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Derivational morphology and suffixing bias on linguistic and nonlinguistic material Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-08-22 Leona Polyanskaya, Stavros Skopeteas, Peter Halama, Robin Hollenbach, Mikhail Ordin
Across world languages, grammatical meanings tend to be expressed by suffixes. Whether this bias is defined by shaping language so that it is easily processed by domain-general cognitive mechanisms or whether the bias is specific to the language domain has not been resolved. Most evidence supporting these competing hypotheses focuses on the effect of suffixing bias on inflectional morphology and ignores
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Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of pitch-accent systems based on accentual class merger: a new method applied to Japanese dialects Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-22 Takuya Takahashi, Ayaka Onohara, Yasuo Ihara
Unlike studies of the evolutionary relationship between languages, the dialect-level variation within a language has seldom been studied within the framework of a phylogenetic tree, because frequent lexical borrowing muddles the evidence of shared ancestry. The phonological history of Japanese is an exceptional case study where the phenomenon called accentual class merger enables the phylogenetic analysis
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The evolution of evolutionary linguistics Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-07-02 Poonam Brar, Chico Q Camargo
This paper presents a scientometric study of the evolution of evolutionary linguistics, a multidisciplinary field that investigates the origin and evolution of language. We apply network science methods to analyse changes in the connections among core concepts discussed in the Causal Hypotheses in Evolutionary Linguistics Database, a searchable database of causal hypotheses in evolutionary linguistics
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Evolutionary pathways of complexity in gender systems Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-06 Olena Shcherbakova, Marc Allassonnière-Tang
Humans categorize the experience they encounter in various ways, which is mirrored, for instance, in grammatical gender systems of languages. In such systems, nouns are grouped based on whether they refer to masculine/feminine beings, (non-)humans, (in)animate entities, or objects with specific shapes. Languages differ greatly in how many gender assignment rules are incorporated in gender systems and
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Iconicity in the emergence of a phonological system? Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2023-07-15 Mara Moita, Ana Maria Abreu, Ana Mineiro
Iconicity has been described as an impetus for creating sign forms in emerging sign languages and forming signs in established sign languages. Iconic signs are defined as spontaneous or stable signs that directly reflect the representation of their referent. In established sign languages, iconic signs have phonological features. Regarding the link between the motivation for iconic signs and phonological
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Constraints on communicating the order of events in stories through pantomime Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2023-07-12 Marta Sibierska, Przemysław Żywiczyński, Jordan Zlatev, Joost van de Weijer, Monika Boruta-Żywiczyńska
Pantomime is a means of bodily visual communication that is based on iconic gestures that are not fully conventional. It has become a key element in many models of language evolution and a strong candidate for the original human-specific communicative system (Zlatev et al. 2020). Although pantomime affords successful communication in many contexts, it has some semiotic limitations. In this study, we
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Subgrouping in a ‘dialect continuum’: A Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of the Mixtecan language family Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-02 Sandra Auderset, Simon J Greenhill, Christian T DiCanio, Eric W Campbell
Subgrouping language varieties within dialect continua poses challenges for the application of the comparative method of historical linguistics, and similar claims have been made for the use of Bayesian phylogenetic methods. In this article, we present the first Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of the Mixtecan language family of southern Mexico and show that the method produces valuable results and new
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The learnability and emergence of dependency structures in an artificial language Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2023-05-27 Emily Davis, Kenny Smith
In a pair of artificial language experiments, we investigated the learnability and emergence of different dependency structures: branching, center-embedding, and crossed. In natural languages, branching is the most common dependency structure; center-embedding occurs but is often disfavored, and crossed dependencies are very rare. Experiment 1 addressed learnability, testing comprehension, and production
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Language structure is influenced by the proportion of non-native speakers: A reply to Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2023-04-20 Henri Kauhanen, Sarah Einhaus, George Walkden
A recent quantitative study claims language structure, whether quantified as morphological or information-theoretic complexity, to be unaffected by the proportion of those speaking the language non-natively [A. Koplenig, Royal Society Open Science, 6, 181274 (2019)]. This result hinges on either the use of a categorical notion of ‘vehicularity’ as a proxy for the proportion of L2 (second-language)
