Language Variation and Change (2024), 36, 123–147

doi:10.1017/S0954394524000085

Quantifying transitivity: Uncovering relations of

gender and power
Jessi Elana Aaron
Spanish and Portuguese Studies, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
Email: [email protected]

Abstract
Transitivity has come to be recognized as a promising heuristic tool for uncovering implicit
ideologies in a wide range of areas. Though it has been used to explore worldviews in
several kinds of discourse, nearly all have relied solely on qualitative analyses. Statistical
analysis can offer a fuller understanding of past societies. This study applies a gradient,
discourse-based understanding of transitivity, which lends itself nicely to corpus-based
analysis, to data from 16th-century New Spain. In colonial Mexico, female behaviors
were often strictly circumscribed. This paper uses a quantitative, corpus-based frame-
work to examine how gender inequality is reflected in patterns of transitivity. It is found
that female subjects are significantly associated with imperfective contexts, nonfinite con-
structions, akinesis, and low affectedness of the object—all markers of lower transitivity.
Thus, for the most part, in these data, women are represented as inactive, inert, and
powerless.

Keywords: transitivity; gender; representation; historical; Spanish

It is no secret that patterns in language can reveal attitudes and perceptions that oth-
erwise remain unexpressed. The incorporation of speakers’ attitudes into grammatical
patterns is so commonplace, in fact, that such attitudes sometimes become codified as
a part of the grammar through a process known as subjectification (Traugott, 1995).
Other times, frequently cooccurring collocates can reveal speakers’ attitudes toward
certain social groups (e.g., Aaron, 2010; Mautner, 2007). While most such studies have
focused on contemporary society, such patterns can also open unique windows to the
past. In taking a historical linguistic approach to social analysis, we are no longer
dependent upon the writers of the past to address or represent social inequalities
explicitly in their work; the implicit biases are revealed through more subtle choices.
One such subtlety is found in patterns of transitivity. Not easily analyzable via anecdo-
tal observation, transitivity can offer us clues about how referents’ roles are construed
within a text. In the next section, I will define transitivity as it is used here.

© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms
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 124 Jessi Elana Aaron

Transitivity
This paper applies Hopper and Thompson’s (1980) multifaceted definition of
transitivity to examine representations of men and women in 16th-century New Spain
(modern-day Mexico). Here, transitivity is understood, in basic terms, as “a matter of
carrying-over or transferring an action from one participant to another” (Hopper &
Thompson, 1980:253). This definition reflects the original meaning of the term and
the way it was used by Greek grammarians such as Apolonius Dyscolus (see Martínez
Vázquez, 1998). This contrasts with the dichotomous view of transitivity, which has
often been understood as a syntactic phenomenon, determined most simply by a verb’s
ability to take a direct object (Alarcos Llorach, 1994:349), such that build (which can
take a direct object) would generally be transitive, while arrive (which cannot take a
direct object) would be intransitive. However, Thompson and Hopper (2001:28) argued
that “transitivity is composite and […] a matter of the grammar of the entire clause,
rather than just the relationship between a verb and its object.” For an overview of
much of the research on transitivity, see Bilous (2012).
In their 1980 article, Hopper and Thompson first introduced their scale of transi-
tivity, which consists of 10 dimensions meant to gauge one facet of the transferal of
action.

(1) Participants: The transferal of action requires at least two participants, so

contexts with two or three participants are considered high in this category.
(2) Aspect: An action presented as completed (e.g., perfective) has been trans-
ferred more effectively than an incomplete action (e.g., imperfective).
(3) Kinesis: Actions that involve physical movement are more effectively trans-
mitted than those that do not.
(4) Punctuality: When the inception and the completion of an event or action
are indistinguishable, the clause is considered punctual, which indicates more
effective transmission of the action.
(5) Volitionality: A clause is considered to be high in volitionality if the subject is
presented as acting intentionally.
(6) Mood: Actions that have occurred in the real world (realis) and not in a non-
real world (irrealis) show more effective action transferal.
(7) Agency: The higher in potency the agent of an action, the more effective the
transmission of the action.
(8) Object affectedness: The more affected the patient of an action, the more
effective the transmission of the action.
(9) Affirmation: If an action is affirmed, its transmission is more effective than if
it is negated.
(10) Object individuation: Individuation—the distinctness of the object from the
subject, as well as from its own background—is measured by several param-
eters (Table 1). The greater the object individuation, the more effective the
transmission of the action.

This scale has been taken up by many researchers interested in usage-based mod-
els of language (García-Miguel, 2023). One testament to the centrality and utility of
this model for Spanish is its prominence in the studies gathered in Clements and

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 Language Variation and Change 125
Table 1. Characteristics of individuation and non-individuation (from Hopper & Thompson 1980:253)

Individuated Non-individuated
Proper Common
Human Inanimate
Concrete Abstract
Singular Plural
Count Mass
Referential, definite Non-referential

Yoon’s (2005) volume, Functional approaches to Spanish syntax: Lexical semantics,

discourse and transitivity. These studies, primarily qualitative, show the wide reach
this approach to transitivity can have, from understanding word order to explaining
causatives. Another is Vázquez Rozas and García-Miguel’s (2006) detailed quantita-
tive study of the correlation between subjectivity and transitivity in different discourse
genres. To my knowledge, however, Hopper and Thompson’s (1980) model has yet to
be applied quantitatively to studies of sociolinguistic variation.

