The notion that linguistic forms and meanings are related only by convention and not by any direct relationship between sounds and semantic concepts is a foundational principle of modern linguistics. Though the principle generally holds across the lexicon, systematic exceptions have been identified. These “sound symbolic” forms have been identified in lexical items and linguistic processes in many individual languages. This paper examines sound symbolism in the languages of Australia. We conduct a statistical investigation of the evidence for several common patterns of sound symbolism, using data from a sample of 120 languages. The patterns examined here include the association of meanings denoting “smallness” or “nearness” with front vowels or palatal consonants, and the association of meanings denoting “largeness” or “distance” with back vowels or velar consonants. Our results provide evidence for the expected associations of vowels and consonants with meanings of “smallness” and “proximity” in Australian languages. However, the patterns uncovered in this region are more complicated than predicted. Several sound-meaning relationships are only significant for segments in prominent positions in the word, and the prevailing mapping between vowel quality and magnitude meaning cannot be characterized by a simple link between gradients of magnitude and vowel F2, contrary to the claims of previous studies.

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The naming of colors has long been a topic of interest in the study of human culture and cognition. Color term research has asked diverse questions about thought and communication, but no previous research has used an evolutionary framework. We show that there is broad support for the most influential theory of color term development (most strongly represented by Berlin and Kay [Berlin B, Kay P (1969) (Univ of California Press, Berkeley, CA)]); however, we find extensive evidence for the loss (as well as gain) of color terms. We find alternative trajectories of color term evolution beyond those considered in the standard theories. These results not only refine our knowledge of how humans lexicalize the color space and how the systems change over time; they illustrate the promise of phylogenetic methods within the domain of cognitive science, and they show how language change interacts with human perception.linguistics | color | cognitive science | evolution | Australian languages T he naming of colors has long been a topic of interest in the study of human culture and cognition. It is a key case study for the link between perception, language, and the categorization of the natural world (1-4). The assumptions central to these lines of research on color naming are often linked, whether implicitly or explicitly, with the ways in which color term systems are believed to evolve. One of the most noteworthy scholarly works on color terms, both in terms of its impact on subsequent research and its clear and explicit evolutionary hypotheses, is the classification system proposed by Berlin and Kay (5) and refined in subsequent works (6-8). However, despite the very clear hypothesis in this literature that the attested range of color-naming systems in language results from evolution along highly constrained pathways, very little has been done to test these claims. Here, we directly examine the evolutionary hypotheses associated with this research tradition: principally, that as color term systems evolve languages gain but never lose basic color terms; and that the order in which color terms are added to a language's lexicon is fixed. This approach capitalizes on the different patterns we should find in the presence of strong, universal cognitive constraints on color evolution, compared with those that might result from a more relativistic view, in which every language's color term system development follows a unique path. We use Bayesian phylogenetic methods, which allow us to probabilistically reconstruct ancestral inventories and evaluate claims regarding the order in which color terms enter (and leave) the lexicon. We apply these techniques to Australia's Pama-Nyungan language family.The Color Research Landscape Universal Patterns in Color Naming. Berlin and Kay's 1969 influential study (5) first established the notion of a universal, cross-linguistic typology of color term systems and ascribed the limited range of systems attested in their surveys to a strict developmental pathway. The model outlined in Berlin and Kay...

Although many hypotheses have been proposed to explain why humans speak so many languages and why languages are unevenly distributed across the globe, the factors that shape geographical patterns of cultural and linguistic diversity remain poorly understood. Prior research has tended to focus on identifying universal predictors of language diversity, without accounting for how local factors and multiple predictors interact. Here, we use a unique combination of path analysis, mechanistic simulation modelling, and geographically weighted regression to investigate the broadly described, but poorly understood, spatial pattern of language diversity in North America. We show that the ecological drivers of language diversity are not universal or entirely direct. The strongest associations imply a role for previously developed hypothesized drivers such as population density, resource diversity, and carrying capacity with group size limits. The predictive power of this web of factors varies over space from regions where our model predicts approximately 86% of the variation in diversity, to areas where less than 40% is explained.

How humans obtain food has dramatically reshaped ecosystems and altered both the trajectory of human history and the characteristics of human societies. Our species' subsistence varies widely, from predominantly foraging strategies, to plant-based agriculture and animal husbandry. The extent to which environmental, social and historical factors have driven such variation is currently unclear. Prior attempts to resolve long-standing debates on this topic have been hampered by an over-reliance on narrative arguments, small and geographically narrow samples, and by contradictory findings. Here we overcome these methodological limitations by applying multi-model inference tools developed in biogeography to a global dataset (818 societies). Although some have argued that unique conditions and events determine each society's particular subsistence strategy, we find strong support for a general global pattern in which a limited set of environmental, social and historical factors predicts an essential characteristic of all human groups: how we obtain our food.