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Article published In: Studies in Language
Vol. 49:3 (2025) ► pp.712–756

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Contact effects in nominal number systems

A worldwide survey

ORCiD logo with link | Aix-Marseille Univ., CNRS LPL
 | University of Helsinki
Published online: 29 July 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.24019.dig
Abstract
This paper is a comparative study of contact effects in nominal number systems, based on a sample of 49 pairs of languages in contact and focusing on pattern borrowing. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, we find that plural marking and number marking on nouns are the features most likely to display similar encodings across languages in contact. We also show that, though less frequent globally, duals are particularly sensitive to contact effects. The study confirms that inherent inflections are more likely to show contact effects than contextual inflections. It also shows that certain number distinctions are prone to contact-induced convergence regardless of their crosslinguistic frequency.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Method
    • 2.1Sampling method
    • 2.2Coding design for nominal number systems
    • 2.3Estimating convergences between number systems in contact
      • 2.3.1Number Similarity Scores
      • 2.3.2Disentangling contact from retention
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Convergence scores for the number systems of the sampled Focus languages
    • 3.2What prompts convergence and stability in the dataset
    • 3.3Convergence and stability in number systems: Some illustrations
      • 3.3.1Contact effects in plural and nominal marking
      • 3.3.2Contact effects in the dual and minor number values
      • 3.3.3Stability in number marking
  • 4.Summary and concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
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