Research questions
This paper applies this composite definition of transitivity to representations of women
and men in 16th-century New Spain. Though differences found are described as “gen-
der” differences, it should be noted that a binary, sex-based system of categorization
of both referents and writers is used. This binary approach reflects both the way gen-
der was understood at the time and place the analyzed texts were produced and the
limitations of working with historical data, which often do not provide nuanced infor-
mation regarding gender identity. I use the term “gender” and not “sex” throughout this
paper because what is of interest here is the social construction—as revealed through
language use—of the (sex-based) gender categories of the time.
Following DuBois (1987), three basic syntactic roles are distinguished: A (subject
of a verb with an object complement), S (subject of a verb with no object comple-
ment), and O (object, further divided into direct object [DO] and indirect object
[IO]). This tripartite distinction “neutralizes the bias implicit in the traditional received
categories and opens the way for a more effective investigation of grammatical rela-
tions” (DuBois, 1987:807). It is important to note that here these labels are syntactic in
nature, and A and O should not be confused with the semantic labels of “agent” and
“patient,” respectively, though in many contexts they may coincide with these semantic
roles.
Within this framework, it is assumed that higher transitivity (that is, more successful
transmission of the action) is associated with a greater power difference between A
and O. Therefore, it is argued that a stronger association of one gender with A in high-
transitivity contexts would reveal gender-based differences in the authors’ perceived
notions of social power. The same is true for any gender bias in O, but here the perceived
power differential would be in the opposite direction. To test this hypothesis, this paper
asks the following questions:

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 126 Jessi Elana Aaron

(1) Using Hopper and Thompson’s (1980) definition of transitivity, are high-
transitivity contexts associated with female or male participants in 16th-
century texts from New Spain?
(a) How often does each gender appear as an A or S, and how often as an O?
(b) To what extent do A and S of each gender occur in constructions
of high transitivity?
(2) Does the gender of the writer affect transitivity patterns in 16th-century texts
from New Spain?

It is found that women—especially in texts produced by males—are consistently

and significantly associated with the DO role in higher-transitivity contexts, while they
tend to appear as A or S mainly in lower-transitivity contexts. These results provide
linguistic evidence for gender differences in the representation of women and men in
early colonial Mexican texts.

Gender in New Spain

In New Spain, patriarchalism “was a powerful and persuasive ideology in society at
large,” and served as the “dominant metaphor for a variety of hierarchies … that were
organized upon the principles of patrons and clients and cut across social and ethnic
boundaries” (Seed, 1988:7). These expectations were, nevertheless, mediated by social
class and race, allowing certain women more agency than others (Gonzalbo, 1985:12).
As Aaron (2004) noted, “women were expected to be submissive to their husbands and
superiors (Gonzalbo, 1985:12), silent (Chinchilla, 1996), secluded (Arenal & Schlau,
1989:1), and inactive in public life and public spaces (Chinchilla, 1996:37; Gonzalbo
1985:13)” (602). In the home life of colonial Spanish America, “both the objects in
the home and the women themselves belonged to the men” (Arenal & Schlau, 1989:3).
Despite such pressures, women at all levels of society still managed to be active in many
areas of public life, including religion, commerce, and recreation (Gonzalbo, 1985:13-
14), though not without social censure (Moraña, 1996:7-8).
Quantitative linguistic exploration of such gender relations in Spanish is still scarce.
Nonetheless, Torres Cacoullos (2018), in a quantitative study of gender differences in
subject expression in 13th- to 16th-century Spanish, found that female subjects were
less frequent and more deictically distant than their male counterparts. The unexpect-
edness of the female subject meant a greater rate of expression for the female personal
pronoun ella ‘she,’ reflecting the socio-pragmatic expectations of the era.

Transitivity and worldview

Many usage-based scholars examining transitivity have been drawn to the sociopoliti-
cal implications of multifaceted definitions of transitivity, which have come to be recog-
nized as a promising heuristic for uncovering implicit ideologies. As Matu (2008:201)
explained, “transitivity shows how speakers encode in language their mental picture
of reality and how they account for their experience of the world around them.” This
means that speakers’ worldview—a view they will rarely articulate explicitly—may
be accessed in part through their application of transitivity patterns in language use.

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 Language Variation and Change 127

As such, Thompson (2008:17) argued that transitivity analysis “is one of the most
effective ways of exploring the ideological assumptions that inform and are construed
by the texts” (see also Lee, 2016:466). Indeed, Fowler (1991:70) called transitivity an
“essential tool in the analysis of representation.” Several previous corpus-based studies
have recognized the utility of transitivity in uncovering implicit power relations (e.g.,
Hubbard, 1999; Ji & Shen, 2004; Page, 2003; Ryder, 1999; Teo, 2000; Wareing, 1994).
However, apart from Karimi, Lukin, Rotha Moore, Walczak, and Butow (2018), all such
studies have relied solely on qualitative analyses. Because ideological transmission is
“most effective when its workings are least visible” (Fairclough, 2001:71), statistical
analysis can offer us a fuller understanding of past societies (Diller & Khanittanan,
2002:48; Franzosi, 2010) and bygone social structures.
Hopper and Thompson’s (1980) discourse-based yet structural understanding of
transitivity lends itself nicely to quantitative corpus-based analysis (see, for instance,
Oropeza Escobar, 2011). These authors mentioned the following components of tran-
sitivity: number of participants, kinesis, aspect, punctuality, volitionality, affirmation,
mood, agency, object affectedness, and object individuation. As such, (2) would be
more transitive, while (1) would be less transitive, though both meet the traditional
definition of “transitive” constructions, given that (2) is high in kinesis, volitionality,
and object affectedness, while (1) is not. Nonetheless, (1) is more transitive than (2) in
terms of aspect and punctuality. Moreover, both examples have two participants, realis
mood, and affirmative polarity.

(1) Y passado el rio que dizen de Grijalva, de aquella parte de Guaçacualco, çerca
de duzientas leguas desta çibdad de Tenustitan, halló los yndios de guerra, que
no estan del todo subjettos al domjnjo de vuestra majestad.
‘And having passed the river that they call Grijalva, in that part of Guaçacualco,
close to two hundred leagues from this city of Tenustitan, he found the Indians
of war, not all of whom are subjects of Your Majesty’s dominion.’
(DLNE, doc. 1, 1525; see Company Company, 1994)
(2) Y a los yndios que de aca yban con los christianos diz que guardaron para comer,
y a los christianos hechaban en la laguna
‘And the Indians who were travelling from here with the Christians, it’s said
they kept [them] to eat [them], and they threw the Christians into the lagoon’
(DLNE, doc. 1, 1525)

Data and methods

Corpus
This study examines data from the 16th century from Documentos lingüísticos de la
Nueva España: Altiplano central (Company Company, 1994; henceforth DLNE). The
section of the corpus used here includes 78 written documents dating from 1535 to
1585 (word count = 90,527). These documents, compiled based on their approxima-
tion to the spoken language of the time, “are colloquial in nature” and show “a more
fluid syntax” (Company Company, 1994:5). The DLNE contains four principal types of
documents: letters, court testimonies, inventories and wills, and petitions and reports.

