Does Lateral Transmission Obscure Inheritance in Hunter-Gatherer Languages?

Abstract

In recent years, linguists have begun to increasingly rely on quantitative phylogenetic approaches to examine language evolution. Some linguists have questioned the suitability of phylogenetic approaches on the grounds that linguistic evolution is largely reticulate due to extensive lateral transmission, or borrowing, among languages. The problem may be particularly pronounced in hunter-gatherer languages, where the conventional wisdom among many linguists is that lexical borrowing rates are so high that tree building approaches cannot provide meaningful insights into evolutionary processes. However, this claim has never been systematically evaluated, in large part because suitable data were unavailable. In addition, little is known about the subsistence, demographic, ecological, and social factors that might mediate variation in rates of borrowing among languages. Here, we evaluate these claims with a large sample of hunter-gatherer languages from three regions around the world. In this study, a list of 204 basic vocabulary items was collected for 122 hunter-gatherer and small-scale cultivator languages from three ecologically diverse case study areas: northern Australia, northwest Amazonia, and California and the Great Basin. Words were rigorously coded for etymological (inheritance) status, and loan rates were calculated. Loan rate variability was examined with respect to language area, subsistence mode, and population size, density, and mobility; these results were then compared to the sample of 41 primarily agriculturalist languages in [1]. Though loan levels varied both within and among regions, they were generally low in all regions (mean 5.06%, median 2.49%, and SD 7.56), despite substantial demographic, ecological, and social variation. Amazonian levels were uniformly very low, with no language exhibiting more than 4%. Rates were low but more variable in the other two study regions, in part because of several outlier languages where rates of borrowing were especially high. High mobility, prestige asymmetries, and language shift may contribute to the high rates in these outliers. No support was found for claims that hunter-gatherer languages borrow more than agriculturalist languages. These results debunk the myth of high borrowing in hunter-gatherer languages and suggest that the evolution of these languages is governed by the same type of rules as those operating in large-scale agriculturalist speech communities. The results also show that local factors are likely to be more critical than general processes in determining high (or low) loan rates.

The Areal Linguistics of Amazonia

“…Beier et al (2002), for example, argue that particular discourse practices, such as the dialogical discourse genres, ritual wailing, and the pragmatically-motivated use of evidentials are common over large areas of Amazonia in a manner consonant with that of a language region. Bowern et al (2011) similarly find that lexical borrowing is unusually low in Amazonia, in comparison with other global macro-regions (see also Section 2 above), a tendency that Epps (forthcoming) attributes to a widely diffused language ideology that discourages language mixing.…”

“…One area that has had some documentation is the Southern Guiana region, where Carib, Arawak, and Salivan groups exhibit notable cultural continuity resulting from "constant interaction through marriage, trade, and migration" (Rivière 1984: 8; see also Arhem 1989, Carlin 2011. Much like the other regions discussed here, linguistic distinctions are maintained as key markers of ethnic identity (Howard 2001: 341), and loanwords are relatively few (Carlin 2007, Bowern et al 2011. Carlin (2007) The Southern Guiana region may itself be part of a much larger contact zone that includes parts of the Orinoco and northern Amazon watersheds (Migliazza 1985: 20;cf.…”

“…In keeping with these maintenance practices, the region's languages have experienced remarkably low levels of lexical borrowing despite the intense, long-term contact among them. A systematic lexical study of ten different Vaupés languages reveals only 2-4% loans in basic vocabulary (Bowern et al 2011; see also Epps 2009), with slightly higher levels in flora-fauna and material/ritual culture terms (around 10-12% in Nadahup and Kakua-Nukak languages; lower in Tukanoan and Arawak). On the other hand, the existing loans include various Wanderwörter (see , Epps 2012, which offer the impression that if a lexical item is to be borrowed, it is likely to travel widely, possibly because it loses an association with a particular language in the process and thus becomes 'fair game' (see also Muysken 2012: 252).…”

“…Despite their close contact, Seifart (2011: 20) finds that only about 5% of Resigaro lexical stems have been borrowed from Bora (gauged via an extensive set of core and non-core vocabulary), of which many are flora-fauna terms; similarly low loan rates between Bora, Resigaro, and other languages of the region are identified in work by Bowern et al (2011. 5 However, Resigaro has borrowed a striking number of bound morphological forms, including whole sets of nominal classifiers (over half of Resigaro's total), number markers, quantifiers, and other forms, totaling over 50 distinct items (Seifart 2011(Seifart , 2012.…”

Universal typological dependencies should be detectable in the history of language families

“…In the construction of our trees known borrowings were removed from the analyses. Basic vocabulary generally has low rates of borrowing (Embleton 1986, Haspelmath & Tadmor 2009, Bowern et al 2011. Thus, while a small number of branches might be misplaced due to undetected borrowing, it is highly unlikely that our tree estimates are substantially biased by greater than 15 % rates of undetected borrowing.…”