact, there are two different types of spatial dynamics of interest to typologists and areal linguists: language expansion, and unidirectional contact effects. In this talk I present three new statistical techniques to model expansion and unidirectional contact effects. I illustrate these techniques with a case study on Polynesian phoneme inventory sizes, and show that there is strong evidence for unidirectional effects, but little evidence for expansion effects (contra Atkinson 2011). I also argue that we are still far from having a complete understanding of how to model all spatial dynamics that can affect language contact, and that more attention should be paid to these issues.