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 128 Jessi Elana Aaron

The testimonies are primarily transcriptions of oral testimonies from illiterate

citizens. Thus, this corpus is likely to be more representative of the diversity of Mexican
colonial society as a whole than traditional literary corpora. However, by having
ultimate control over the written product, male transcribers still maintained their
hegemony, and through their language we find, as Schlau (1996:183) stated, “as much
revealed about social norms […] as in religious papers and dogma.” In colonial Mexico,
female and non-white spaces were often strictly circumscribed, though Osowski (2010)
noted that the formation of new cultural practices in the nascent society also offered
spaces for the creative assertion of agency.

Data extraction
This paper quantitatively examines the transitivity patterns associated with third-
person references to women and men in 16th-century texts in the DLNE. Using a
combination of keyword searches and manual reading, all third-person female refer-
ents were extracted from the corpus, resulting in 262 examples taken from 18 of the
78 documents (the others included no female referents). This was then matched with
male referents, with a maximum of 10 examples taken from each document, until a
comparable amount (n = 246) was found. The extraction of male referents generally
followed the document order in the corpus, which required about 8,385 words of the
90,527-word corpus and involved 26 of the 78 documents (53,968 words).1

Coding
Relevant contexts are analyzed in terms of Hopper and Thompson’s (1980) transitiv-
ity, including number of participants (operationalized as grammatical role), kinesis,
aspect, mood, punctuality, volitionality, affirmation, object individuation, and object
affectedness. I did not attempt to code for agency directly. Given the historical and
cultural distance between 16th-century inhabitants of New Spain and myself, I chose
to avoid any measure of agency that would rely on my own (culturally specific) per-
ceptions of power and distance. Nonetheless, we may glean some information about
agency patterns through other measures, such as volitionality, grammatical role, and
object affectedness.
In this model and elsewhere, the measures of transitivity are understood as gradient
and not binary. Nonetheless, some of these measures are coded as binary or tripartite
categories to best show the contrast between maximally differing examples; this is not
meant to imply any lack of continuity within the categories themselves. Table 2 shows
all of the factors coded, with examples for each.

Grammatical role. First, to measure the number of participants, all examples were
coded for the syntactic role of the referent. The roles coded included subject of a verb
with an object complement (A), subject of a verb with no object complement (S),
direct object (DO), indirect object (IO), obliques, genitive (or possessive) construc-
tions, and other, which included elements that were not incorporated syntactically
(see Table 2). After this initial coding, subsequent coding was limited to examples
including subjects (S and A, n = 263) and/or objects (DO and IO, n = 133), as these
arguments are most closely related to the verb and thus the most revealing in terms of
transitivity patterns. As García Miguel (1995:97-98) has noted, nouns that occur within

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 Language Variation and Change 129

prepositional phrases (including oblique and genitive constructions) have a less direct
and less central relationship to the main verb than that of syntactic objects.

Kinesis. All tokens with subjects or objects of interest were coded for kinesis.
Occurrences that involved clear movement (e.g., viajar ‘travel’) were coded as high,
while those with limited movement (e.g., escribir ‘write’) were coded as intermediate;
contexts with no inherent movement (e.g., pensar ‘think’) were coded as akinetic.

Aspect. Aspect, coded for subjects and objects, was determined through verbal mor-
phology, such that occurrences in Preterit were coded as perfective, while those in
Imperfect were coded as imperfective. A third morphological category, that of Perfects,
was also coded. However, as Perfects can express both perfective and imperfective
meanings (Detges, 2000), these were included with other forms that were unmarked
for aspect, such as Present and nonfinite constructions. Among subjects, this left 46%
(n = 120/263) of occurrences to be coded as unmarked for aspect, and among objects,
57% (n = 76/133). The shrinking of the data set for aspect, though not ideal, is an
honest reflection of the tense, aspect, and mood (TAM) distribution in the corpus.
The reasons for choosing morphological over semantic marking as a basis for cod-
ing aspect are threefold. First, the main interest is in the contrast between perfective
and imperfective contexts, as completed actions are considered to have the most effec-
tive transmittance of the action (Hopper & Thompson, 1980). Indeed, Hopper and
Thompson (1980:252) contrasted a perfective (or telic) use of eat in I ate it up with the
imperfective (or atelic) I am eating it. Although these authors relied on semantic and
not morphological cues (see also Thompson & Hopper, 2001:35), this is most likely due
to the lack of morphological marking of telicity in English. Fortunately, Spanish differ-
entiates such contexts morphologically. Moreover, as García-Miguel (1995:83) noted,
“the global aspectuality of a predicate is determined by the entire structure of a clause,
and not solely by the lexical properties of its verb or by the grammatical characteris-
tics of the predicate” (translated from Spanish). Given aspectual markers’ theoretical
ability to occur with any Aktionsart, and therefore speakers’ ability to mark any verb as
they choose, the morphological marking of aspect has sometimes been characterized
as “subjective aspect” (García-Miguel, 1995:83, translated from Spanish). Since what is
of interest here is the writers’ contextualized representations of the referents, this kind
of aspect would be most informative for this analysis.
Second, another reason to differentiate between morphological perfectives and
imperfectives when examining transitivity is that these are generally understood to
play a role in foregrounding and backgrounding information, respectively (Hopper,
1977). Perfectivity and imperfectivity, then, would be further associated with higher
versus lower transitivity, respectively, as backgrounded information is generally lower
in focus and thus involves less transfer of energy. Finally, although overlaps and inter-
actions between measures of transitivity are inevitable, the goal here was to include
measures that could at least be differentiated. Had lexical aspect been used to measure
aspect, this coding would have overlapped almost completely with two other measures:
punctuality and kinesis.

Mood. The data were coded for mood as realis, irrealis, or as neither (nonfinite).
Included in irrealis were all subjunctive, conditional, future, and imperative forms.
Realis included all other finite verbs.

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 130 Jessi Elana Aaron

Punctuality. For punctuality, the data were coded dichotomously, as either punctual
or not punctual, using the lexical aspect of the verb.

Volitionality. Volitionality was also coded dichotomously. All examples were coded
as volitional unless the action was one that could not be done voluntarily (e.g., being
hungry, receiving something, having certain innate characteristics) or was not being
done voluntarily (e.g., being mistreated, becoming poor, dying).

Affirmation. Clauses with no negation were coded as affirmative, while those with any
sort of negation were coded as negated.

