Marc Allassonnière-Tang
Biographic Data
| ID | 1453515 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Marc Allassonnière-Tang |
| GIVEN NAMES | Marc |
| FAMILY NAME | Allassonnière-Tang |
| SIGNATURE | ALLASSONNIÈRE-TANG M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9057-642X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 22 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The evolution of gender and number agreement in the noun phrase
We test the dependency relations between gender and number posited by Greenberg’s Universal 36 by focusing on patterns of gender and number agreement in the noun phrase from an evolutionary perspective. To do so, we use data from Grambank, the largest existing database of morphosyntactic structures in the world’s languages. Based on data from 1,608 languages worldwide, we use a Reverse Jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo method to investigate the order…
Internal order and areal patterns in South Asian numerals
The linguistic diversity present in South Asia stems from its historical mix of cultures, as well as its heterogeneous topography. This diversity can be observed in numeral systems, which play an important role in cognitive and cultural history. We provide the first typological overview of numeral systems in South Asia, presenting a database of 122 languages – mostly Austroasiatic, Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, and Tibeto-Burman, with a majority of data…
The phonology of letter shapes
The visual shapes of letters, contrary to the phonemes of spoken languages, lack a unified description. • With a gamified approach, we crowdsourced thousands of letter descriptions. • 43 scripts’ letters can be completely described as sets of binary features. • Compared to phonemes, letters require more such features for a complete description. • These features are also less informative in letters than in phonemes. Differentiating letter shapes a…
Gendered and Gender-Neutral Naming Practices in Mandarin Chinese
This study investigates gender-specific names, as well as gender-neutral names in Mandarin Chinese, and explores their naming strategies from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives. Synchronically, we examined the 100 most frequently used names for girls, boys, and gender-neutral names, using data from the full population of Taiwan ( Ministry of the Interior of Taiwan, 2018 ). We analyzed the frequency of each character in accordance with me…
Early humans out of Africa had only base-initial numerals
The vast majority of languages have numerals involving multiplication. Cross-linguistically, a numeral that involves a multiplier and a numeral base can be base-final, e.g., three hundred [three × hundred] in English, or base-initial, e.g., ikie ita [hundred × three] in Ibibio (Niger-Congo). A worldwide survey of 4099 languages reveals that 39% of the languages are base-initial, 48% are base-final, 4% use both orders, and 8% are without numeral b…
The evolutionary dynamics of grammatical gender in Torricelli languages
Grammatical gender in New Guinea is an often neglected area in typological research, even though it is extremely diverse. For example, in New Guinea, some languages have grammatical gender systems with two sex-based categories, more than four gender-indexing targets, and no gender marking on nouns, while some languages have grammatical gender systems with much more categories, which are only marginally sex-based. This paper infers the processes o…
‘Reflexemes’ – a first cross-linguistic insight into how and why reflexive constructions encode emotions
This article presents the first study on reflexive expressions having lexicalized an emotional meaning, as in the English example enjoy oneself . Such lexicalized forms, which we call ‘reflexemes’, occur in a number of genetically unrelated languages worldwide. Here we interrogate the cross-linguistic distribution and semantics of reflexemes, based on a sample of 58 languages from 6 genetic groups throughout Europe, Australia, and Asia. Reflexeme…
The meaning of morphomes
Romance stem alternations have been argued to represent exclusively morphological objects (or “morphomes”) independent from semantic and syntactic categories. This conclusion has been based on feature-value analyses of the inflected forms, and definitions of natural classes that are theoretically driven and about which no consensus exists. Individual examples of morphomes are thus frequently challenged, while their autonomously morphological natu…
Revisiting the automatic prediction of lexical errors in Mandarin
Speech errors provide cues for explaining the process of word retrieval. For example, speech errors are less likely to occur with high-frequency words since these words already receive a high level of activation. The current analysis further develops existing findings in two ways. First, instead of considering the overall frequency of the words in the entire corpora, we consider the gap in frequency between sequential pairs of words. We hypothesi…
Qu’est-ce qu’une femme ?
