% pubman genre = article
@article{item_3652464,
title = {{Loss of colexification of {\textquotesingle}hand{\textquotesingle} and {\textquotesingle}five{\textquotesingle} in Austronesian languages}},
author = {Barlow, Russell},
language = {eng},
issn = {1527-9421},
doi = {10.1353/ol.2025.a960927},
year = {2025},
date = {2025-06},
abstract = {{Many Austronesian languages employ similar words for the concepts {\textquotesingle}hand{\textquotesingle} and {\textquotesingle}five{\textquotesingle}. Indeed, (partial) colexification of these two meanings is generally reconstructed back to Proto-Austronesian. However, a number of Austronesian languages do not colexify {\textquotesingle}hand{\textquotesingle} and {\textquotesingle}five{\textquotesingle}, raising the question of what drives such lexical splits. Based on a sample of 812 Austronesian languages, I identify 465 languages (57 percent) as not exhibiting colexification of {\textquotesingle}hand{\textquotesingle} and {\textquotesingle}five{\textquotesingle}. I find that terms for {\textquotesingle}hand{\textquotesingle} are often subject to replacement, whereas terms for {\textquotesingle}five{\textquotesingle} are generally stable throughout the family. The replacement of {\textquotesingle}five{\textquotesingle} has occurred primarily in languages in which the inherited decimal counting system has been lost and the numerals {\textquotesingle}six{\textquotesingle} through {\textquotesingle}nine{\textquotesingle} are no longer unanalyzable monomorphemic words. This suggests that lower numerals like {\textquotesingle}five{\textquotesingle} are less likely to be stable lexical items when they do not lie somewhere in the middle of a series of underived number terms.}},
journal = {{Oceanic Linguistics}},
volume = {64},
number = {1},
pages = {145--200},
}