Supplementary material for "Sociogeographic correlates of typological variation in northwestern Bantu gender systems" by Annemarie Verkerk and Francesca Di Garbo, published in LDC, 2022

These are the supplementary materials for an article published in Language Dynamics and Change (LDC) entitled "Sociogeographic correlates of typological variation in northwestern Bantu gender systems", by Annemarie Verkerk and Francesca Di Garbo, with DOI 10.1163/22105832-bja10017. This paper investigates the sociolinguistic factors that impact the typology and evolution of grammatical gender systems in northwestern Bantu, the most diverse area of the Bantu-speaking world. We base our analyses on a typological classification of 179 northwestern Bantu languages, focusing on various instances of semantic agreement and their role in the erosion of gender marking. In addition, we conduct in-depth analyses of the sociolinguistics and population history of the 17 languages of the sample with the most eroded gender systems. The sociohistorical factors identified to explain these highly eroded systems are then translated into a set of explanatory variables, which we use to conduct extensive quantitative analyses on the 179 language sample. These variables are population size, longitude, latitude, relationship with the Central African rainforest, and border with Ubangi/Central Sudanic languages. All these measures are relevant, with population size and bordering with Ubangi/Central Sudanic being the most robust factors in accounting for the distribution of gender restructuring. We conclude that fine-tuned variable design tailored to language and area-specific ecologies is crucial to the advancement of quantitative sociolinguistic typology. These supplementary materials consist of the relevant code and data used for this study, with accompanying figures and details on the analyses.

本补充资料为发表于《语言动态与变化（Language Dynamics and Change，LDC）》期刊的论文配套材料，论文标题为《西北班图语族性别系统类型变异的社会地理关联》，作者为Annemarie Verkerk与Francesca Di Garbo，DOI编号为10.1163/22105832-bja10017。本研究聚焦西北班图语区——班图语分布区域中多样性最高的片区，探讨影响语法性别系统类型学特征与演化的社会语言学因素。我们的分析基于179种西北班图语言的类型学分类，重点关注语义一致（semantic agreement）现象的各类表现及其在性别标记弱化进程中的作用。此外，我们对样本中性别系统弱化程度最高的17种语言开展了深入的社会语言学与人口史研究。随后，我们将用于解释这类高度弱化性别系统的社会历史因素转化为一套解释变量，并基于这179种语言的样本开展了大规模定量分析。这些变量涵盖人口规模、经度、纬度、与中非热带雨林的空间关联，以及与乌班吉语/中苏丹语族语言的接壤情况。所有变量均具备统计学相关性，其中人口规模与接壤乌班吉语/中苏丹语族语言是解释性别重构分布特征的最具稳健性的影响因素。本研究结论表明，针对语言与区域特定生态量身定制的精细化变量设计，对于推动定量社会语言学类型学的发展至关重要。本补充资料包含本研究使用的全部相关代码与数据，以及分析过程配套的图表与细节说明。