Inferring recent evolutionary changes in speech sounds

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate evolutionarily recent changes in the distributions of speech sounds in the world's languages. In particular, we explore the impact of language contact in the past two millennia on today's distributions. Based on three extensive databases of phonological inventories, we analyse the discrepancies between the distribution of speech sounds of ancient and reconstructed languages, on the one hand, and those in present-day languages, on the other. Furthermore, we analyse the degree to which the diffusion of speech sounds via language contact played a role in these discrepancies. We find evidence for substantive differences between ancient and present-day distributions, as well as for the important role of language contact in shaping these distributions over time. Moreover, our findings suggest that the distributions of speech sounds across geographic macro-areas were homogenized to an observable extent in recent millennia. Our findings suggest that what we call the Implicit Uniformitarian Hypothesis, at least with respect to the composition of phonological inventories, cannot be held uncritically. Linguists who would like to draw inferences about human language based on present-day cross-linguistic distributions must consider their theories in light of even short-term language evolution. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Reconstructing prehistoric languages’.

The sounds of prehistoric speech

“…Other contributions in this volume take a more phoneme-based approach (e.g. [6]). Such an approach is essential, but phonemes relate only obliquely to the frequency of particular articulations in speech, and that frequency is also critical to understanding patterns that are most representative of speech.…”

What’s in the r? A review of the usage of the r symbol in the Illustrations of the IPA

“…Finally, in the Section 5, 'Discussion and conclusions', we suggest that care should be taken when taking the symbol r at face value in grammars, databases and other linguistic resources without further clarification. As a corollary, our findings might signal the need to re-evaluate already published research concerning the frequency of the alveolar trill within and between languages (Maddieson 1984), its areal and genealogical patterning, and the forces influencing these patterns (Moran, Lester & Grossman 2021), its acquisition (McLeod & Crowe 2018, Stemberger & Bernhardt 2018 and its extra-linguistic associations (Winter et al 2022), among others. However, we emphasize that our work should not be taken as negative, but as a positive, constructive contribution to the establishment of clearer transcription guidelines, ensuring a better consistency between large cross-linguistic databases, and promoting the use of statistical methods that better handle the ambiguity of most existing resources.…”

Investigating environmental effects on phonology using diachronic models

“…The first is the case of borrowing between languages in contact. Moran, Lester, and Grossman (2021) estimate the effect of borrowing on speech sounds to be considerable, and M.-h. Zhang, Pan, Yan, and Jin (2018) use admixture models to show that phonemic features, including tone, are likely to have undergone borrowing in the evolution of Chinese dialects. Therefore, borrowing represents a major confound for the link between humidity and tone (Collins, 2016(Collins, , 2017.…”