Abstract This paper examines how human nouns are distributed across gender values in Bantu languages. In Bantu studies, one gender value is widely described as the “human” gender, and it is generally expected that human nouns are predominantly assigned to it with some notable exceptions. Drawing on lexical data from 45 Bantu varieties in the RefLex database ( Segerer & Flavier 2025 ), the study assesses how consistently this expectation is met across the family. The results reveal substantial variation: in some languages more than 95% of human nouns occur in this dedicated “human” gender, while in others the proportion is below 60%, with especially low figures in some northwestern Bantu languages. The analysis offers a partial account of these patterns. The findings raise questions of broader cross-linguistic relevance regarding key typological assumptions about human nouns as the semantic core of grammatical gender.
This paper examines how Takituduh Bunun (Austronesian: Taiwan) encodes translocative motion, using the framework of Holistic Spatial Semantics. Based on elicited field data, we identify key lexical and grammatical resources, including motion verbs, a productive motion prefix (u-), and the locative voice. These interact flexibly to express basic semantic categories such as Path, Direction, Manner, and Region. We show that Takituduh Bunun challenges the traditional binary motion typology by relying extensively on morphological strategies rather than verb roots and their satellites. The ability to combine multiple form-meaning mappings in serial verb constructions and through voice morphology suggests a need to move beyond binary typologies and focus on the distributional properties of semantic categories across grammatical resources. Our findings highlight the importance of Formosan languages for a more inclusive typology of motion events and call for further attention to the role of morphology in spatial semantics.
Multi-constituent numerals involve a decision as to whether the lower value should precede or follow the higher value. While most languages go for consistent ordering, a minority of languages use both orders in the range from '11' to '99' (compare English seven-teen [unit-ten order] to seventy-two [ten-unit order]). This study presents a typological analysis of 258 inconsistent-order languages. Most, but not all inconsistent languages switch from unit-ten to ten-unit order. Numeral 20 is by far the most preferred switch point. A combination of natural order, the frequent-before-infrequent principle, paradigm consistency and the internal structure of numeral systems can account for the empirical results. The frequent-before-infrequent bias facilitates the emergence of the unit-ten order. Because the frequency of numerals decreases with increasing numerical magnitude, the frequency bias gradually loses its force, thereby enabling the natural order to take over and bringing about the switch from the unit-ten to the ten-unit order.
This paper investigates the effect of usage frequency on the alternation between anticausativization and lability in Late Latin. For many verbs entering the causal-noncausal alternation ('John opens the door' vs. 'The door opens'), the intransitive alternant is either unmarked in lability or marked by the mediopassive voice or a reflexive pronoun. Previous research suggested that factors such as control, telicity, and Aktionsart influence the selection among these strategies. Drawing on a representative sample of Latin texts dating from 200 to 600 CE, this study offers corpus-based evidence on how these parameters align with the form-frequency correspondence principle. The data show that verbs with higher semantic transitivity tend to occur more frequently in their transitive alternant, and that control is a subject property more associated with transitive uses. I therefore argue that usage frequency plays a pivotal role in shaping transitivity in the diachrony of anticausativization and lability.
Cuntou Tuhua, an undocumented Tuhua variety within the Sinitic languages spoken in northern Guangdong, exhibits three types of passive constructions. The la-construction and the piau-construction have developed internally from transitive constructions involving actions of taking and giving, and are typically used to express negative events, with the agent obligatorily present. In contrast, the phai-construction is a borrowed form from Mandarin, used exclusively for positive events and requiring the omission of the agent. The grammaticalization of the la-construction and the piau-construction indicates that they represent a strategy of topicalization. These passive constructions also serve a distinct participant-identification function, arising from the conventionalization of the construction, including determining participant roles and tracking referents in discourse.