Object individuation. Object individuation is one of two measures of the O in Hopper

and Thompson’s (1980) model of transitivity, the other being Affectedness of O.
According to these authors, individuation is measured both in terms of its distinct-
ness from the A and from its own background (see Table 1). To operationalize this
measure, the features of number, animacy, and referentiality were primarily used.

Object affectedness. Object affectedness refers to “the degree to which an action is

transferred to a patient” (Hopper & Thompson, 1980:252-253); the greater the effect
on the O, the greater the effectiveness of the A. Here, O affectedness was coded as
low, medium, or high. In ditransitive contexts, whichever role (DO or IO) was rep-
resented by the female or male referent of interest was considered the O. This choice
was made for several reasons, including the variable marking of third-person objects
in colonial Spanish, which were often simply written as l(’), eliminating any formal
distinction, as well as the fluidity between DO and IO afforded by leísmo (the use
of typically IO marking for some—usually male—human DOs), which was common
in 16th-century Spanish. Notably, in highly affected ditransitive contexts, there was
generally little distinction between the (human) IOs and the DOs, which included
inalienable possessions like “fingers” and “virginity.”

Table 2. Examples of the measures coded for quantitative analysis

Factor Example
(Agency) Grammatical role
Ha resçibido de Pero Gallego un plumaje muy rico,
A ‘he has received from Pero Gallego a very rich plumage,’ (DLNE,
Doc. 9)
y su hija quedava en casa,
S
‘and her daughter stayed at home,’ (DLNE, Doc. 20)
este testigo embió a una yndia con una criatura suya a cuestas,
DO ‘this witness sent an Indian woman with a little one behind her,’
(DLNE, Doc. 56)
el dicho Maldonado, que alli estava, oviese tomado a la dicha yndia los
dichos tres pesos,
IO ‘the aforementioned Maldonado, who was there, had taken the three
pesos from the aforementioned Indian woman,’ (DLNE, Doc. 56)
(Continued)

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 Language Variation and Change 131
Table 2. (Continued.)

Factor Example
otro delito hecho en mi cassa y con la dicha mi hija
Oblique ‘other crime committed in my house and with my daughter,’ (DLNE,
Doc. 75)
este testigo conoçia a los padres de la dicha donzella
Genitive ‘this witness knew the parents of said young woman,’ (DLNE, Doc. 53)
este testigo embió a una yndia con una criatura suya a cuestas, hija
deste testigo, con tres pesos,
Other ‘this witness sent an Indian woman with a little one behind her,
daughter of this witness, with three pesos,’ (DLNE, Doc. 56)
Kinesis
Y que si queria religion, podria entrar en un monasterio de monjas,
None ‘and if she wanted religion, she could enter a nun monastery,’ (DLNE,
Doc. 53)
una carta que Gorge de Alvarado escrivjo a Pedro de Alvarado
Medium ‘a letter that Jorge de Alvarado wrote to Pedro de Alvarado,’ (DLNE,
Doc. 4)
la dicha Leonor Alvarez, madre de la dicha Catalina, arrojó a este que
declara una picadera,
High ‘said Leonor Álvarez, mother of the forementioned Catalina, threw a
pecking hammer at the declaring witness,’ (DLNE, Doc. 20)
Aspect
segund esta muger me dixo,
Perfective
‘according to what this woman told me,’ (DLNE, Doc. 7)
estava obligada esta testigo a callar,
Imperfective
‘this witness was obligated to keep quiet,’ (DLNE, Doc. 54)
los que han quedado en la tierra,
Perfect
‘those who have stayed in the land,’ (DLNE, Doc. 13)
la amenazava diziendo que callase,
Other/unmarked
‘he threatened her, telling her to be quiet,’ (DLNE, Doc. 54)
Mood
Y ella bolvio,
Realis
‘and she returned,’ (DLNE, Doc. 56)
Para que ella venga, enbia çien pesos,
Irrealis
‘so that she [can] come, send 100 pesos,’ (DLNE, Doc. 33)
Y la dicha Luisa de Gallegos, acuitandose y llorando, dixo,
Nonfinite ‘and the aforementioned Luisa de Gallegos, lying down and weeping,
said,’ (DLNE, Doc. 55)
Punctuality
la susodicha le respondio que llorava su mala ventura,
Punctual ‘the aforementioned woman responded that she was crying because
of her misadventure,’ (DLNE, Doc. 55)
su hija, que estava mala en la cama,
Non-punctual
‘her daughter, who was sick in bed,’ (DLNE, Doc. 20)
Volitionality
quando ella se yva acostar que hera muy tarde,
Volitional ‘when she was going to lie down because it was very late,’ (DLNE,
Doc. 55)
(Continued)

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 132 Jessi Elana Aaron
Table 2. (Continued.)

Factor Example
entendiendo que ternia neçesidad de comida,
Non-volitional ‘understanding that she would be in need of food,’ (DLNE, Doc. 53)
Affirmation
el deseo que tyene de servjr,
Affirmed
‘the desire he has to serve,’ (DLNE, Doc. 2)
le dixo que no obedesca al licenciado Marcos de Agujlar,
Negated ‘he told him not to obey Lic. Marcos de Aguilar,’ (DLNE, Doc. 4)
Object individuation
Suplico a v. m. dé al señor Ocaño media arroba de muy buen vino,
High ‘I beg you to give Mr. Ocaño half an arroba of very good wine,’ (DLNE,
Doc. 21)
de los que les tenian alli sus vestidos,
Low
‘whose clothing they had there,’ (DLNE, Doc. 17)
Object affectedness
no tiene otro hijo aca,
Low
‘he does not have any other son here,’ (DLNE, Doc. 26)
Suplico a v. m. dé al señor Ocaño media arroba de muy buen vino,
Medium ‘I beg you to give Mr. Ocaño half an arroba of very good wine,’ (DLNE,
Doc. 21)
que tambien açotarian a esta testigo,
High
‘that they would flog this witness as well,’ (DLNE, Doc. 54)

A note on interactions
In light of these multiple factors, it may be tempting to attempt to examine varia-
tion in transitivity through multivariate analysis. However, Hopper and Thompson
(1980:255, 294) noted that these measures interact with each other and are clearly
interrelated. In a quantitative analysis of English, Nicolas (2018-2019:47-55) found
correlations between kinesis and aspect, kinesis and punctuality, kinesis and volition-
ality, kinesis and the affectedness of O, affirmation and mood, mood and affectedness
of O, affirmation and affectedness of O, and volitionality and agency. Indeed, Pollán’s
(2001:66-67) multiple attempts to submit these transitivity measures to multivariate
analysis ultimately failed. Considering this, the present study used Chi-squared tests
to check for statistical significance. While such tests cannot eliminate the interactions
between transitivity measures, they do allow us to look at each on its own, without
mathematical interference in the results from other factors. Nonetheless, we must
always keep in mind that these measures are correlated and can never be considered
independent in the context of transitivity.

