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 of development and change of grammatical gender in Torricelli languages from two perspectives. First, it synthesizes the available data in the existing literature and hypothesizes the evolutionary pathway of gender systems in Torricelli languages. Second, it conducts an analysis with phylogenetic comparative methods to provide a quantitative assessment of the evolutionary possibilities for gender systems in Torricelli languages.