Cover not available
Article published In:
Diachronica
Vol. 35:1 (2018) ► pp.1–34

Areal pressure in grammatical evolution

An Indo-European case study

| Lund University | University of Zurich
| Lund University
| Lund University
| Lund University
| 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: historical linguistics, evolutionary linguistics, areal linguistics, typological change, Indo-European, language contact, complexity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous literature
    • 2.1Quantitative typology
    • 2.2Phylogenetic linguistics and graphical models
  • 3.Materials and methods
  • 4.Data
    • 4.1DiACL
      • 4.1.1Areal dynamics across the dataset
    • 4.2Tree sample
      • 4.2.1Ancestry constraints
  • 5.Model
    • 5.1Evolutionary model
      • 5.1.1Rate inference
    • 5.2Changes in time and space
      • 5.2.1Character mapping
      • 5.2.2Ancestral state reconstruction
      • 5.2.3Birth/death simulation
  • 6.Results
    • 6.1Evaluation metrics
      • 6.1.1Capturing data at tips
      • 6.1.2Capturing ancient/medieval data
      • 6.1.3Dependencies
    • 6.2Reconstructions
    • 6.3Analysis
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Appendices
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 16 April 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.16035.cat
References (75)
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.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. Harald. 2008. Analyzing linguistic data: A practical introduction to statistics using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baerman, Matthew, Dunstan Brown & Greville Corbett (eds.). 2015. Understanding and measuring morphological complexity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bentz, Christian & Bodo Winter. 2013. Languages with more second language learners tend to lose nominal case. Language Dynamics and Change 3(1). 1–27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bickel, Balthasar. 2011. Statistical modeling of language universals. Linguistic Typology 151. 401–413. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bollback, Jonathan P. 2006. SIMMAP: Stochastic character mapping of discrete traits on phylogenies. BMC Bioinformatics 71. 88. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Braunmüller, Kurt. 1984. Morphologische Undurchsichtigkeit – ein Charakteristikum kleiner Sprachen. Kopenhagener Beiträge zur Germanistischen Linguistik 221. 48–68.Google Scholar
Carling, Gerd (ed.). 2017. Diachronic atlas of comparative linguistics online. Lund: Lund University, [URL] (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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, Philip J. & Francis C. Evans. 1954. Distance to nearest neighbor as a measure of spatial relationships in populations. Ecology 35(4). 445–453. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Darlington, Richard B. & Andrew F. Hayes. 2017. Regression analysis and linear models: Concepts, applications, and implementation. London: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
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.Google Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Delbrück, Berthold. 1900. Vergleichende Syntax der indogermanischen Sprachen, vol. 31. Strassburg: Karl J. Trübner.Google Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S. 1989. Large linguistic areas and language sampling. Studies in Language 13(2). 257–292. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dunn, Michael. 2015. Language phylogenies. In Claire Bowern & Bethwyn Evans (eds.), The Routledge handbook of historical linguistics, 190–211. Oxford: Routledge.Google Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Felsenstein, Joseph. 2004. Inferring phylogenies. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates.Google Scholar
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.Google Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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.Google Scholar
Gamkrelidze, Tamaz & Vyacheslav I. Ivanov. 1995. Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans (translated by Johanna Nichols). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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.Google Scholar
Gelman, Andrew & Donald B. Rubin. 1992. Inference from iterative simulation using multiple sequences. Statistical Science 71. 457–511. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Graham, Christopher. 2016. Geographical correlates of rare word orders: A computational approach to quantitative typology and language contact. University of California, Davis dissertation.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John J. & Robert Wilson. 1971. Convergence and creolization. In Dell Hymes (ed.), Pidginization and creolization of languages, 151–168. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin, Matthew Dryer, David Gil & Bernard Comrie. 2005. The world atlas of language structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Haug, Dag. 2015. Treebanks in historical linguistic research. In Carlotta Viti (ed.), Perspectives on historical syntax, 187–202. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Haynie, Hannah, Claire Bowern & Hannah LaPalombara. 2014. Sound symbolism in the languages of Australia. PloS One 9(4). e92852. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hock, Hans Henrich. 1996 [1993]. Subversion or convergence? The issue of pre-Vedic retroflexion reexamined. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 23(2). 73–115.Google Scholar
Hoenigswald, Henry M. 1960. Language change and linguistic reconstruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
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.Google Scholar
Jäger, Gerhard & Johann-Mattis List. Forthcoming. Using ancestral state reconstruction methods for onomasiological reconstruction in multilingual word lists. Language Dynamics and Change 81.
Jordan, Michael. 2004. Graphical models. Statistical Science 19(1). 140–155. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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.Google Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lass, Roger. 1997. Historical linguistics and language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liggett, Thomas M. 2010. Continuous time Markov processes: An introduction, vol. 1131 Graduate Studies in Mathematics. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lupyan, Gary & Rick Dale. 2010. Language structure is partly determined by social structure. PLoS One 51. 1–10. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martinet, André. 1975. Évolution des langues et reconstruction. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Meid, Wolfgang. 1975. Probleme der räumlichen und zeitlichen Gliederung des Indogermanischen. In Helmut Rix (ed.), Flexion und Wortbildung, 204–19. Wiesbaden: Reichert.Google Scholar
Meillet, Antoine. 1925. La méthode comparative en linguistique historique. Oslo: H. Aschehoug & Co.Google Scholar
Miestamo, Matti, Kaius Sinnemäki & Fred Karlsson (eds.). 2008. Complexity in linguistic theory, language learning and language change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nichols, Johanna. 1986. Head-marking and dependent-marking grammar. Language 621. 56–119. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2003. Diversity and stability in languages. In Brian D. Joseph & Richard D. Janda (eds.), The Oxford handbook of historical linguistics, 283–310. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 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.Google Scholar
Nichols, Johanna & Tandy Warnow. 2008. Tutorial on computational linguistic phylogeny. Language and Linguistics Compass 2(5). 760–820. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nielsen, Rasmus. 2002. Mapping mutations on phylogenies. Systematic Biology 51(5). 729–739. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Renfrew, Colin. 2000. At the edge of knowability: Towards a prehistory of languages. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10(1). 7–34. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ross, Malcolm. 2013. Diagnosing contact processes from their outcomes: The importance of life stages. Journal of Language Contact 6(1). 5–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language: An introduction to the study of speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.Google Scholar
Schaller, Helmut Wilhelm. 1975. Die Balkansprachen: eine Einführung in die Balkanphilologie. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.Google Scholar
Swadesh, Morris. 1952. Lexicostatistic dating of prehistoric ethnic contacts. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 961. 452–463.Google Scholar
. 1955. Towards greater accuracy in lexicostatistic dating. International Journal of American Linguistics 211. 121–137. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 1974. Linguistic change and diffusion: Description and explanation in sociolinguistic dialect geography. Language in Society 3(2). 215–246. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2001. Contact and simplification: Historical baggage and directionality in linguistic change. Linguistic Typology 51. 371–374.Google Scholar
Vennemann, Theo. 1994. Linguistic reconstruction in the context of European prehistory. Transactions of the Philological Society 921. 215–284. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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.Google Scholar
. 2014. Reconstructing syntactic variation in Proto-Indo-European. Indo-European Linguistics 21. 73–111. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wichmann, Søren. 2015. Diachronic stability and typology. In Claire Bowern & Bethwyn Evans (eds.), The Routledge handbook of historical linguistics, 212–224. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Willis, David. 1998. Syntactic change in Welsh: A study of the loss of the verb-second. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Winford, Donald. 2005. Contact-induced changes: Classification and processes. Diachronica 22(2). 373–427. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yang, Ziheng. 2014. Molecular evolution: A statistical approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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 [URL].
Cited by (16)

