# Relation between Word Order of Languages and
## Serotonin Transporter Gene

\author{
Terumasa EHARA(江原暉将) \\ Ehara NLP Research Laboratory \\ eharate @ gmail.com
}

## 1 Introduction

Serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR) has two alleles: Short (S) and Long (L). Relative frequency of $S$ allele (S-ratio in this paper) differs across populations. African populations have low S-ratio, say $20 \%$ and East Asian populations have high S-ratio, say 70\% (Gureyev et al., 2014).

Courtet et al., (2001) show that the relative frequencies of the $\mathrm{S}$ allele were significantly higher in the violent suicidal attempters than in the controls. Chiao and Blizinsky (2010) show culture-gene coevolution between allelic frequency of 5-HTTLPR and cultural values of individualism-collectivism. They show that collectivistic cultures were significantly more likely to comprise individuals carrying the $\mathrm{S}$ allele of the 5-HTTLPR.

We have investigated relations between word order (WO) of languages (focused on the order of Object and Verb: OV/VO) and suicide-rate / homicide-rate of the speakers' populations (Ehara, 2015), the distribution of Ychromosome DNA haplogroups of speakers' populations (Ehara, 2018) and the distribution of mitochondrial DNA haplogroups of speakers' populations (Ehara, 2020). In this paper, we will investigate relation between word order of languages and the S-ratio of the speakers' populations. Our conjecture is "OV language speakers have high Sratio and VO language speakers have low S-ratio".

## 2 Data

Data for the word order (OV/VO) are obtained mainly from the WALS online database (Dryer and Haspelmath, 2013) and Yamamoto's book (Yamamoto, 2003).

Data for S-ratio of populations used in this study are listed in Appendix. They are obtained from papers described in the reference column of the appendix. Language names, their word orders and their speakers' S- ratio are listed in Table 2. Some languages (for example, Mandarin) appear multiple times, because they are spoken in multiple areas or by multiple populations.

## 3 Global analysis

T-test is done for the data in Table 2. OV vs VO word order language speakers have significantly different $\mathrm{S}$ ratio, that is shown in Table 1.

Table 1: T-test result

Figure 1 shows the relation between East longitude of languages and S-ratio. East longitude of languages are obtained from WALS database. In this Figure, blue dots correspond OV languages and red dots correspond VO languages. Most of languages in 100-150 east longitude (East Asian languages) have high S-ratio. There are several outliers in this Figure. Some of them will be explained in section 5 .

Figure 1: East longitude of languages and S-ratio

Table 2: Word Order of languages and S-ratio NO: No dominant order

20.00

VO Arabic (Modern

Standard)

VO Hungarian

NO German

VO Czech

VO Swedish

4 Local analysis

4.1 Ethiopia
Many Ethiopians speak Amharic or Oromo, both of them are OV type. Many languages in Africa are VO type. Table 3 shows the data from Africa. Ethiopian's S-ratio is higher than the S-ratio of other African populations.

Sandawe is OV type and has low S-ratio that is outlier.

Table 3: Data from Africa

 & \multicolumn{1}{|c|}{} & \multicolumn{1}{|c|}{ language } & WO & S-ratio \\

## 4.2 Basque

Basque is OV type and many of European languages are VO type. Table 4 shows the data from South Europe. Basque has highest $\mathrm{S}$-ratio.

Table 4: Data from South Europe

 &  & language & WO & S-ratio \\

## 4.3 Turkey

Turkish is OV type. Table 5 compares languages Turkish and surrounding areas of it. Turkish is in second rank. Hebrew (Modern) spoken by Samaritan has highest S-ratio, that is outlier of the VO type. Other Israeli populations have middle level of S-ratio in this region. Azerbaijani, which is OV type, has also high S-ratio.

Table 5: Data from West Asia and East Europe

 & \multicolumn{1}{|c|}{} & \multicolumn{1}{|c|}{ language } & WO & S-ratio \\

## 4.4 Russia

Table 6 shows Russian data. Two VO type languages (Russian and Komi Zyrian) speakers have low S-ratio.

