Article published in:

Diachronica
Vol. 35:1 (2018) ► pp. 1–34

Areal pressure in grammatical evolution

An Indo-European case study

Chundra A. Cathcart | Lund University/University of Zurich

Gerd Carling | Lund University

Filip Larsson | Lund University

Niklas Johansson | Lund University

Erich Round | University of Queensland/University of Surrey

This article investigates the evolutionary and spatial dynamics of typological characters in 117 Indo-European languages. We partition types of change (i.e., gain or loss) for each variant according to whether they bring about a simplification in morphosyntactic patterns that must be learned, whether they are neutral (i.e., neither simplifying nor introducing complexity) or whether they introduce a more complex pattern. We find that changes which introduce complexity show significantly less areal signal (according to a metric we devise) than changes which simplify and neutral changes, but we find no significant differences between the latter two groups. This result is compatible with a scenario where certain types of parallel change are more likely to be mediated by advergence and contact between proximate speech communities, while other developments are due purely to drift and are largely independent of intercultural contact.

Keywords: areal linguistics, evolutionary linguistics, historical linguistics, complexity, language contact, Indo-European, typological change

This article is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 16 April 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.16035.cat

Full-text

Areal pressure in grammatical evolution

References

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y.

2007 Grammars in contact: A cross-linguistic perspective. In Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald & R. M. W. Dixon (eds.), Grammars in contact, 1–66. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Baayen, R. Harald

2008 Analyzing linguistic data: A practical introduction to statistics using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Baerman, Matthew, Dunstan Brown & Greville Corbett

(eds.) 2015 Understanding and measuring morphological complexity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bauer, Brigitte

2007 The definite article in Indo-European: Emergence of a new grammatical category? In Elisabeth Stark, Elisabeth Leiss & Werner Abraham (eds.), Nominal determination: Typology, context constraints, and historical emergence, 103–139. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Beaulieu, Jeremy M. & Brian C. O’Meara

2014 Hidden Markov models for studying the evolution of binary morphological characters. In László Zsolt Garamszegi (ed.), Modern phylogenetic comparative methods and their application in evolutionary biology: Concepts and practice, 395–408. Heidelberg: Springer.

Bentz, Christian & Bodo Winter

2013 Languages with more second language learners tend to lose nominal case. Language Dynamics and Change 3(1). 1–27.

[ p. 30 ]

Bickel, Balthasar

2011 Statistical modeling of language universals. Linguistic Typology 15. 401–413.

Bollback, Jonathan P.

2006 SIMMAP: Stochastic character mapping of discrete traits on phylogenies. BMC Bioinformatics 7. 88.

Botero, Carlos A., Beth Gardner, Kathryn R. Kirby, Joseph Bulbulia, Michael C. Gavin & Russell D. Gray

2014 The ecology of religious beliefs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111(47). 16784–16789.

Braunmüller, Kurt

1984 Morphologische Undurchsichtigkeit – ein Charakteristikum kleiner Sprachen. Kopenhagener Beiträge zur Germanistischen Linguistik 22. 48–68.

Carling, Gerd

(ed.) 2017 Diachronic atlas of comparative linguistics online. Lund: Lund University, https://diacl.ht.lu.se/ (30 July 2016).

Chang, William, Chundra Cathcart, David Hall & Andrew Garrett

2015 Ancestry-constrained phylogenetic analysis supports the Indo-European Steppe Hypothesis. Language 91(1). 194–244.

Clark, Philip J. & Francis C. Evans

1954 Distance to nearest neighbor as a measure of spatial relationships in populations. Ecology 35(4). 445–453.

Darlington, Richard B. & Andrew F. Hayes

2017 Regression analysis and linear models: Concepts, applications, and implementation. London: Guilford Press.

Daumé, Hal

2009 Non-parametric Bayesian areal linguistics. In Human language technologies: The 2009 annual conference of the North American chapter of the ACL, 593–601. Boulder, CO: Association for Computational Linguistics.

Dediu, Dan

2010 A Bayesian phylogenetic approach to estimating the stability of linguistic features and the genetic biasing of tone. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 278(1704). 474–479.

Delbrück, Berthold

1900 Vergleichende Syntax der indogermanischen Sprachen, vol. 3. Strassburg: Karl J. Trübner.

Drummond, A. J., M. A. Suchard, D. Xie & A. Rambaut

2012 Bayesian phylogenetics with BEAUti and the BEAST 1.7. Molecular Biology and Evolution 29(8). 1969–1973.

Dryer, Matthew S.

1989 Large linguistic areas and language sampling. Studies in Language 13(2). 257–292.

Dunn, Michael

2015 Language phylogenies. In Claire Bowern & Bethwyn Evans (eds.), The Routledge handbook of historical linguistics, 190–211. Oxford: Routledge.

