Article published in:
Diachronica
Vol. 37:3 (2020) ► pp. 410–446

Phylogenetic linguistic evidence and the Dene-Yeniseian homeland

| Universität Tübingen
Sicoli & Holton (2014) (PLoS ONE 9:3, e91722) use computational phylogenetics to argue that linguistic data from the putative, but likely, Dene-Yeniseian macro-family are better compatible with a homeland in Beringia (i.e., northeastern Siberia plus northwestern Alaska) than with one in central Siberia or deeper Asia. I show that a more careful examination of the data invalidates this conclusion: in fact, linguistic data do not support Beringia as the homeland. In the course of showing this, I discuss, without requiring a deep mathematical background, a number of methodological issues concerning computational phylogenetic analyses of linguistic data and drawing inferences from them. The aim is to contribute to making computational phylogenetics less of a black box for historical linguists. I conclude with a brief overview of the current evidence bearing on the Dene-Yeniseian homeland from linguistics, archaeology, folklore studies and genetics, and suggest current best practice for linguistic phylogenetics, the use of which would have helped to avoid some of the problems in Sicoli and Holton’s Dene-Yeniseian study, and in turn the percolation of those problems into subsequent synthetic interdisciplinary research.
Keywords: Dene-Yeniseian, Na-Dene, Yeniseian, Beringia, phylogenetics, tree prior, languages and genes, computational historical linguistics
Published online: 15 July 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.17038.yan
References

References

Berezkin, Yuriy Evgenyevich
2010 Mifologičeskie obyasneniya smertnosti čeloveka i problema proiskhoždeniya na-dene [Mythological explanations for the mortality of man, and the problem of Na-Dene origins]. In Ot bytiya k inobytiyu. Folklor i pogrebal’nyj ritual v tradicionnykh kul’turakh Sibiri i Ameriki [From being to other-being. Folklore and mortuary rite in the traditional cultures of Siberia and the Americas], 7–50. Saint Petersburg: MAE RAN.Google Scholar
Bouckaert, Remco, Joseph Heled, Denise Kühnert, Tim Vaughan, Chieh-Hsi Wu, Dong Xie, Marc A. Suchard, Andrew Rambaut & Alexei J. Drummond
2014 BEAST 2: A software platform for Bayesian evolutionary analysis. PLoS Computational Biology 10(4). e1003537. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bouckaert, Remco, Philippe Lemey, Michael Dunn, Simon J. Greenhill, Alexander V. Alekseyenko, Alexei J. Drummond, Russell D. Gray, Marc A. Suchard & Quentin D. Atkinson
2012 Mapping the origins and expansion of the Indo-European language family. Science 337. 957–960. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Brooks, Stephen P. & Andrew Gelman
1998 General methods for monitoring convergence of iterative simulations. Statistical Science 7(4). 434–455.Google Scholar
Campbell, Lyle
2011 Review of “The Dene-Yeniseian connection”. International Journal of American Linguistics 77(3). 445–451. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Peter U., Arthur S. Dyke, Jeremy D. Shakun, Anders E. Carlson, Jorie Clark, Barbara Wohlfarth, Jerry X. Mitrovica, Steven W. Hostetler & A. Marshall McCabe
2009 The last glacial maximum. Science 325(5941). 710–714. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dos Reis, Mario & Ziheng Yang
2013 The unbearable uncertainty of Bayesian divergence time estimation. Journal of Systematics and Evolution 5(1). 30–43. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Drummond, Alexei J. & Remco R. Bouckaert
2015 Bayesian evolutionary analysis with BEAST. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Flegontov, Pavel, N. Ezgi Altinisik, Piya Changmai, Nadin Rohland, Swapan Mallick, Deborah A. Bolnick, Francesca Candilio, Olga Flegontova, Choongwon Jeong, Thomas K. Harper, Denise Keating, Douglas J. Kennett, Alexander M. Kim, Thiseas C. Lamnidis, Iñigo Olalde, Jennifer Raff, Robert A. Sattler, Pontus Skoglund, Edward J. Vajda, Sergey Vasilyev, Elizaveta Veselovskaya, M. Geoffrey Hayes, Dennis H. O’Rourke, Ron Pinhasi, Johannes Krause, David Reich & Stephan Schiffels
2017 Paleo-Eskimo genetic legacy across North America. Unpublished preprint, https://​www​.biorxiv​.org​/content​/10​.1101​/203018v1. Crossref
Flegontov, Pavel, Piya Changmai, Anastassiya Zidkova, Maria D. Logacheva, N. Ezgi Altınışik, Olga Flegontova, Mikhail S. Gelfand, Evgeny S. Gerasimov, Ekaterina E. Khrameeva, Olga P. Konovalova, Tatiana Neretina, Yuri V. Nikolsky, George Starostin, Vita V. Stepanova, Igor V. Travinsky, Martin Tříska, Petr Tříska & Tatiana V. Tatarinova
2016 Genomic study of the Ket: a Paleo-Eskimo-related ethnic group with significant ancient North Eurasian ancestry. Scientific Reports 6. 20768. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gernhard, Tanja
2008 The conditioned reconstructed process. Journal of Theoretical Biology 253(4). 769–778. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ho, Simon Y. W. & Sebastián Duchêne
2014 Molecular-clock methods for estimating evolutionary rates and timescales. Molecular Ecology 23. 5947–5965. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hoffecker, John F., Scott A. Elias, Dennis H. O’Rourke, G. Richard Scott & Nancy H. Bigelow
2016 Beringia and the global dispersal of modern humans. Evolutionary Anthropology. Issues, News and Reviews 25(2). 64–78. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kassian, Alexei
2016 Global lexicostatistical database. Na-Dene family: Athapaskan group. Available at starling​.rinet​.ru
Kibrik, Andrej A.