Qu’est-ce qu’une femme
Why we need a gradient approach to word order
This article argues for a gradient approach to word order, which treats word order preferences, both within and across languages, as a continuous variable. Word order variability should be regarded as a basic assumption, rather than as something exceptional. Although this approach follows naturally from the emergentist usage-based view of language, we argue that it can be beneficial for all frameworks and linguistic domains, including language ac…
The noncausal/causal alternation and genealogical affiliation
The noncausal/causal alternation is the pairing of two verb forms that refer to the same core event but differ in the absence vs. presence of a causer for this event (e.g. rise vs. raise, open (intr.) vs. open (tr.), die vs. kill). Languages differ in their overall preferences among the possible strategies for coding this alternation. This study uses machine-learning methods (clustering and tree-based computational classifiers) to investigate the…
The noncausal/causal alternation and genealogical affiliation
The noncausal/causal alternation is the pairing of two verb forms that refer to the same core event but differ in the absence vs. presence of a causer for this event (e.g. rise vs. raise, open (intr.) vs. open (tr.), die vs. kill). Languages differ in their overall preferences among the possible strategies for coding this alternation. This study uses machine-learning methods (clustering and tree-based computational classifiers) to investigate the…
Operation LiLi
Less-resourced languages are usually left out of phonetic studies based on large corpora. We contribute to the recent efforts to fill this gap by assessing how to use open-access, crowd-sourced audio data from Lingua Libre for phonetic research. Lingua Libre is a participative linguistic library developed by Wikimedia France in 2015. It contains more than 670k recordings in approximately 150 languages across nearly 740 speakers. As a proof of con…
Defining numeral classifiers and identifying classifier languages of the world
This paper presents a precise definition of numeral classifiers, steps to identify a numeral classifier language, and a database of 3,338 languages, of which 723 languages have been identified as having a numeral classifier system. The database, named World Atlas of Classifier Languages (WACL), has been systematically constructed over the last 10 years via a manual survey of relevant literature and also an automatic scan of digitized grammars fol…
Expansion by migration and diffusion by contact is a source to the global diversity of linguistic nominal categorization systems
Languages of diverse structures and different families tend to share common patterns if they are spoken in geographic proximity. This convergence is often explained by horizontal diffusibility, which is typically ascribed to language contact. In such a scenario, speakers of two or more languages interact and influence each other’s languages, and in this interaction, more grammaticalized features tend to be more resistant to diffusion compared to …
What conditions tone paradigms in Yukuna
Yukuna is an understudied Arawak language of North-West Amazonia with a privative tonal system. In this system, roots are underlyingly specified for tone, whilst affixes are toneless. However, affixation interacts with tone, leading to many variations in surface tonal patterns. This paper puts forth a qualitative analysis of Yukuna’s tonal system, and provides data-driven evidence in favor of this analysis using machine learning methods. More pre…
An empirical study on the contribution of formal and semantic features to the grammatical gender of nouns
This study conducts an experimental evaluation of two hypotheses about the contributions of formal and semantic features to the grammatical gender assignment of nouns. One of the hypotheses (Corbett and Fraser 2000) claims that semantic features dominate formal ones. The other hypothesis, formulated within the optimal gender assignment theory (Rice 2006), states that form and semantics contribute equally. Both hypotheses claim that the combinatio…
The Diversity of Classifier Inventory in Mandarin Dialects
Our study compares Standard Mandarin (the Beijing dialect used in spoken and written registers) with the Mandarin dialect of Baoding (one of the Mandarin dialects belonging to the Jì-lŭ Mandarin group, Hebei-Shandong). Standard Mandarin and Baoding are geographically and phylogenetically closely related, but they differ in terms of their classifier system, as Standard Mandarin resorts to a wide array of sortal classifiers whereas Baoding only use…
Numeral base, numeral classifier, and noun
Greenberg ( 1990a : 292) suggests that classifiers ( clf ) and numeral bases tend to harmonize in word order, i.e. a numeral (Num) with a base-final [ n base ] order appears in a clf -final [Num clf ] order, e.g. in Mandarin Chinese, san1-bai3 (three hundred) ‘300’ and san1 zhi1 gou3 (three clf animal dog) ‘three dogs’, and a base-initial [ base n ] Num appears in a clf -initial [ clf Num] order, e.g. in Kilivila (Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Ocean…
The evolutionary trends of grammatical gender in Indo-Aryan languages
This paper infers the processes of development and change of grammatical gender in Indo-Aryan languages using phylogenetic comparative methods. 48 Indo-Aryan languages are coded based on 44 presence-absence features relating to gender marking on the verbs, adjectives, personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, and possessive pronouns. A Bayesian Reverse Jump Hyper Prior analysis, which infers the evolutionary dynamics of changes between feature v…
Why we need a gradient approach to word order
This article argues for a gradient approach to word order, which treats word order preferences, both within and across languages, as a continuous variable. Word order variability should be regarded as a basic assumption, rather than as something exceptional. Although this approach follows naturally from the emergentist usage-based view of language, we argue that it can be beneficial for all frameworks and linguistic domains, including language ac…