Dunn, Michael, Tonya Kim Dewey, Carlee Arnett, Thórhallur Eythórsson & Jóhanna Barðdal

2017 Dative sickness: A phylogenetic analysis of argument structure evolution in Germanic. Language 93(1). e1–e22.

Dunn, Michael, Simon J. Greenhill, Stephen C. Levinson & Russell D. Gray

2011 Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals. Nature 473(7345). 79–82.

Dunn, Michael, Stephen C. Levinson, Eva Lindström, Ger Reesink & Angela Terrill

2008 Structural phylogeny in historical linguistics: Methodological explorations applied in Island Melanesia. Language 84(4). 710–759.

Felsenstein, Joseph

2004 Inferring phylogenies. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates.

Fortson, Benjamin W.

2015 Indo-European: Methods and problems. In Claire Bowern & Bethwyn Evans (eds.), The Routledge handbook of historical linguistics, 645–656. Oxford: Routledge.

[ p. 31 ]

François, Alexandre

2011 Social ecology and language history in the northern Vanuatu linkage: A tale of divergence and convergence. Journal of Historical Linguistics 1(2). 175–246.

Friedrich, Paul

1975 Proto-Indo-European syntax: The order of meaningful elements (Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph 1). Butte, MT: Montana College of Mineral Science and Technology.

Gamkrelidze, Tamaz & Vyacheslav I. Ivanov

1995 Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans (translated by Johanna Nichols). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Garrett, Andrew

2006 Convergence in the formation of Indo-European subgroups: Phylogeny and chronology. In Peter Forster & Colin Renfrew (eds.), Phylogenetic methods and the prehistory of languages, 139–151. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

Gelman, Andrew & Donald B. Rubin

1992 Inference from iterative simulation using multiple sequences. Statistical Science 7. 457–511.

Graham, Christopher

2016 Geographical correlates of rare word orders: A computational approach to quantitative typology and language contact. University of California, Davis dissertation.

Gumperz, John J. & Robert Wilson

1971 Convergence and creolization. In Dell Hymes (ed.), Pidginization and creolization of languages, 151–168. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Haspelmath, Martin, Matthew Dryer, David Gil & Bernard Comrie

2005 The world atlas of language structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Haug, Dag

2015 Treebanks in historical linguistic research. In Carlotta Viti (ed.), Perspectives on historical syntax, 187–202. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Haynie, Hannah, Claire Bowern & Hannah LaPalombara

2014 Sound symbolism in the languages of Australia. PloS One 9(4). e92852.

Hock, Hans Henrich

1996 [1993] Subversion or convergence? The issue of pre-Vedic retroflexion reexamined. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 23(2). 73–115.

Hoenigswald, Henry M.

1960 Language change and linguistic reconstruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

1966 Criteria for the subgrouping of languages. In Henrik Birnbaum & Jaan Puhvel (eds.), Ancient Indo-European dialects, 1–12. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Jäger, Gerhard & Johann-Mattis List

. Forthcoming. Using ancestral state reconstruction methods for onomasiological reconstruction in multilingual word lists. Language Dynamics and Change 8.

Jordan, Michael

2004 Graphical models. Statistical Science 19(1). 140–155.

Kroch, Anthony, Ann Taylor & Donald Ringe

2000 The Middle English verb-second constraint: A case study in language contact and language change. In Susan C. Herring, Pieter Th. van Reenen & Lene Schøsler (eds.), Textual parameters in older languages, 353–392. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Kusters, Wouter

2008 Complexity in linguistic theory, language learning and language change. In Matti Miestamo, Kaius Sinnemäki & Fred Karlsson (eds.), Language complexity: Typology, contact, change, 3–22. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Lass, Roger

1997 Historical linguistics and language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Liggett, Thomas M.

2010 Continuous time Markov processes: An introduction, vol. 113 Graduate Studies in Mathematics. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society.

[ p. 32 ]

List, Johann-Mattis, Shijulal Nelson-Sathi, William Martin & Hans Geisler

2014 Using phy-logenetic networks to model Chinese dialect history. In Søren Wichmann & Jeff Good (eds.), Quantifying language dynamics, 125–154. Leiden: Brill.

Lupyan, Gary & Rick Dale

2010 Language structure is partly determined by social structure. PLoS One 5. 1–10.

Martinet, André

1975 Évolution des langues et reconstruction. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

Meid, Wolfgang

1975 Probleme der räumlichen und zeitlichen Gliederung des Indogermanischen. In Helmut Rix (ed.), Flexion und Wortbildung, 204–19. Wiesbaden: Reichert.