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Language games meet multi-agent reinforcement learning: A case study for the naming game Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2023-04-18 Paul Van Eecke, Katrien Beuls, Jérôme Botoko Ekila, Roxana Rădulescu
Today, computational models of emergent communication in populations of autonomous agents are studied through two main methodological paradigms: multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) and the language game paradigm. While both paradigms share their main objectives and employ strikingly similar methods, the interaction between both communities has so far been surprisingly limited. This can to a large
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The representation of animal communication and language evolution in introductory linguistics textbooks Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2023-04-18 Sławomir Wacewicz, Michael Pleyer, Aleksandra Szczepańska, Aleksandra Ewa Poniewierska, Przemysław Żywiczyński
The last three decades have brought a wealth of new empirical data and methods that have transformed investigations of language evolution into a fast-growing field of scientific research. In this paper, we investigate how the results of this research are represented in the content of the most popular introductory linguistic textbooks. We carried out a comprehensive computer-assisted qualitative study
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Modelling admixture across language levels to evaluate deep history claims Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2023-03-30 Nataliia Hübler, Simon J Greenhill
The so-called ‘Altaic’ languages have been subject of debate for over 200 years. An array of different data sets have been used to investigate the genealogical relationships between them, but the controversy persists. The new data with a high potential for such cases in historical linguistics are structural features, which are sometimes declared to be prone to borrowing and discarded from the very
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Inferring linguistic transmission between generations at the scale of individuals Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2023-03-21 Valentin Thouzeau, Antonin Affholder, Philippe Mennecier, Paul Verdu, Frédéric Austerlitz
Historical linguistics strongly benefited from recent methodological advances inspired by phylogenetics. Nevertheless, no available method uses contemporaneous within-population linguistic diversity to reconstruct the history of human populations. Here, we developed an approach inspired from population genetics to perform historical linguistic inferences from linguistic data sampled at the individual
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The scientometric landscape of Evolang: A comprehensive database of the Evolang conference Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2023-03-21 Sławomir Wacewicz, Marta Sibierska, Placiński Marek, Aleksandra Szczepańska, Aleksandra Poniewierska, Yen Ng, Przemysław Żywiczyński
Language evolution is a modern incarnation of a long intellectual tradition that addresses the fundamental question of how language began. Such a formulation is intuitively obvious, but a more precise characterisation of this area of research with its central notions—language and evolution—has proved surprisingly elusive. In this paper, we show how conceptual analysis can be complemented with scientometric
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Are non-native speakers the drivers of morphological simplification? A Wug experiment on the Dutch past tense system Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2022-08-12 Isabeau De Smet, Laura Rosseel, Freek Van de Velde
It has often been suggested that there is an inverse correlation between the number of adult non-native speakers in a language and its morphological complexity. Secluded languages often show more complex morphology, while high-contact languages go through more severe simplifications throughout the ages. One such simplification linked to language contact is the regularization of the Germanic past tense
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A Cognitive Bias for Zipfian Distributions? Uniform Distributions Become More Skewed via Cultural Transmission Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2022-07-09 Amir Shufaniya, Inbal Arnon
There is growing evidence that cognitive biases play a role in shaping language structure. Here, we ask whether such biases could contribute to the propensity of Zipfian word-frequency distributions in language, one of the striking commonalities between languages. Recent theoretical accounts and experimental findings suggest that such distributions provide a facilitative environment for word learning
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Teaching, sharing experience, and innovation in cultural transmission Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2022-07-06 Ottilie Tilston, Adrian Bangerter, Kristian Tylén
Teaching is widely understood to have an important role in cultural transmission. But cultural transmission experiments typically do not document or analyse what happens during teaching. Here, we examine the content of teaching during skill transmission under two conditions: in the presence of the artefact (no-displacement condition) and in the absence of the artefact (displacement condition). Participants
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Phylogeny of the Turkic Languages Inferred from Basic Vocabulary: Limitations of the Lexicostatistical Methods in an Intensive Contact Situation Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2022-07-06 Ilya M Egorov, Anna V Dybo, Alexei S Kassian