## Table 6: Data from Russia

 & \multicolumn{1}{|c|}{} & \multicolumn{1}{|c|}{ language } & WO & S-ratio \\

OV type Adyghe speaking Adygei has low S-ratio that is outlier.

## 4.5 Kashmir

Although many Indian languages are OV type, Kashmiri is VO type. Table 7 shows Kashmiri and surrounding areas' data. Kashmir has lowest S-ratio.

Table 7: Data from Kashmiri and surrounding areas

 & \multicolumn{1}{|c|}{} & language & WO & S-ratio \\

## 4.6 East and South East Asia

Data from East and South East Asia are shown in Table 8. Japanese and Korean speakers have high S-ratio. On the other hand, OV language speakers in China (Kazakh, Khalkha and Uygur) have lower S-ratio than Mandarin speakers. Nasioi is also the outlier of OV language speakers.

Table 8: Data from East and South East Asia

 & \multicolumn{1}{|c|}{} & language & WO & S-ratio \\

## 4.7 Native Americans

Table 9 shows data from Native Americans. Top 5 languages are OV type or No dominant word order type (NO). Pima Bajo and Surui speakers are outlier of OV languages speakers in this region.

Table 9: Data from Native Americans

 & \multicolumn{1}{|c}{} & \multicolumn{1}{|c|}{ language } & WO & S-ratio \\

## 5 Examination of the outliers

Local analysis shows that there are several outliers. Table 10 shows the number of speakers of these outlier languages that are obtained from Wikipedia. Except for OV languages in China (Kazakh, Khalkha and Uyghur), the number of speakers of outlier languages are rather small. This fact may affect the S-ratio.

Table 10: Number of speakers of outlier languages

 \\

## 6 Conclusion and Future Works

We have investigated the relation between word order of Object and Verb (OV vs VO) of languages and the relative frequency of serotonin transporter gene 5-
HTTLPR's allele S (S-ratio) of their speakers' population. By statistical analysis (t-test) for global data, we show "OV language speakers have high S-ratio and VO language speakers have low S-ratio".

S-ratio differs geographically. So, we have executed local analysis that shows similar results from the global analysis.

To clarify the reason why the above relation holds is the future work. Another future work is to clarify the reason why the outliers exist.

## References

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Rafael Bisso-Machado, Virginia Ramallo, Eduardo TarazonaSantos, Francisco M. Salzano, Maria Cátira Bortolini, and Tábita Hünemeier. 2013. Brief communication: 5-HTTLPR genetic diversity and mode of subsistence in Native Americans. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 151(3):492-494.

Joan Y. Chiao and Katherine D. Blizinsky. 2010. Culture-gene coevolution of individualism-collectivism and the serotonin transporter gene. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 277(1681):529-537.

P. Courtet, P. Baud, M. Abbar, J. P. Boulenger, D. Castelnau, D. Mouthon, A. Malafosse, and C. Buresi. 2001. Association between violent suicidal behavior and the low activity allele of the serotonin transporter gene. Molecular Psychiatry, 6(3):338-341.

Matthew S. Dryer and Martin Haspelmath. 2013. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online, Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, https://wals.info/, accessed on 2018-03-09.

Terumasa Ehara. 2015. Relation between Word Order Parameters and Suicide / Homicide Rates. Jounal of Yamanashi Eiwa College, 13:9-29.

Terumasa Ehara. 2020. Relation between Word Order of Languages and the Entropy of Mitochondrial DNA Haplogroups Distribution of the Speakers' Population. In Proceedings of The 26th Annual Meeting of The Association for Natural Language Processing, pages 490-493.

Terumasa EHARA. 2018. Relation between Word Order of Languages and the Entropy of Y-chromosome Haplogroup Distribution of the Speakers' Population. In Proceedings of The 24th Annual Meeting of The Association for Natural Language Processing, pages 1019-1022.

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## Appendix Data used in the study

 & Language & wo & S-ratio & Reference \\

 & Language & Wo & S-ratio & Reference \\

 & vo & 49.26 & (Chiao and Blizinsky, 2010) \\

WO: Word order, OV: Object verb order, VO: Verb object order, NO: No dominant order