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A quantitative approach to sociotopography in Austronesian languages

Abstract Absolute spatial orientation systems are pervasive and diverse among Austronesian languages, and decades of research has suggested that such systems are motivated at least in part by environmental and cultural factors. In this paper, we take a quantitative approach to the study of orientation systems by presenting the results of an exploratory multifactorial analysis of spatial orientation systems across 131 Austronesian languages, representing nearly all available data on orientation systems for the family. We analyze these data using multinomial logistic regression to uncover correlations between orientation type and four predictor variables representing cultural and environmental factors: geographic distribution, economy, geography (proximity to the sea), and ruggedness of terrain. Our model suggests that while not entirely predictive of the type of orientation system, the factors geography and economy alone account for much of the variation among spatial orientation systems in our sample, supporting a “weak” form of the Sociotopographic Model (Palmer, Bill, Jonathon Lum, Jonathan Schlossberg & Alice Gaby. 2017. How does the environment shape spatial language? Evidence for sociotopography. Linguistic Typology 21(3). 457–491). Additionally, this study demonstrates the potential of quantitative analytical methods for exploring the relationship between culture, environment, and spatial orientation systems.