This article provides an attempt to revise the phylogenetic structure of the Turkic family using a computational lexicostatistical approach. The methodological framework of the present research is characterized by the following features: (1) wordlists with strictly controlled semantics; (2) step-by-step reconstruction using Swadesh wordlists for proto-languages; (3) three stages of post-processing
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Bayesian methods for ancestral state reconstruction in morphosyntax: Exploring the history of argument marking strategies in a large language family Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2022-05-31 Joshua Phillips, Claire Bowern
Bayesian phylogenetic methods have been gaining traction and currency in historical linguistics, as their potential for uncovering elements of language change is increasingly understood. Here, we demonstrate a proof of concept for using ancestral state reconstruction methods to reconstruct changes in morphology. We use a simple Brownian motion model of character evolution to test how splits in ergative
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BayesVarbrul: a unified multidimensional analysis of language change in a speaker community Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2022-04-19 Xia Hua
Exchange in ideas between language evolution and biological evolution has a long history, due to a shared theoretical foundation between language and biology as two evolving systems. Both systems evolve in terms of the frequency of a variant in a population for each of a large number of variables, that is how often a particular variant of a language variable is used in a speaker community and how many
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The evolution of color naming reflects pressure for efficiency: Evidence from the recent past Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2022-04-11 Noga Zaslavsky, Karee Garvin, Charles Kemp, Naftali Tishby, Terry Regier
It has been proposed that semantic systems evolve under pressure for efficiency. This hypothesis has so far been supported largely indirectly, by synchronic cross-language comparison, rather than directly by diachronic data. Here, we directly test this hypothesis in the domain of color naming, by analyzing recent diachronic data from Nafaanra, a language of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, and comparing it
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Methodological Problems in Quantitative Research on Environmental Effects in Phonology Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2022-04-09 Frederik Hartmann
This paper engages with the quantitative methodology underlying studies proposing a link between environment and phonology by replicating three prominent studies on ejectives and altitude, vowels and humidity, and sonority and ambient temperature. It argues that there are several issues regarding the methodological footing of such correlational studies. Further, the paper finds that the problems of
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A simulation on coevolution between language and multiple cognitive abilities Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2022-01-29 Tao Gong, Lan Shuai, Xiaolong Yang
We propose a coevolution scenario between language and two cognitive abilities, namely shared intentionality and lexical memory, under a conceptual framework that integrates biological evolution of language learners and cultural evolution of communal language among language users. Piggybacking on a well-attested agent-based model on the origin of simple lexicon and constituent word order out of holistic
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Correcting a bias in TIGER rates resulting from high amounts of invariant and singleton cognate sets Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2022-01-19 Johann-Mattis List
In a recent issue of the Journal of Language Evolution, Syrjänen et al. (2021) investigate the suitability of computing Cummins and McInerney’s (2011) TIGER rates for estimating the tree-likeness of linguistic datasets compiled for phylogenetic reconstruction. The authors test the TIGER rates on a diverse sample of simulated data, which by and large confirms the usefulness of TIGER rates as an analytic
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Crouching TIGER, hidden structure: Exploring the nature of linguistic data using TIGER values Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2021-11-18 Kaj Syrjänen, Luke Maurits, Unni Leino, Terhi Honkola, Jadranka Rota, Outi Vesakoski
In recent years, techniques such as Bayesian inference of phylogeny have become a standard part of the quantitative linguistic toolkit. While these tools successfully model the tree-like component of a linguistic dataset, real-world datasets generally include a combination of tree-like and nontree-like signals. Alongside developing techniques for modeling nontree-like data, an important requirement
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The philosophical interpretation of language game theory Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2021-11-04 Nick Zangwill
I give an informal presentation of the evolutionary game theoretic approach to the conventions that constitute linguistic meaning. The aim is to give a philosophical interpretation of the project, which accounts for the role of game theoretic mathematics in explaining linguistic phenomena. I articulate the main virtue of this sort of account, which is its psychological economy, and I point to the casual
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Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of linguistic data using BEAST Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2021-09-24 Konstantin Hoffmann, Remco Bouckaert, Simon J Greenhill, Denise Kühnert
