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.

本资料为发表在《语言动态与变化》（Language Dynamics and Change，LDC）杂志上的文章《西北班图语系语法性别系统类型学变化的地理社会学相关性》的补充材料。该文由Annemarie Verkerk和Francesca Di Garbo撰写，DOI为10.1163/22105832-bja10017。该研究探讨了影响西北班图语系语法性别系统类型学及其演化的社会语言学因素，班图语系是班图语使用世界中最多样化的地区。研究基于179种西北班图语言的类型学分类，聚焦于语义一致性及其在性别标记侵蚀中的作用。此外，我们对样本中性别系统侵蚀最严重的17种语言的方言学和人口史进行了深入分析。用以解释这些高度侵蚀的系统的社会历史因素被转化为一系列解释变量，我们利用这些变量对179种语言样本进行了广泛的定量分析。这些变量包括人口规模、经纬度、与中非雨林的关系以及与乌班吉/中苏丹语系的边界。所有这些指标均具有相关性，其中人口规模和与乌班吉/中苏丹语系的边界是解释性别重构分布的最稳健因素。我们得出结论，针对语言和区域特定生态量身定制的精细变量设计对于定量社会语言学类型学的发展至关重要。这些补充材料包括用于本研究的相关代码和数据，以及伴随的分析图表和详细资料。