Operation LiLi
Less-resourced languages are usually left out of phonetic studies based on large corpora. We contribute to the recent efforts to fill this gap by assessing how to use open-access, crowd-sourced audio data from Lingua Libre for phonetic research. Lingua Libre is a participative linguistic library developed by Wikimedia France in 2015. It contains more than 670k recordings in approximately 150 languages across nearly 740 speakers. As a proof of con…
Defining numeral classifiers and identifying classifier languages of the world
This paper presents a precise definition of numeral classifiers, steps to identify a numeral classifier language, and a database of 3,338 languages, of which 723 languages have been identified as having a numeral classifier system. The database, named World Atlas of Classifier Languages (WACL), has been systematically constructed over the last 10 years via a manual survey of relevant literature and also an automatic scan of digitized grammars fol…
Numeral base, numeral classifier, and noun
Greenberg ( 1990a : 292) suggests that classifiers ( clf ) and numeral bases tend to harmonize in word order, i.e. a numeral (Num) with a base-final [ n base ] order appears in a clf -final [Num clf ] order, e.g. in Mandarin Chinese, san1-bai3 (three hundred) ‘300’ and san1 zhi1 gou3 (three clf animal dog) ‘three dogs’, and a base-initial [ base n ] Num appears in a clf -initial [ clf Num] order, e.g. in Kilivila (Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Ocean…
The evolutionary trends of grammatical gender in Indo-Aryan languages
This paper infers the processes of development and change of grammatical gender in Indo-Aryan languages using phylogenetic comparative methods. 48 Indo-Aryan languages are coded based on 44 presence-absence features relating to gender marking on the verbs, adjectives, personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, and possessive pronouns. A Bayesian Reverse Jump Hyper Prior analysis, which infers the evolutionary dynamics of changes between feature v…
Expansion by migration and diffusion by contact is a source to the global diversity of linguistic nominal categorization systems
Languages of diverse structures and different families tend to share common patterns if they are spoken in geographic proximity. This convergence is often explained by horizontal diffusibility, which is typically ascribed to language contact. In such a scenario, speakers of two or more languages interact and influence each other’s languages, and in this interaction, more grammaticalized features tend to be more resistant to diffusion compared to …
What conditions tone paradigms in Yukuna
Yukuna is an understudied Arawak language of North-West Amazonia with a privative tonal system. In this system, roots are underlyingly specified for tone, whilst affixes are toneless. However, affixation interacts with tone, leading to many variations in surface tonal patterns. This paper puts forth a qualitative analysis of Yukuna’s tonal system, and provides data-driven evidence in favor of this analysis using machine learning methods. More pre…
An empirical study on the contribution of formal and semantic features to the grammatical gender of nouns
This study conducts an experimental evaluation of two hypotheses about the contributions of formal and semantic features to the grammatical gender assignment of nouns. One of the hypotheses (Corbett and Fraser 2000) claims that semantic features dominate formal ones. The other hypothesis, formulated within the optimal gender assignment theory (Rice 2006), states that form and semantics contribute equally. Both hypotheses claim that the combinatio…
The Diversity of Classifier Inventory in Mandarin Dialects
Our study compares Standard Mandarin (the Beijing dialect used in spoken and written registers) with the Mandarin dialect of Baoding (one of the Mandarin dialects belonging to the Jì-lŭ Mandarin group, Hebei-Shandong). Standard Mandarin and Baoding are geographically and phylogenetically closely related, but they differ in terms of their classifier system, as Standard Mandarin resorts to a wide array of sortal classifiers whereas Baoding only use…
The noncausal/causal alternation and genealogical affiliation
The noncausal/causal alternation is the pairing of two verb forms that refer to the same core event but differ in the absence vs. presence of a causer for this event (e.g. rise vs. raise, open (intr.) vs. open (tr.), die vs. kill). Languages differ in their overall preferences among the possible strategies for coding this alternation. This study uses machine-learning methods (clustering and tree-based computational classifiers) to investigate the…
The noncausal/causal alternation and genealogical affiliation
The noncausal/causal alternation is the pairing of two verb forms that refer to the same core event but differ in the absence vs. presence of a causer for this event (e.g. rise vs. raise, open (intr.) vs. open (tr.), die vs. kill). Languages differ in their overall preferences among the possible strategies for coding this alternation. This study uses machine-learning methods (clustering and tree-based computational classifiers) to investigate the…
Operation LiLi
Less-resourced languages are usually left out of phonetic studies based on large corpora. We contribute to the recent efforts to fill this gap by assessing how to use open-access, crowd-sourced audio data from Lingua Libre for phonetic research. Lingua Libre is a participative linguistic library developed by Wikimedia France in 2015. It contains more than 670k recordings in approximately 150 languages across nearly 740 speakers. As a proof of con…
Defining numeral classifiers and identifying classifier languages of the world
This paper presents a precise definition of numeral classifiers, steps to identify a numeral classifier language, and a database of 3,338 languages, of which 723 languages have been identified as having a numeral classifier system. The database, named World Atlas of Classifier Languages (WACL), has been systematically constructed over the last 10 years via a manual survey of relevant literature and also an automatic scan of digitized grammars fol…
Qu’est-ce qu’une femme ?