Bayesian phylogenetic methods provide a set of tools to efficiently evaluate large linguistic datasets by reconstructing phylogenies—family trees—that represent the history of language families. These methods provide a powerful way to test hypotheses about prehistory, regarding the subgrouping, origins, expansion, and timing of the languages and their speakers. Through phylogenetics, we gain insights
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The emergence of systematic argument distinctions in artificial sign languages Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2021-06-18 Yasamin Motamedi, Kenny Smith, Marieke Schouwstra, Jennifer Culbertson, Simon Kirby
Word order is a key property by which languages indicate the relationship between a predicate and its arguments. However, sign languages use a number of other modality-specific tools in addition to word order such as spatial agreement, which has been likened to verbal agreement in spoken languages, and role shift, where the signer takes on characteristics of propositional agents. In particular, data
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Cultural evolution leads to vocal iconicity in an experimental iterated learning task Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2021-05-07 Niklas Erben Johansson, Jon W Carr, Simon Kirby
Experimental and cross-linguistic studies have shown that vocal iconicity is prevalent in words that carry meanings related to size and shape. Although these studies demonstrate the importance of vocal iconicity and reveal the cognitive biases underpinning it, there is less work demonstrating how these biases lead to the evolution of a sound symbolic lexicon in the first place. In this study, we show
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Constituent order in silent gesture reflects the perspective of the producer Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2021-03-20 Fiona Kirton, Simon Kirby, Kenny Smith, Jennifer Culbertson, Marieke Schouwstra
Understanding the relationship between human cognition and linguistic structure is a central theme in language evolution research. Numerous studies have investigated this question using the silent gesture paradigm in which participants describe events using only gesture and no speech. Research using this paradigm has found that Agent–Patient–Action (APV) is the most commonly produced gesture order
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Exploring the history of pronouns in South America with computer-assisted methods Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2021-03-10 Luis Miguel Rojas-Berscia, Sean Roberts
Pronouns as a diagnostic feature of language relatedness have been widely explored in historical and comparative linguistics. In this article, we focus on South American pronouns, as a potential example of items with their own history passing between the boundaries of language families, what has been dubbed in the literature as ‘historical markers’. Historical markers are not a direct diagnostic of
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Flexibility in wild infant chimpanzee vocal behavior Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2020-12-02 Guillaume Dezecache, Klaus Zuberbühler, Marina Davila-Ross, Christoph D. Dahl
How did human language evolve from earlier forms of communication? One way to address this question is to compare prelinguistic human vocal behavior with nonhuman primate calls. An important finding has been that, prior to speech and from early on, human infant vocal behavior exhibits functional flexibility, or the capacity to produce sounds that are not tied to one specific function. This is reflected
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How vocal temporal parameters develop: a comparative study between humans and songbirds, two distantly related vocal learners Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2020-11-27 Takahasi M, Okanoya K, Mazuka R.
AbstractHuman infants acquire motor patterns for speech during the first several years of their lives. Sequential vocalizations such as human speech are complex behaviors, and the ability to learn new vocalizations is limited to only a few animal species. Vocalizations are generated through the coordination of three types of organs: namely, vocal, respiratory, and articulatory organs. Moreover, sophisticated
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Pantomime as the original human-specific communicative system Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2020-09-01 Zlatev J, Żywiczyński P, Wacewicz S.
AbstractWe propose reframing one of the key questions in the field of language evolution as what was the original human-specific communicative system? With the help of cognitive semiotics, first we clarify the difference between signals, which characterize animal communication, and signs, which do not replace but complement signals in human communication. We claim that the evolution of bodily mimesis
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When the tune shapes morphology: The origins of vocatives Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2020-09-01 Sóskuthy M, Roettger T.
AbstractMany languages use pitch to express pragmatic meaning (henceforth ‘tune’). This requires segmental carriers with rich harmonic structure and high periodic energy, making vowels the optimal carriers of the tune. Tunes can be phonetically impoverished when there is a shortage of vowels, endangering the recovery of their function. This biases sound systems towards the optimisation of tune transmission
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Rejoinder to Huijbregts’s: Biting into Evolution of Language Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2020-08-10 Moran S, Bickel B.
