Is the rate of linguistic change constant?

Nettle, Daniel

doi:10.1016/s0024-3841(98)00047-3

Cited by 92 publications

(84 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…This assertion, however, must be treated with suspicion, because, first, we have no fixed points at all against which to calibrate the date, and second, we do not know whether the rate of linguistic change is constant. It is most likely that it is not (24). It must be emphasized, in any case, that the stock is defined by a degree of linguistic similarity and not by a known age.…”

Section: The Distribution Of Linguistic Diversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Linguistic diversity of the Americas can be reconciled with a recent colonization

Nettle

1999

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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The Americas harbor a very great diversity of indigenous language stocks, many more than are found in any other continent. J. Nichols [(1990) Language 66, 475-521] has argued that this diversity indicates a great time depth of in situ evolution. She thus infers that the colonization of the Americas must have begun around 35,000 years ago. This estimate is much earlier than the date for which there is strong archaeological support, which does not much exceed 12,000 years. Nichols' assumption is that the diversity of linguistic stocks increases linearly with time. This paper compares the major continents of the world to show that this assumption is not correct. In fact, stock diversity is highest in the Americas, which are by consensus the youngest continents, intermediate in Australia and New Guinea, and lowest in Africa and Eurasia where the time depth is greatest. If anything, then, after an initial radiation, stock diversity decreases with time. A simple model is outlined that predicts these dynamics. It assumes that early in the peopling of continents, there are many unfilled niches for communities to live in, and so fissioning into new lineages is frequent. As the habitat is filled up, the rate of fissioning declines and lineage extinction becomes the dominant evolutionary force.The question of when and how the Americas were colonized is one of the most intriguing in human prehistory and continues to generate a huge literature. The discipline that traditionally has dominated this literature is archaeology, for it is only archaeology that can provide direct evidence of prehistoric human presence in an area, and only archaeology that has an absolute method of dating such a presence (1-3). More recently, however, the considerations of archaeologists have been augmented by two other sources of information. The first of these is molecular genetics, which, by assuming approximate constancy in the mutation rate, can provide indirect methods of inferring the date of divergence of human populations (4-9). The second is comparative linguistics. Linguists have used the distribution of pre-Columbian language families in the Americas, in conjunction with inferences about rates and patterns of diversification, to attempt to reach back into the past (10-12). The best known conclusion to be drawn from the linguistic data is that of the innovative study by Johanna Nichols, who infers from the great linguistic diversity of the Americas that the time depth of human habitation must far exceed that accepted by the majority of archaeologists (10). In this paper, I argue that Nichols' assumptions lack empirical validity, and that the very linguistic data she discusses are equally compatible with, if not suggestive of, a recent colonization.

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Section: The Distribution Of Linguistic Diversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Linguistic diversity of the Americas can be reconciled with a recent colonization

Nettle

1999

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…However, opinions differ on both the possible mechanisms and the expected patterns (2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7). It has been suggested that larger populations will generate more innovations and are less prone to random loss of cultural elements (8)(9)(10), but may have less efficient diffusion of innovations than smaller populations (4).…”

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“…Systematic variation in the rates of language change may affect attempts to reconstruct the history of human cultures from comparative language data, particularly the estimation of time (21). Theoretical modeling has been used to explore the consequences of population size on rates of language evolution; however, such models unavoidably require prior assumptions about the way language change diffuses through populations (4,6). Tests of population size effects have so far been equivocal and have been limited by the availability of appropriate data and methodology (3,7,22).…”