Results
In general, females are significantly underrepresented in the corpus (p < .000). By nor-
malizing the frequencies for female and male referents, we find that the ratio of female
to male is 1:10.1, with female referents occurring at a rate of 289.4 per 100,000 words
and males at 2,933.8 per 100,000 words (Table 3).2
Overall, we will see that female referents are less likely to be represented as initiators
of actions that affect an object, and when females occur as A or S, it tends to be in

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 Language Variation and Change 133
Table 3. Raw and relative frequencies of third-person referents in DLNE by gender (p < .000)

N Total words Per 100,000 words

Female referents 262 90,527 289.4
Male referents 246 8,385 2,933.8

clauses with lower transitivity than those of their male counterparts. Of the transitivity
measures included here, significant differences (p < .05) were found in grammatical
role, aspect, mood, affectedness of the object, and kinesis.

Grammatical role
Table 4 and Figure 1 show grammatical role by referent gender. In situations with more
than one participant, female referents are significantly less likely to be As (p = .002)
and more likely to be DOs (p = .004). For instance, in (3), there is a male A, while in
(4), there is a female DO paired with yet another male A.

Table 4. Grammatical role by referent gender (for A, p = .002; DO, p = .004; all others, p > .05)

Subject Subject
(A) (S) DO IO Genitive Oblique Other Total

N % N % N % N % N % N % N % N %
Female 64 24 60 23 45 17 30 11 10 4 44 17 9 3 262 52
Male 91 37 48 20 21 8 37 15 17 7 28 11 4 2 246 48
Total 155 30 108 21 66 13 67 13 27 5 72 14 13 2 508 100

Figure 1. Percentage of grammatical role by referent gender (for A and DO, p < .05; all others, n.s.).

(3) Male A
El virrey desta Nueva España me dio una carta de buestra magestad
‘The viceroy of this New Spain gave me a letter from you’
(DLNE, doc. 24)

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 134 Jessi Elana Aaron

(4) Female DO, male A

Y él le dezia que no hera pecado, y la amenazava diziendo que callase,
que tambien açotarian a esta testigo
‘And he told her that it wasn’t a sin, and he threatened her, telling her to
shut up, that they would beat this witness [her], too’
(DLNE, doc. 54)
Though women are less likely than men to appear as A in two-participant situations
in this corpus, they are just as likely to appear as S in one-participant constructions. It
is here we can take a closer look at transitivity as a representational tool. When women
appear as grammatical subjects—in situations with only one participant or with more
than one—are the contexts in which they act more or less transitive? Given females’
propensity to appear as DO and not as A in this corpus, we would hypothesize that
their roles as grammatical subjects would be less transitive. In Hopper and Thompson’s
terms, then, we would expect lower perfectivity, realis, kinesis, and object affectedness.
This is, indeed, what we find.

Aspect
As Hopper and Thompson (1980:252) explained, in imperfective aspect, the transferal
of an action to the patient “is only partially carried out.” Thus, grammatical subjects in
imperfective contexts—here overwhelmingly female—are less effective in (completing)
their actions than are subjects of perfective actions—here more often male. In Table 5
and Figure 2, which show aspect among subjects by subject gender, we see that women
subjects are significantly more likely to appear in imperfective contexts, as in (5), at
42%, versus 9% for males.3 Male subjects are more likely to appear in all other aspects,
significantly so in the case of Perfect (p = .003) and contexts unmarked for aspect
(p = .016).

(5) Female subject with imperfective aspect

Y preguntandole este testigo que por qué llorava, la susodicha le respondio
que llorava su mala ventura
‘And this [male] witness asking her why she was crying, the abovemen-
tioned women replied que she was crying about her bad luck’
(DLNE, doc. 55)
Table 6 shows the results for aspect according to object gender. Here, again, females
are more likely to occur in imperfective contexts. This could mean that female Os are

Table 5. Aspect among subjects by subject gender (imperfective, p = .000; perfect, p = .003; unmarked,
p = .016; perfective, n.s.)

Perfective Imperfective Perfect Unmarked Total

N % N % N % N % N %
Female 32 25 52 42 5 4 35 28 124 47
Male 47 34 12 9 21 15 59 42 139 53
Total 79 30 64 24 26 10 94 36 263 100

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 Language Variation and Change 135

Figure 2. Percentage of aspect among subjects by subject gender (for imperfective, perfect, and unmarked,
p < .05; perfective, n.s.).

less likely to have energy transferred to them completely. However, given the results
for object affectedness given below (in which female objects are more highly affected),
this is not the most likely explanation. Perhaps the results for aspect, both for subjects
and objects, point toward a backgrounding of women’s experiences, as imperfective
contexts tend to encode backgrounded information (Hopper, 1977). This also aligns
with the significant difference among subjects in Perfect contexts, which have more
male subjects, as the Perfect is generally associated with current relevance (and thus
less likely to be backgrounded).

Table 6. Aspect among objects by object gender (imperfective, p = .019; all others, n.s.)

Perfective Imperfective Perfect Unmarked Total

N % N % N % N % N %
Female 14 19 12 16 9 12 40 53 75 56
Male 14 24 2 3 6 10 36 62 58 44
Total 28 21 14 10 15 11 76 57 133 100

Mood
Irrealis events, events that did not happen or that occur only in a non-real world, are
“obviously less effective” (Hopper & Thompson, 1980:252) than realis events. Here,
male subjects are significantly more likely to occur in realis contexts, as in (6), at 84%,
versus 70% for females (p = .007; Table 7, Figure 3).