Cited by 16 other publications

Bowern, Claire, Margaret Thomas, Andrew Garrett, James Kirby, Wilkinson Daniel Wong Gonzales, Tamisha L. Tan, Terttu Nevalainen, Patience Epps & Don Daniels
2024. Diachrony and Diachronica . Diachronica DOI logo
Round, Erich R.
2024. Ancient languages and algorithms. Diachronica DOI logo
Sinnemäki, Kaius, Francesca Di Garbo, Ricardo Napoleão de Souza & T. Mark Ellison
2024. A typological approach to language change in contact situations. Diachronica DOI logo
Her, One-Soon & Bing-Tsiong Li
2023. Chapter 5. A single origin of numeral classifiers in Asia and the Pacific. In Nominal Classification in Asia and Oceania [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 362], ► pp. 113 ff. DOI logo
Levshina, Natalia, Savithry Namboodiripad, Marc Allassonnière-Tang, Mathew Kramer, Luigi Talamo, Annemarie Verkerk, Sasha Wilmoth, Gabriela Garrido Rodriguez, Timothy Michael Gupton, Evan Kidd, Zoey Liu, Chiara Naccarato, Rachel Nordlinger, Anastasia Panova & Natalia Stoynova
2023. Why we need a gradient approach to word order. Linguistics 61:4 ► pp. 825 ff. DOI logo
Goldstein, David
2022. Correlated grammaticalization. Diachronica 39:5 ► pp. 658 ff. DOI logo
Goldstein, David
2024. Divergence-time estimation in Indo-European. Diachronica 41:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Macklin-Cordes, Jayden L. & Erich R. Round
2022. Challenges of sampling and how phylogenetic comparative methods help: with a case study of the Pama-Nyungan laminal contrast. Linguistic Typology 26:3 ► pp. 533 ff. DOI logo
Carling, Gerd & Chundra Cathcart
2021. Evolutionary dynamics of Indo-European alignment patterns. Diachronica 38:3 ► pp. 358 ff. DOI logo
Hoffmann, Konstantin, Remco Bouckaert, Simon J Greenhill & Denise Kühnert
2021. Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of linguistic data using BEAST. Journal of Language Evolution 6:2 ► pp. 119 ff. DOI logo
List, Johann-Mattis & Robert Forkel
2021. Automated identification of borrowings in multilingual wordlists. Open Research Europe 1 ► pp. 79 ff. DOI logo
List, Johann-Mattis & Robert Forkel
2021. Automated identification of borrowings in multilingual wordlists. Open Research Europe 1 ► pp. 79 ff. DOI logo
List, Johann-Mattis & Robert Forkel
2022. Automated identification of borrowings in multilingual wordlists. Open Research Europe 1 ► pp. 79 ff. DOI logo
Wichmann, Søren & Taraka Rama
2021. Testing methods of linguistic homeland detection using synthetic data. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 376:1824 DOI logo
List, Johann‐Mattis
2019. Automated methods for the investigation of language contact, with a focus on lexical borrowing. Language and Linguistics Compass 13:10 DOI logo
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. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 october 2024. 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.