Meillet, Antoine

1925 La méthode comparative en linguistique historique. Oslo: H. Aschehoug & Co.

Miestamo, Matti, Kaius Sinnemäki & Fred Karlsson

(eds.) 2008 Complexity in linguistic theory, language learning and language change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Nakhleh, Luay, Donald Ringe & Tandy Warnow

2005 Perfect phylogenetic networks: A new methodology for reconstructing the evolutionary history of natural languages. Language 81(2). 382–420.

Nichols, Johanna

1986 Head-marking and dependent-marking grammar. Language 62. 56–119.

1998 The Eurasian spread zone and the Indo-European dispersal. In Roger M. Blench & Matthew Spriggs (eds.), Archaeology and language II: Correlating archaeological and linguistic hypotheses, 220–266. London: Routledge.

2003 Diversity and stability in languages. In Brian D. Joseph & Richard D. Janda (eds.), The Oxford handbook of historical linguistics, 283–310. Oxford: Blackwell.

2009 Linguistic complexity: A comprehensive definition and survey. In Geoffrey Sampson, David Gil & Peter Trudgill (eds.), Language complexity as an evolving variable, 110–125. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nichols, Johanna & Tandy Warnow

2008 Tutorial on computational linguistic phylogeny. Language and Linguistics Compass 2(5). 760–820.

Nielsen, Rasmus

2002 Mapping mutations on phylogenies. Systematic Biology 51(5). 729–739.

Paradis, Emmanuel

2014 Simulation of phylogenetic data. In László Zsolt Garamszegi (ed.), Modern phylogenetic comparative methods and their application in evolutionary biology: Concepts and practice, 335–350. Heidelberg: Springer.

Renfrew, Colin

2000 At the edge of knowability: Towards a prehistory of languages. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10(1). 7–34.

Rosenthal, Jeffrey S.

2011 Optimal proposal distributions and adaptive MCMC. In Steve Brooks, Andrew Gelman, Galin L. Jones & Xiao-Li Meng (eds.), Handbook of Markov chain Monte Carlo, 93–112. Boca Raton, FL: Chapman & Hall/CRC.

Ross, Malcolm

2013 Diagnosing contact processes from their outcomes: The importance of life stages. Journal of Language Contact 6(1). 5–47.

Sapir, Edward

1921 Language: An introduction to the study of speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.

Schaller, Helmut Wilhelm

1975 Die Balkansprachen: eine Einführung in die Balkanphilologie. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

[ p. 33 ]

Swadesh, Morris

1952 Lexicostatistic dating of prehistoric ethnic contacts. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 96. 452–463.

1955 Towards greater accuracy in lexicostatistic dating. International Journal of American Linguistics 21. 121–137.

Trudgill, Peter

1974 Linguistic change and diffusion: Description and explanation in sociolinguistic dialect geography. Language in Society 3(2). 215–246.

2001 Contact and simplification: Historical baggage and directionality in linguistic change. Linguistic Typology 5. 371–374.

Vennemann, Theo

1994 Linguistic reconstruction in the context of European prehistory. Transactions of the Philological Society 92. 215–284.

Viti, Carlotta

2010 The information structure of OVS in Vedic. In Gisella Ferraresi & Rosemarie Lühr (eds.), Diachronic studies on information structure: Language acquisition and change, 37–62. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

2014 Reconstructing syntactic variation in Proto-Indo-European. Indo-European Linguistics 2. 73–111.

Wichmann, Søren

2015 Diachronic stability and typology. In Claire Bowern & Bethwyn Evans (eds.), The Routledge handbook of historical linguistics, 212–224. London: Routledge.

Willis, David

1998 Syntactic change in Welsh: A study of the loss of the verb-second. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Winford, Donald

2005 Contact-induced changes: Classification and processes. Diachronica 22(2). 373–427.

Yang, Ziheng

2014 Molecular evolution: A statistical approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Yanovich, Igor

2016 Genetic drift explains Sapir’s “drift” in semantic change. In Seán G. Roberts, Christine Cuskley, Luke McCrohon, Lluis Barceló-Coblijn, Olga Fehér & Tessa Verhoef (eds.), The evolution of language: Proceedings of the 11th international conference (EVOLANGX11), Online at http://evolang.org/neworleans/papers/24.html.

[ p. 34 ]

Cited by

Cited by other publications

Carling, Gerd, Filip Larsson, Chundra A. Cathcart, Niklas Johansson, Arthur Holmer, Erich Round, Rob Verhoeven & Muhammad Zubair Asghar

2018. Diachronic Atlas of Comparative Linguistics (DiACL)—A database for ancient language typology. PLOS ONE 13:10 ► pp. e0205313 ff.

List, Johann‐Mattis

2019. Automated methods for the investigation of language contact, with a focus on lexical borrowing. Language and Linguistics Compass 13:10

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 may 2020. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.