(6) Male subject, realis

Y vieron que en estorvar mj camjno se me hazía mucho agravio
‘And they saw that blocking my way caused me much grief ’
(DLNE, doc. 12)

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 136 Jessi Elana Aaron
Table 7. Mood by subject gender (for realis, p = .007; nonfinite, p < 0.001; irrealis, n.s.)

Realis Irrealis Nonfinite Total

N % N % N % N %
Female 87 70 20 16 17 14 124 47
Male 117 84 19 14 3 2 139 53
Total 204 78 39 15 20 8 263 100

Figure 3. Percentage of mood among subjects by subject gender (for realis and nonfinite, p < .05; irrealis,
n.s.).

Women subjects, on the other hand, are significantly more likely to occur in contexts
unmarked for mood (i.e., nonfinite contexts), at 14%, versus 2% for males (p < 0.001).
These contexts are often gerunds, and the information given about the woman is back-
grounded, as in (7). This interpretation is consistent with the findings for aspect,
in which female subjects and objects are more closely associated with imperfective
contexts, which also tend to be backgrounded (Hopper, 1977).

(7) Female subject in a nonfinite context

porque pareçia mal siendo moça andar por los caminos y calles y campos,
espeçialmente teniendo una hija donzella de doze o treze años.
‘because it looked bad, being a girl, to walk around the roads and paths
and country, especially having a young daughter of 12 or 13 years of age.’
(DLNE, doc. 53)
For objects, mood showed no significant correlation with gender.

Object affectedness
The difference between female and male grammatical subjects becomes even clearer
when we turn to object affectedness. First, looking at O affectedness by the gender

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 Language Variation and Change 137

of A, the greater the affectedness, the stronger the association with higher transitivity.
These results are shown in Table 8 and then synthesized into a dichotomous measure
in Figure 4, for all As by A gender. Here we see that when the A is male, only about
half (n = 48/91, 53%) of the objects are left unaffected. On the other hand, when the
A is female, the O is unaffected nearly three-quarters of the time (n = 47/64, 73%),
representing a significant difference (p = .009).
Table 8. Affectedness of O by A gender (for not affected, p = .009; somewhat affected, p = .013; highly
affected, n.s.)

Not affected Somewhat affected Highly affected Total

N % N % N % N %
Female 47 73 12 19 5 8 64 41
Male 48 53 34 37 9 10 91 59
Total 95 61 46 30 14 9 155 100

Figure 4. Percentage of affectedness of object by agent gender (p = .009).

This suggests that even in the apparently most powerful grammatical position, A,
females are represented as having less effect on the world around them. Interestingly,
two of the five examples (40%) in which a female A has a highly affected O are reflexive
constructions, such that the A is also the O, as in (8).

(8) Female A and O in reflexive construction, highly affected O

Y se fue a una jmagen de Nuestra Señora, y se dava en los pechos.
‘And she approached an image of Our Lady and was hitting herself in the
chest’
(DLNE, Doc. 55)
In only one context—which is described twice in the text and was thus counted
twice in the study—do we see a physical act of violence committed by a woman against
a man (9).

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 138 Jessi Elana Aaron

(9) Female A with highly affected male O

Preguntado sy por cabsa de averse echado carnalmente éste que declara
con la dicha Catalina, la dicha su madre Leonor Alvarez, despues que lo
supo, arrojó a éste que declara una picadera, diziendole que por qué avia
desonrada a su hija
‘Asked if, because this witness had had carnal intercourse with the said
Catalina, the said mother Leonor Alvarez, after she found out, threw a
small pecking hammer at this witness, asking him why he had dishon-
ored her daughter’
(DLNE, Doc. 20)
Indeed, the typical female A looks much more like the A in (10), who is, notably, the
same woman who purportedly threw the pecking hammer.4 In some cases, the female
A is in fact a highly affected subject and behaves semantically more like a patient, as in
(11).

(10) Typical female A

Preguntado qué hijas tenja la dicha Leonor Alvarez, dixo que dos, una
casada e otra <una> donzella.
‘Asked what daughters the aforementioned Leonor Alvarez had, he said
two, one married and the other unmarried’
(DLNE, Doc. 20)
(11) Female A with unaffected O
los pueblos que fueron tasados en manta, que al prinçipio eran pequeñas
cuando començaron a tributar, y agora azenselas dar tan grandes que son más
diez que no veynte de las que davan al prinçipio. Y aun en la anchura dellas
an crecido tanto, que las mujeres rreçiben notable daño y travajo en tesello,
y ase allado malparir por ello.
‘the towns that were taxed in textiles, which at first were small when they
began paying tribute, now they they make them give them such large ones
that it is more like ten and not the twenty that they were giving in the begin-
ning. And their width has even grown so much that the women receive
notable pain and labor in weaving it, and some have been found to miscarry
from this.’
(DLNE, doc. 24)
Moving on to look at O affectedness by the gender of O, shown in Table 9, one sig-
nificant difference emerges: female Os are more likely to be highly affected (p = .031).

Table 9. Affectedness of O by O gender (or highly affected, p = .031; all others, n.s.)

Not affected Somewhat affected Highly affected Total

N % N % N % N %
Female 20 27 28 37 27 36 75 56
Male 17 29 30 52 11 19 58 44
Total 37 28 58 44 38 28 133 100

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 Language Variation and Change 139

Alarmingly, there seems to be a trend within the context of high affectedness in the
case of female referents. The verbs that occur with these female O include the following:
acometer ‘commit’ (euphemism for rape), alzar ‘lift up,’ amenazar ‘threaten,’ aporrear
‘beat (with a club),’ azotar ‘flog,’ casar ‘marry (off),’ castigar ‘punish,’ corromper ‘corrupt’
(rape), deshonrar ‘dishonor’ (rape), echar a galeras ‘throw to the galleys,’ estupar ‘rape,’
hacer venir ‘make come’ (migration), hacer violencia ‘do violence (against)’ (i.e., rape),
llevar ‘take’ (twice, taking a woman somewhere; once, God taking through death), lle-
var (su virginidad) ‘take (her virginity)’ (i.e., rape), morder ‘bite,’ pasar ‘pass’ (pushing
a woman through an open window after sexual relations), sacar ‘take out’ (kidnapping
two female Indians from a monastery), tomar ‘take’ (stealing from a woman), tomar (de
los brazos) ‘grab by the arms,’ traer ‘bring’ (twice, migration), and traer (de brazo) ‘drag
by the arm.’ Indeed, 12 of the 21 verbs (57%) used to describe highly affected female
Os involve direct physical and/or sexual violence against women.
In contrast, the verbs that occur with a highly affected male O include acrecentar
‘grow’ (in reference to labor for indigenous people), apretar ‘squeeze’ (in business),
enviar ‘send’ (twice, two Christians kidnapped by indigenous people; twice, send-
ing someone somewhere), hacer (tratamiento) ‘treat’ (poor treatment of indigenous
people), hacer alzamiento ‘rise up against,’ ocupar ‘use’ (using indigenous men for
labor), and traer ‘bring’ (migration). A notable number of highly affected male O were
indigenous people.