1993 Transitivity increase in Athabaskan languages. In Bernard Comrie & Maria Polinsky (eds.), Causatives and transitivity, 47–67. Amsterdam: Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul
2015 New perspectives in historical linguistics. In Claire Bowern & Bethwyn Evans (eds.), The Routledge handbook of historical linguistics, 64–102. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kolipakam, Vishnupriya, Fiona M. Jordan, Michael Dunn, Simon J. Greenhill, Remco Bouckaert, Russell D. Gray & Annemarie Verkerk
2018 A Bayesian phylogenetic study of the Dravidian language family. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 5(3). 171504.Google Scholar
Krauss, Michael E.
1968 Noun classification systems in Athapaskan, Eyak, Tlingit and Haida verbs. International Journal ofAmerican Linguistics 34(3). 194–203. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1969 On the classifiers in the Athapaskan, Eyak and Tlingit verb. International Journal of American Linguistics memoir 24, supplement to issue 4. 51–83.Google Scholar
Lewis, Paul O.
2001 A likelihood approach to estimating phylogeny from discrete morphological character data. Systematic Biology 50(6). 913–925. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Maurits, Luke, Robert Forkel, Gereon A. Kaiping & Quentin D. Atkinson
2017 BEASTling: A software tool for linguistic phylogenetics using BEAST 2. PLoS ONE 12(8). e0180908. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Moreno-Mayar, J. Víctor, Lasse Vinner, Peter de Barros Damgaard, Constanza de la Fuente, Jeffrey Chan, Jeffrey P. Spence, Morten E. Allentoft, Tharsika Vimala, Fernando Racimo, Thomaz Pinotti, Simon Rasmussen, Ashot Margaryan, Miren Iraeta Orbegozo, Dorothea Mylopotamitaki, Matthew Wooller, Clement Bataille, Lorena Becerra-Valdivia, David Chivall, Daniel Comeskey, Thibaut Devièse, Donald K. Grayson, Len George, Harold Harry, Verner Alexandersen, Charlotte Primeau, Jon Erlandson, Claudia Rodrigues-Carvalho, Silvia Reis, Murilo Q. R. Bastos, Jerome Cybulski, Carlos Vullo, Flavia Morello, Miguel Vilar, Spencer Wells, Kristian Gregersen, Kasper Lykke Hansen, Niels Lynnerup, Marta Mirazón Lahr, Kurt Kjær, André Strauss, Marta Alfonso-Durruty, Antonio Salas, Hannes Schroeder, Thomas Higham, Ripan S. Malhi, Jeffrey T. Rasic, Luiz Souza, Fabricio R. Santos, Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas, Martin Sikora, Rasmus Nielsen, Yun S. Song, David J. Meltzer & Eske Willerslev
2018 Early human dispersals within the Americas. Science 362. 6419 and eaav2621. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Nikolaev, Sergei
2014 Toward the reconstruction of Proto-Na-Dene. Journal of Language Relationship 11. 103–123. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Potter, Ben A.