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confidence: 99%

Rate of language evolution is affected by population size

Bromham

Hua

Fitzpatrick

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

101

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The effect of population size on patterns and rates of language evolution is controversial. Do languages with larger speaker populations change faster due to a greater capacity for innovation, or do smaller populations change faster due to more efficient diffusion of innovations? Do smaller populations suffer greater loss of language elements through founder effects or drift, or do languages with more speakers lose features due to a process of simplification? Revealing the influence of population size on the tempo and mode of language evolution not only will clarify underlying mechanisms of language change but also has practical implications for the way that language data are used to reconstruct the history of human cultures. Here, we provide, to our knowledge, the first empirical, statistically robust test of the influence of population size on rates of language evolution, controlling for the evolutionary history of the populations and formally comparing the fit of different models of language evolution. We compare rates of gain and loss of cognate words for basic vocabulary in Polynesian languages, an ideal test case with a well-defined history. We demonstrate that larger populations have higher rates of gain of new words whereas smaller populations have higher rates of word loss. These results show that demographic factors can influence rates of language evolution and that rates of gain and loss are affected differently. These findings are strikingly consistent with general predictions of evolutionary models. language evolution | sister-pair comparison | Austronesian | lexical change | Poisson regression P opulation size can play a crucial role in the evolution of languages and cultures (1). However, opinions differ on both the possible mechanisms and the expected patterns (2-7). It has been suggested that larger populations will generate more innovations and are less prone to random loss of cultural elements (8-10), but may have less efficient diffusion of innovations than smaller populations (4). Alternatively, languages spoken by small isolated populations of speakers may have lower rates of loss if they maintain tighter cultural norms that improve transmission and resist change (11). Rates of change might be accelerated by founder effects when a new population is started from a small number of colonists, which could result in loss of elements from the ancestral language (11-13). Population size might also influence language complexity if small populations can develop greater linguistic complexity (11), whereas large, widespread languages that are often learned by adults may become simplified (14). Conversely, it has been suggested that the average rate of word turnover is essentially the same in all languages (15-17), or that it is determined primarily by other factors such as language contact (6, 18).Uncovering systematic patterns of rates of language change may reveal underlying mechanisms of language evolution (13,19). In particular, investigating rates of language change can demonstrate whether langua...

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“…It is a well-known feature of language change that rates are variable (e.g., Hoenigswald 1960, Nettle 1999, Blust 2000, Atkinson et al 2008, Greenhill et al 2010a). The apparent intractability of this problem is what led to the abandonment of phylogenetic inference by distance methods (lexicostatistics) by mainstream linguistics.…”

Section: Variable Rates Of Changementioning

confidence: 99%

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

Levinson

Greenhill

Gray

et al. 2011

Linguistic Typology

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1. Introduction We claim that making sense of the typological diversity of languages demands a historical/evolutionary approach.We are pleased that the target paper (Dunn et al. 2011a) has served to bring discussion of this claim into prominence, and are grateful that leading typologists have taken the time to respond (commentaries denoted by boldface). It is unfortunate though that a number of the commentaries in this issue of LT show significant misunderstandings of our paper. Donohue thinks we were out to show the stability of typological features, but that was not our target at all (although related methods can be used to do that: see, e.g., Greenhill et al. 2010a, Dediu 2011a). Plank seems to think we were arguing against universals of any type, but our target was in fact just the implicational universals of word order that have been the bread and butter of typology. He also seems to think we ignore diachrony, whereas in fact the method introduces diachrony centrally into typological reasoning, thereby potentially revolutionising typology (see Cysouw’s commentary). Levy & Daumé think we were testing for lineage-specificity, whereas that was in fact an outcome (the main finding) of our testing for correlated evolution. Dryer thinks we must account for the distribution of language types around the world, but that was not our aim: our aim was to test the causal connection between linguistic variables by taking the perspective of language evolution (diversification and change). Longobardi & Roberts seem to think we set out to extract family trees from syntactic features, but our goal was in fact to use trees based on lexical cognates and hang reconstructed syntactic states on each node of these trees, thereby reconstructing the processes of language change

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Is the rate of linguistic change constant?

Cited by 92 publications

References 13 publications

Linguistic diversity of the Americas can be reconciled with a recent colonization

Linguistic diversity of the Americas can be reconciled with a recent colonization

Rate of language evolution is affected by population size

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

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