Qu’est-ce qu’une femme
Why we need a gradient approach to word order
This article argues for a gradient approach to word order, which treats word order preferences, both within and across languages, as a continuous variable. Word order variability should be regarded as a basic assumption, rather than as something exceptional. Although this approach follows naturally from the emergentist usage-based view of language, we argue that it can be beneficial for all frameworks and linguistic domains, including language ac…
Early humans out of Africa had only base-initial numerals
The vast majority of languages have numerals involving multiplication. Cross-linguistically, a numeral that involves a multiplier and a numeral base can be base-final, e.g., three hundred [three × hundred] in English, or base-initial, e.g., ikie ita [hundred × three] in Ibibio (Niger-Congo). A worldwide survey of 4099 languages reveals that 39% of the languages are base-initial, 48% are base-final, 4% use both orders, and 8% are without numeral b…
The evolutionary dynamics of grammatical gender in Torricelli languages
Grammatical gender in New Guinea is an often neglected area in typological research, even though it is extremely diverse. For example, in New Guinea, some languages have grammatical gender systems with two sex-based categories, more than four gender-indexing targets, and no gender marking on nouns, while some languages have grammatical gender systems with much more categories, which are only marginally sex-based. This paper infers the processes o…
‘Reflexemes’ – a first cross-linguistic insight into how and why reflexive constructions encode emotions
This article presents the first study on reflexive expressions having lexicalized an emotional meaning, as in the English example enjoy oneself . Such lexicalized forms, which we call ‘reflexemes’, occur in a number of genetically unrelated languages worldwide. Here we interrogate the cross-linguistic distribution and semantics of reflexemes, based on a sample of 58 languages from 6 genetic groups throughout Europe, Australia, and Asia. Reflexeme…
The meaning of morphomes
Romance stem alternations have been argued to represent exclusively morphological objects (or “morphomes”) independent from semantic and syntactic categories. This conclusion has been based on feature-value analyses of the inflected forms, and definitions of natural classes that are theoretically driven and about which no consensus exists. Individual examples of morphomes are thus frequently challenged, while their autonomously morphological natu…
Revisiting the automatic prediction of lexical errors in Mandarin
Speech errors provide cues for explaining the process of word retrieval. For example, speech errors are less likely to occur with high-frequency words since these words already receive a high level of activation. The current analysis further develops existing findings in two ways. First, instead of considering the overall frequency of the words in the entire corpora, we consider the gap in frequency between sequential pairs of words. We hypothesi…
Internal order and areal patterns in South Asian numerals
The linguistic diversity present in South Asia stems from its historical mix of cultures, as well as its heterogeneous topography. This diversity can be observed in numeral systems, which play an important role in cognitive and cultural history. We provide the first typological overview of numeral systems in South Asia, presenting a database of 122 languages – mostly Austroasiatic, Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, and Tibeto-Burman, with a majority of data…
The phonology of letter shapes
The visual shapes of letters, contrary to the phonemes of spoken languages, lack a unified description. • With a gamified approach, we crowdsourced thousands of letter descriptions. • 43 scripts’ letters can be completely described as sets of binary features. • Compared to phonemes, letters require more such features for a complete description. • These features are also less informative in letters than in phonemes. Differentiating letter shapes a…
Gendered and Gender-Neutral Naming Practices in Mandarin Chinese
This study investigates gender-specific names, as well as gender-neutral names in Mandarin Chinese, and explores their naming strategies from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives. Synchronically, we examined the 100 most frequently used names for girls, boys, and gender-neutral names, using data from the full population of Taiwan ( Ministry of the Interior of Taiwan, 2018 ). We analyzed the frequency of each character in accordance with me…
The evolution of gender and number agreement in the noun phrase
We test the dependency relations between gender and number posited by Greenberg’s Universal 36 by focusing on patterns of gender and number agreement in the noun phrase from an evolutionary perspective. To do so, we use data from Grambank, the largest existing database of morphosyntactic structures in the world’s languages. Based on data from 1,608 languages worldwide, we use a Reverse Jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo method to investigate the order…
Linguistics (18 works) · Computer Science (15 works) · Language and cultural evolution (14 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Artificial Intelligence (12 works) · Natural language processing (11 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (10 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Mathematics (6 works) · Natural Language Processing Techniques (6 works)