Huijbregts’s commentary11 about our paper (Blasi et al. 2019) gives us the opportunity to highlight an ongoing problem in the investigation of language evolution that has hindered its research since the 19th century: the lack of engagement with empirical data. This problem stems partially from the issue of how language is defined, and consequently, how researchers engage in meaningful evolutionary
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Biting into evolution of language Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2020-07-02 M A C (Riny) Huybregts
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Dispersion, communication, and alignment: an experimental study of the emergence of structure in combinatorial phonology Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2020-05-16 Gareth Roberts, Robin Clark
Languages exhibit structure at a number of levels, including at the level of phonology, the system of meaningless combinatorial units from which words are constructed. Phonological systems typically exhibit greater dispersion than would be expected by chance. Several theoretical models have been proposed to account for this, and a common theme is that such organization emerges as a result of the competing
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CHIELD: the causal hypotheses in evolutionary linguistics database Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2020-04-16 Seán G Roberts, Anton Killin, Angarika Deb, Catherine Sheard, Simon J Greenhill, Kaius Sinnemäki, José Segovia-Martín, Jonas Nölle, Aleksandrs Berdicevskis, Archie Humphreys-Balkwill, Hannah Little, Christopher Opie, Guillaume Jacques, Lindell Bromham, Peeter Tinits, Robert M Ross, Sean Lee, Emily Gasser, Jasmine Calladine, Matthew Spike, Stephen Francis Mann, Olena Shcherbakova, Ruth Singer, Shuya
Language is one of the most complex of human traits. There are many hypotheses about how it originated, what factors shaped its diversity, and what ongoing processes drive how it changes. We present the Causal Hypotheses in Evolutionary Linguistics Database (CHIELD, https://chield.excd.org/), a tool for expressing, exploring, and evaluating hypotheses. It allows researchers to integrate multiple theories
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The ‘culture of two’: Communication accommodation in ravens’ (Corvus corax) nonvocal signaling Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2020-01-01 Eva Maria Luef,Andries Ter Maat,Manuela Jäger,Simone Pika
Abstract The theory of communication accommodation refers to linguistic processes through which human interactants—consciously or subconsciously—shift their speech and gesture styles to resemble those of their conversation partners. This phenomenon represents a crucial feature of human language and is particularly pronounced in affiliative and/or strong relationships. Communication accommodation is
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Bayesian phylolinguistics infers the internal structure and the time-depth of the Turkic language family Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2020-01-01 Alexander Savelyev, Martine Robbeets
Despite more than 200 years of research, the internal structure of the Turkic language family remains subject to debate. Classifications of Turkic so far are based on both classical historical–comparative linguistic and distance-based quantitative approaches. Although these studies yield an internal structure of the Turkic family, they cannot give us an understanding of the statistical robustness of
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Language endangerment: a multidimensional analysis of risk factors Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2020-01-01 L Bromham, X Hua, C Algy, F Meakins
Funding for the data collection comes from an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowship awarded to Felicity Meakins (FT170100042) and the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (Project ID: CE140100041). We thank the Gurindji participants for their contributions to this study.
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Best practices in justifying calibrations for dating language families Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2019-12-28 L Maurits, M de Heer, T Honkola, M Dunn, O Vesakoski
The use of computational methods to assign absolute datings to language divergence is receiving renewed interest, as modern approaches based on Bayesian statistics offer alternatives to the discred ...
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Double-blind reviewing and gender biases at EvoLang conferences: An update Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2019-10-12 Christine Cuskley, Seán G Roberts, Stephen Politzer-Ahles, Tessa Verhoef
A previous study of reviewing at the Evolution of Language conferences found effects that suggested that gender bias against female authors was alleviated under double-blind review at EvoLang11. We update this analysis in two specific ways. First, we add data from the most recent EvoLang12 conference, providing a comprehensive picture of the conference over five iterations. Like EvoLang11, EvoLang12
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Influence of the tree prior and sampling scale on Bayesian phylogenetic estimates of the origin times of language families Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2019-07-01 Andrew M Ritchie,Simon Y W Ho
AbstractBayesian phylogenetic methods derived from evolutionary biology can be used to reconstruct the history of human languages using databases of cognate words. These analyses have produced exciting results regarding the origins and dispersal of linguistic and cultural groups through prehistory. Bayesian lexical dating requires the specification of priors on all model parameters. This includes the
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Is Language Necessary for the Social Transmission of Lithic Technology? Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2019-07-01 Dor Shilton
AbstractRecently, a growing number of studies have considered the role of language in the social transmission of tool-making skill during human evolution. In this article, I address this question in light of a new theory of language and its evolution, and review evidence from anthropology and experimental archaeology related to it. I argue that the specific function of language—the instruction of imagination—is
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Errata for Roberts & Verhoef (2016) Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2019-07-01 Stephen Politzer-Ahles,Christine Cuskley,Seán G Roberts,Tessa Verhoef
