Perfect Phylogenetic Networks: A New Methodology for Reconstructing the Evolutionary History of Natural Languages

Abstract

In this paper we extend the Ringe-Warnow model of language evolution to include the case where languages remain in contact, trading linguistic material, as they evolve. We describe our analysis of an Indo-European dataset (originally assembled by Ringe and Taylor) based on this new model. Our study shows that this new model fits the IE family well and suggests that the early evolution of IE involved only limited contact between distinct lineages. Furthermore, the candidate histories we obtain appear to be consistent with archaeological findings, which suggests that this method may be of practical use.

Evolutionary Phylogenetic Networks: Models and Issues

“…Nakhleh et al proposed multi-state perfect phylogenetic networks 6 to model the evolutionary histories of natural languages in the presence of borrowing [77]. The Character Compatibility on Phylogenetic Networks Problem is to decide whether a given phylogenetic network is a perfect phylogenetic network for a set C of characters (alternatively, a leaf-labeling λ k ).…”

Cultural macroevolution and the transmission of traits

“…This could change, however, with recent methodological advances such as split decomposition, 65 which can evaluate borrowing within a tree, and perfect phylogenetic networks. 66 Split decomposition methods do not force the data to fit a tree, but rather check for nontree-like signals in the data. 67 In studying the evolution of Austronesian languages in the Pacific, Hurles and coworkers 23 use split decomposition to show that horizontal language transmission occurs at periods when there was a pause, archeologically speaking, in the expansion of the Lapita people, and presumably when there was a chance for more genetic and cultural exchange among the indigenous and the newly arrived dispersing populations.…”

Reconstructing Evolution of Natural Languages: Complexity and Parameterized Algorithms

“…Taking the advantage of the fact the the number of b-edges in the phylogenetic network is small [9], the BCCPN problem can be naturally parameterized by the number of b-edges, k, in the phylogenetic network. We call this problem the Parameterized BCCPN problem.…”

“…To address this issue, Nakhleh et al introduced the perfect phylogenetic networks (PPN) model in which languages do not evolve via a clean speciation process [8,9]. They proved the NPhardness of the problem of testing whether a network is a perfect phylogenetic one for characters exhibiting at least three states, leaving open the case of binary characters, and gave a straightforward O(3 k n) time parameterized algorithm for the problem [8], where k is the number of bidirectional edges in the network and n is its size.…”