Kinesis
Finally, kinesis shows a similar pattern, seen in Table 10 and Figure 5, with physical
action being associated with male grammatical subjects (12) and less physical action
with females (13).

(12) Kinesis with male subject

determinó de yr todavia el dicho viaje de las Higueras y sacó de aquj çiento
y veynte de caballo
‘he decided to still go on the said trip to Hilgueras, and he took out one
hundred twenty horses from here’
(DLNE, doc. 1)
(13) Lack of kinesis with female subject
entendiendo que ternia neçesidad de comida, tenia cuydado de llevarle
cada dia la comida en un paño
‘understanding that she would need food, he took care to take her some
food in a dish every day’
(DLNE, doc. 53)

Table 10. Kinesis by subject gender (p = .035)

No kinesis Kinesis Total

N % N % N %
Female 91 73 33 27 124 47
Male 85 62 54 38 139 53
Total 176 67 87 33 263 100

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 140 Jessi Elana Aaron

Figure 5. Percentage of kinesis by subject gender (p = .035).

Nonsignificant factors
The factors found to have no significant effects were object individuation, punctual-
ity, volitionality, and polarity. I will discuss them here briefly, as some, particularly
object individuation and punctuality, show some interesting tendencies that might
achieve statistical significance with a larger sample size. In most cases, the ten-
dency points toward higher transitivity with male subjects than with female subjects.
Nonetheless, the tendencies are just that—tendencies—and cannot serve as further
robust evidence of gender differences in transitivity patterns in these data, given their
lack of statistical significance.

Individuation of object
In Table 11, we see that female As in these data have a higher rate of individuated objects
(17%) than do male As (9%). This is the only case in which we see a (nonsignificantly)
higher transitivity with female subjects than with males. Interestingly, however, Hopper
and Thompson (1980:253) characterized individuated O contexts as highly transitive
because “there is likely to be a focus of attention on the effect of the event” on the O,
“or perhaps on both participants.” In this light, this might suggest that, in these data,

Table 11. Individuated O by A gender (p > .05)

Individuated Total

N % N
Female 11 17 64
Male 8 9 91

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 Language Variation and Change 141

when a female does act as A, the focus is more likely to be on the O than on her role in
the action. However, this difference is not significant.

Punctuality
Punctual actions, “with no obvious transitional phase between inception and comple-
tion” (Hopper & Thompson, 1980:252), are associated with higher transitivity, as their
effect on the patient is more pronounced. In Table 12, we see that male subjects are
slightly more likely than female subjects to engage in punctual actions in these data, at
64% and 56%, respectively.
Table 12. Punctuality by subject gender (p > .05)

Punctual Total

N % N
Female 69 56 124
Male 89 64 139
Total 158 60 263

Volitionality
Highly volitional contexts are considered to indicate greater transitivity, as the effect
on the patient is seen to be greater if the A acted purposefully (Hopper & Thompson,
1980). Table 13 shows that male subjects are slightly, though not significantly, more
likely to appear in volitional contexts than are female subjects, at 64% and 59%, respec-
tively. The results for this measure, which can be taken as a partial measure of agency
(not coded), echo the results for grammatical role, which also suggest more robust
agency being attributed to male subjects. However, the nonsignificant results for this
factor may in fact be further support for Fauconnier’s (2011) argument, based on
a review of 150 languages, that non-volitionality is not necessarily correlated with
reduced transitivity.
Table 13. Volitionality by subject gender (p > .05)

Volitional Total

N % N
Female 73 59 124
Male 89 64 139
Total 162 62 263

Affirmation
This parameter, which measures affirmation and negation, or polarity, is similar to the
mood parameter in that negated contexts are understood to be lower in transitivity.
Here we see almost no difference between female and male subjects, with 6% and 4%
negated contexts, respectively, as seen in Table 14.

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 142 Jessi Elana Aaron
Table 14. Polarity by subject gender (p > .05)

Positive Negative Total

N % N % N
Female 117 94 7 6 124
Male 133 96 6 4 139
Total 250 95 13 5 263

Writer sex and representation

Thus far, we have seen that, in this corpus, third-person female referents seem to be
associated with weaker transitivity than their male counterparts. This begs the ques-
tion: Is this simply because it is a male perspective found in the majority of these texts?
Indeed, only 10% of the data represent testimonies or letters from females. Table 15
and Figure 6 offer a better sense of how the speaker or writer’s gender affected the rep-
resentation of women.5 In Figure 6, we see that women and men’s treatment of women
referents is distinct. Most notably, female writers/speakers are more likely to portray
women as A in their grammatical role and slightly less likely to portray them as S or
DO. Given the small dataset for female writers, these differences are not statistically
significant. Nonetheless, they are suggestive.

Table 15. Female referents’ grammatical role by writer/speaker sex (p > .05 for all measures)

A S DO IO Genitive Oblique Other Total

Writer sex N % N % N % N % N % N % N % N %
Female 15 29 8 16 7 14 8 16 3 6 8 16 2 3 51 100
Male 49 23 52 25 38 18 22 10 7 3 36 17 7 3 211 100
Total 64 24 60 23 45 17 30 11 10 4 44 17 9 3 262 100

Figure 6. Percentage of female referents’ grammatical role by writer/speaker sex (p > .05).

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 Language Variation and Change 143

If we then remove female writers from the equation, as in Table 16 and Figure 7,
which show only male-authored texts, the significant discrepancy in gender rep-
resentation in A and direct objects becomes even clearer, with men represented
as A nearly twice as often as women, at 37% and 23%, respectively, and women
being more than twice as likely to appear as DOs, at 18%, versus men at 8%.
Interestingly, women are also more likely—though not significantly so—to be repre-
sented in men’s texts as S. It is important to remember that S, unlike A, carries out
no transferal of action. Thus, those in the S role, like the female subjects in Nair and
Rosli’s (2013) study of children’s literature, are not actually being accorded a position
of power.