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Compositional Hierarchical Structure Evolves through Cultural Transmission: An Experimental Study Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2019-05-28 Carmen Saldana, Simon Kirby, Robert Truswell, Kenny Smith
Compositional hierarchical structure is a prerequisite for productive languages; it allows language learners to express and understand an infinity of meanings from finite sources (i.e., a lexicon and a grammar). Understanding how such structure evolved is central to evolutionary linguistics. Previous work combining artificial language learning and iterated learning techniques has shown how basic compositional
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Clicks in language evolution: A call for clarification Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2019-04-01 Alex de Voogt
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The emergence of verse templates through iterated learning Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2019-01-01 Varuṇ deCastro-Arrazola,Simon Kirby
Every language produces some type of verse in the form of songs, poems or nursery rhymes, which can be analysed as a layer of words set to a template (e.g. a tune, a poetic metre). Verse templates typically consist of hierarchically organised sections: songs are made up of stanzas, divided into lines, containing bars, etc. We hypothesise that this kind of patterns may emerge in the process of cultural
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Adults are more efficient in creating and transmitting novel signalling systems than children Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2019-01-01 Vera Kempe, Nicolas Gauvrit, Alison Gibson, Margaret Jamieson
Iterated language learning experiments have shown that meaningful and structured signalling systems emerge when there is pressure for signals to be both learnable and expressive. Yet such experiments have mainly been conducted with adults using language-like signals. Here we explore whether structured signalling systems can also emerge when signalling domains are unfamiliar and when the learners are
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When the Bough Breaks: A Contribution to Falk’s Hypothesis Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2018-11-29 David Lindsay
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Social Group Effects on the Emergence of Communicative Conventions and Language Complexity Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2018-10-30 Mark Atkinson, Gregory J Mills, Kenny Smith
Languages differ in their complexity. One possible explanation for this observation is that differences in social factors influence linguistic complexity: languages that are used for communication in small-scale 'societies of intimates' exhibit greater complexity as a result of the communicative contexts in which they are typically employed. We used the techniques from referential communication studies
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Language in Our Brain: The Origins of a Uniquely Human Capacity, by Angela D. Friederici Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2018-09-25 Elena Morgan,Giosuè Baggio
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Socio-ecological resilience and language dynamics: An adaptive cycle model of long-term language change Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2018-09-03 Mark J Hudson
Language is thought to be a crucial element behind Pleistocene expansions of Homo sapiens but our understanding of language change over the very long term is still poor. There have been two main approaches to language dynamics in this context. One assumes a continual ebb and flow of local human populations and languages, leading to high levels of ‘patchiness’ in both genes and languages. Another approach
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Bayesian phylolinguistics reveals the internal structure of the Transeurasian family Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2018-07-01 Martine Robbeets, Remco Bouckaert
The historical connection between the Transeurasian languages, i.e. the Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic languages, is among the most disputed issues of historical linguistics. Here, we will combine the power of classical historical-comparative linguistics and computational Bayesian phylogenetic methods to infer a phylogeny of the Transeurasian languages. To this end, we will use lexical
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Sequence comparison in computational historical linguistics Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2018-07-01 Johann-Mattis List, Mary Walworth, Simon J Greenhill, Tiago Tresoldi, Robert Forkel
With increasing amounts of digitally available data from all over the world, manual annotation of cognates in multi-lingual word lists becomes more and more time-consuming in historical linguistics. Using available software packages to pre-process the data prior to manual analysis can drastically speed-up the process of cognate detection. Furthermore, it allows us to get a quick overview on data which
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Studying language evolution in the age of big data Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2018-06-08 Tanmoy Bhattacharya,Nancy Retzlaff,Damián E Blasi,William Croft,Michael Cysouw,Daniel Hruschka,Ian Maddieson,Lydia Müller,Eric Smith,Peter F Stadler,George Starostin,Hyejin Youn
Abstract The increasing availability of large digital corpora of cross-linguistic data is revolutionizing many branches of linguistics. Overall, it has triggered a shift of attention from detailed questions about individual features to more global patterns amenable to rigorous, but statistical, analyses. This engenders an approach based on successive approximations where models with simplified assumptions
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What smartphone apps may contribute to language evolution research Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2018-06-04 Olivier Morin, James Winters, Thomas F Müller, Tiffany Morisseau, Christian Etter, Simon J Greenhill
Unlike a standard online experiment, a gaming app lets participants interact freely with a vast number of partners, as many times as they wish. The gain is not merely one of statistical power. Cultural evolutionists can use gaming apps to allow large numbers of participants to communicate synchronously; to build realistic transmission chains that avoid the losses of information that occurs in linear
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Different kinds of parsimony: association-learning versus bodily mimesis Journal of Language Evolution (IF 2.1) Pub Date : 2018-01-01 Jordan Zlatev