[DSRP Evidence](https://dsrpevidence.org/)

# Articles are inversely associated with inflectional case in Indo-European

Goldstein, 2026, Language — Linguistics

Patterns: [Systems](https://dsrpevidence.org/pattern/systems), [Relationships](https://dsrpevidence.org/pattern/relationships)

## In short

Case-marking and articles function as alternative substructures for encoding the same referential function within one grammatical system, so as one part shrinks the other expands to compensate.

## What they found (results)

A Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of 94 Indo-European languages found smaller case-marking inventories robustly predict a higher probability of definite or indefinite articles, crossing 50% predicted-article-probability once case systems shrink to roughly 3-4 cases.

These researchers were not testing DSRP. The finding is theirs; the correspondence to DSRP is drawn by this site.

[Source](https://doi.org/10.1017/s0097850726000147)