2011 Archaeological patterning in Northeast Asia and Northwest North America: An examination of the Dene-Yeniseian hypothesis. In James Kari, Ben A. Potter & Edward Vajda (eds.), The Dene-Yeniseian connection, 138–167. Fairbanks: ANLC.Google Scholar
Raftery, Adrian E., Michael A. Newton, Jaya M. Satagopan & Pavel N. Krivitsky
2007 Estimating the integrated likelihood via posterior simulation using the harmonic mean identity. In J. M. Bernardo, M. J. Bayarri, J. O. Berger, A. P. Dawid, D. Heckerman, A. F. M. Smith & M. West (eds.), Bayesian statistics 8, 1–45. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rice, Keren
2000 Voice and valency in the Athapaskan family. In R. M. W. Dixon & Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds.), Changing valency. Case studies in transitivity, 173–235. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ritchie, Andrew M., Nathan Lo & Simon Y. W. Ho
2017 The impact of the tree prior on molecular dating of data sets containing a mixture of inter- and intraspecies sampling. Systematic Biology 66(3). 413–425.Google Scholar
Ronquist, Fredrik, John Huelsenbeck & Maxim Teslenko
2011 MrBayes version 3.2 manual. http://​nbisweden​.github​.io​/MrBayes​/manual​.htmlGoogle Scholar
Ronquist, Fredrik, Seraina Klopfstein, Lars Vilhelmsen, Susanne Schulmeister, Bebra L. Murray & Alexandr P. Rasnitsyn
2012a A total-evidence approach to dating with fossils, applied to the early radiation of the Hymenoptera. Systematic Biology 61(6). 973–999. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ronquist, Fredrik, Paul van der Mark & John P. Huelsenbeck
2009 Bayesian phylogenetic analysis using MrBayes. Theory. Practice. In The phylogenetic handbook, 2nd edn., 210–266. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ronquist, Fredrik, Maxim Teslenko, Paul van der Mark, Daniel L. Ayres, Aaron Darling, Sebastian Höhna, Bret Larget, Liang Liu, Marc A. Suchard & John P. Huelsenbeck
2012b MrBayes 3.2: efficient Bayesian phylogenetic inference and model choice across a large model space. Systematic Biology 61(3). 539–542. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sicoli, Mark A. & Gary Holton
2014 Linguistic phylogenies support back-migration from Beringia to Asia. PLoS ONE 9(3). e91722. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Skoglund, Pontus & David Reich
2016 A genomic view of the peopling of the Americas. Current Opinion in Genetics and Development 41. 27–35. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Starostin, George
2012 Dene-Yeniseian: A critical assessment. Journal of Language Relationship 8. 117–138. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tamm, Erika, Toomas Kivisild, Maere Reidla, Mait Metspalu, David Glenn Smith, Connie J. Mulligan, Claudio M. Bravi, Olga Rickards, Cristina Martinez-Labarga, Elsa K. Khusnutdinova, Sardana A. Fedorova, Maria V. Golubenko, Vadim A. Stepanov, Marina A. Gubina, Sergey I. Zhadanov, Ludmila P. Ossipova, Larisa Damba, Mikhail I. Voevoda, Jose E. Dipierri, Richard Villems & Ripan S. Malhi
2007 Beringian standstill and spread of Native American founders. PLoS ONE 2(9). e829. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Thorne, Jeffrey L. & Hirohisa Kishino
2002 Divergence time and evolutionary rate estimation with multilocus data. Systematic Biology 51(5). 689–702. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Vajda, Edward J.
2011 A Siberian link with Na-Dene languages. In James Kari, Ben A. Potter & Edward J. Vajda (eds.), The Dene-Yeniseian connection, 33–99. Fairbanks: ANLC.Google Scholar
2012 The Dene-Yeniseian connection: A reply to G. Starostin. Journal of Language Relationship 8. 138–152. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2013 Vestigial possessive morphology in Na-Dene and Yeniseian. In Sharon Hargus, Edward Vajda & Daniel Hieber (eds.), Working papers in Athabaskan (Dene) languages 2012, vol. 11 Alaska Native Language Center Working Papers, Fairbanks: ANLC.Google Scholar
2015 Valency properties of the Ket verb clause. In Andrej Malchukov & Bernard Comrie (eds.), Valency classes in the world’s languages, 629–668. Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
2017a Overview of the Dene-Yeniseian linguistic hypothesis. Supplementary Information section 10 of bioRxiv preprint Flegontov et al. (2017) CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2017b Patterns of innovation and retention in templatic polysynthesis. In Michael Fortescue, Marianne Mithun & Nicholas Evans (eds.), The Oxford handbook of polysynthesis, 363–391. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2018 Dene-Yeniseian: progress and unanswered questions. Diachronica 35(2). 277–295. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Watson, Traci
2017 Is theory about peopling of the Americas a bridge too far? [news feature]. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114(22). 5554–5557. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Joseph A. P.
2016 The union of two worlds: Reconstructing elements of Proto-Athabaskan folklore and religion. Folklore 127(1). 26–50. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Xie, Wangang, Paul O. Lewis, Yu Fan, Lynn Kuo & Ming-Hui Chen
2011 Improving marginal likelihood estimation for Bayesian phylogenetic model selection. Systematic Biology 60(2). 150–160. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Yang, Ziheng
1993 Maximum-likelihood estimation of phylogeny from DNA sequences when substitution rates differ over sites. Molecular Biology and Evolution 10(6). 1396–1401.Google Scholar
Yanovich, Igor
2018 The effect of dictionary omissions on phylogenies computationally inferred from lexical data. Language Dynamics and Change 8(1). 78–107. CrossrefGoogle Scholar