Table 16. Referents’ grammatical role by gender in male-produced texts (for A, p = .002; for S, n.s.; for DO,
p = .003; for IO, n.s.; for gen, n.s. [p = .086]; for obl, n.s. [p = .081]; for other, n.s.)

A S DO IO Genitive Oblique Other Total

Ref. gender N % N % N % N % N % N % N % N %
Female 49 23 52 25 38 18 22 10 7 3 36 17 7 3 211 100
Male 91 37 48 19 21 8 37 15 17 7 28 12 4 2 246 100
Total 140 31 100 22 59 13 59 13 24 5 64 14 11 2 457 100

Figure 7. Percentage of grammatical role by referent gender in male-authored texts.

Nonetheless, these significant differences in overall representation should not be

taken to mean that these 16th-century men never portrayed women as powerful. One
notable exception can be seen in Document 7, shown in (14).

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 144 Jessi Elana Aaron

(14) vuestra majestad embió presidente y odores [sic], y agora ay éstos y más:
presidenta e oydoras, que éstas se han sentado en los estrados reales,
estando ellos presentes, y han juzgado contra ellos, y dieron por sentencja
que se casasen por la disoluçion de sus personas. Y certefico a vuestra
majestad que propriamente éstas tienen el cargo de la justicia […]. Los
que bien han de negoçiar y quieren favor del presidente e oydores a ellas
ocurren primero porque no se les niega cosa.
‘you sent a [male] president and [male] judges, and now they are here and
more: a [female] president and [female] judges, and these women have
sat in the royal tribunes, the men being present, and they have judged
against them, and sentenced them to get married for the dissolution of
their persons. And I certify to you that these women are indeed in charge
of justice […]. Those who must negotiate and want the favor of the pres-
ident and judges go to them [these women] first because they are denied
nothing.’
(DLNE, doc. 7)
In the same document, the male author describes a Spanish woman-led monastery
in the city of Texcoco (25 km northeast of present-day Mexico City) in which indige-
nous women, who, although they are not bellas ‘beautiful’ and are not nuns por ser como
son jndias ‘because they are Indians,’ preach outside their church and teach others about
Catholicism. Interestingly, this letter writer also describes how his own masculinity has
been questioned due to his sympathy for the indigenous people (15).

(15) Y asi el guardian de Tamanalco me hizo grand conçiençia dello […]. Y

porque en alguna manera yo lo reprehendi al presidente, y que no lo
disimularia, hizo burla y escarnio de mj.
‘And so the guardian of Tamanalco made me very aware of it [the mis-
treatment of the Indians] […]. And because in a way I reprehended the
president for it, and I wouldn’t hide this, [the president] mocked and
derided me.’
(DLNE, doc. 7)
Thus, we see that even in 16th-century Mexico, there was some room for women to
exert their will and for men to acknowledge such women’s value and power.

Discussion and conclusions

The quantitative analysis of transitivity presented here, based on Hopper and
Thompson’s (1980) structural and semantic definition, shows that female subjects were
significantly associated with imperfective contexts, nonfinite constructions, akinesis,
and low affectedness of the object—all markers of low transitivity. A summary of the
results can be seen in Table 17.
At the same time, female Os were more strongly associated with being highly
affected (see Table 9), on the one hand, while being backgrounded in imperfective
contexts on the other (see Table 6). These gender differences align with the findings
of Torres Cacoullos (2018), who found, in a quantitative study of early Spanish, that

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 Language Variation and Change 145
Table 17. Association of measures of higher transitivity by subject gender

Measure Female Male

Two or more participants ✓
Affected O ✓
Realis mood ✓
Kinesis ✓
Perfective aspect (✓)
Punctuality (✓)
Volitionality (✓)
Individuated O (✓)
Affirmation (✓)
Note: A checkmark indicates that this gender occurred at a significantly higher rate with this measure. A check mark in
parentheses means that the difference was not statistically significant.

females were less likely than males to occur as subjects, and therefore characterized
the expressed female pronoun ella ‘she’ as designating referents that were “less topical”
(102) than their male counterparts. In the current study, for the most part, especially
in texts by male writers, women were represented as inactive, inert, and powerless.
The quantitative application of Hopper and Thompson’s (1980) model of transitiv-
ity to corpus data has drawn attention to a somewhat novel approach to gender in
sociolinguistic studies, with a focus not only on speaker gender but also on referent
gender. This echoes my previous work, which showed that female and male speakers’
morphosyntactic choices were influenced by both their own and their referents’ gender
(Aaron, 2004). The results of this study also point to the intimate link between social
structures and morphosyntactic variation, in line with Arnaud (1998), who found that
the 19th-century rise of the English progressive, which correlated with the psychosoci-
ological factor of interlocutor intimacy, showed gender differences. Because transitivity
measures several elements of the relationship between the A and the O and of the
nature of actions, its analysis can lead to more nuanced interpretations of the repre-
sentation of social actors. The usefulness of such analysis seems particularly acute with
data in which certain actors tend to be textually muted, such that their social situation
or perspective is decentralized. Quantitative transitivity analysis offers a path toward
replicable sociolinguistic studies of representation across the centuries and in many
languages.

Notes
1. Document 19 was excluded because it was a version of document 18, written only days later.
2. The total word count for the male referents takes into account the 10-token cap used to extract male
referents from the corpus. For each document with more than 10 male-referent tokens, the words were
counted up to the end of the sentence from which the final token from that document was extracted. If a
document provided fewer than 10 male-referent tokens, all words in the document were counted.
3. These figures represent grammatical subjects (A and S) only, so occurrences in which referents appeared
in other grammatical roles are not included in the totals.
4. This translation was gleaned from Ivey, Thurber, and Escobedo (1990).
5. The documents used to examine the representation of men did not include any female writers or
speakers.

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 146 Jessi Elana Aaron

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Cite this article: Aaron, Jessi Elana. (2024). Quantifying transitivity: Uncovering relations of gender and
power. Language Variation and Change 36:123–147. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394524000085

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394524000085 Published online by Cambridge University Press