Article published in:
Diachronica
Vol. 39:2 (2022) ► pp. 193–225

Environmental factors affect the evolution of linguistic subgroups in Borneo

| The Chinese University of Hong Kong
| University of North Texas
This study investigates the relatedness and history of the Austronesian languages of Borneo, which is the third largest island in the world and home to significant linguistic diversity. We apply Bayesian phylogenetic dating methods to lexical cognate data based on four historical calibration points to infer a dated phylogeny of 87 languages. The inferred tree topology agrees with the mid and lower-level subgrouping proposals based on the classical comparative method, but suggests a different higher-level organization. The root age of the dated tree is shallower than the archaeological estimates but agrees with a hypothesis of a past linguistic leveling event. The inferred homelands of the major linguistic subgroups from a Bayesian phylogeographic analysis agree with the homeland proposals from archaeology and linguistics. The inferred homelands for four of the eight subgroups support the riverine homeland hypothesis whereby the major linguistic subgroups developed initially in communities situated along Borneo’s major rivers.
Keywords: Bayesian phylogenetics, homeland, Austronesian, Borneo
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Materials and methods
    • 2.1Data
    • 2.2Bornean Subgrouping from Smith (2017a)
    • 2.3Cognate detection
    • 2.4Bayesian phylogenetic dating
      • Lexical evolution model
      • Tree Prior
      • Calibration points
      • Monte-Carlo Markov chain settings
      • Topological constraints
    • 2.5Geographical reconstruction
    • 2.6Test of riverine hypothesis
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Cognate detection
    • 3.2Network analysis
    • 3.3Dating
      • 3.3.1Tree topology accuracy
      • 3.3.2Effect of topological constraints on root age
      • 3.3.3Leave-one out prediction of calibration points
      • 3.3.4Priors only analysis
    • 3.4Test of geographical reconstruction methods
    • 3.5Riverine hypothesis test
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Subgrouping
    • 4.2Dating
    • 4.3Homeland inference
    • 4.4Riverine hypothesis and the dispersal of major subgroups
      • 4.4.1Malayic and Land Dayak
      • 4.4.2North Sarawak
      • 4.4.3Central Sarawak
      • 4.4.4Kayanic
      • 4.4.5Southwest Sabah and Northeast Sabah
      • 4.4.6Barito
      • 4.4.7Overall migration patterns
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 January 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.20024.smi
References
Adelaar, K. Alexander
1989 Malay influence on Malagasy: Linguistic and cultural-historical implications. Oceanic Linguistics 281. 1–46. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1992 Proto-Malayic: The reconstruction of its phonology and parts of its lexicon and morphology. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Google Scholar
2005 Malayo-Sumbawan. Oceanic Linguistics 44(2). 357–388. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Amigó, Enrique, Julio Gonzalo, Javier Artiles & Felisa Verdejo
2009 A comparison of extrinsic clustering evaluation metrics based on formal constraints. Information Retrieval 12(4). 461–486. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Axelsen, Jacob Bock & Susanna Manrubia
2014 River density and landscape roughness are universal determinants of linguistic diversity. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 281(1784). 20133029.Google Scholar
Bellwood, Peter
1995 Austronesian prehistory in Southeast Asia: Homeland, expansion and transformation. In Peter Bellwood, James J. Fox & Darrell Tryon (eds.), The Austronesians: History and comparative perspectives, 103–118. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Google Scholar
2007 Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago: Revised edition. Canberra: Australian National University E-Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bellwood, Peter & Eusebio Dizon
2005 The Batanes archaeological project and the “Out of Taiwan” hypothesis for Austronesian dispersal. Journal of Austronesian Studies 1(1). 1–32.Google Scholar
Bentz, Christian, Dan Dediu, Annemarie Verkerk & Gerhard Jäger
2018 The evolution of language families is shaped by the environment beyond neutral drift. Nature Human Behaviour 21. 816–821. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Blust, Robert
1974 A Murik vocabulary, with a note on the linguistic position of Murik. In Jerome Rousseau (ed.), The peoples of Central Borneo 22(43). 153–189. Special issue of the Sarawak Museum Journal.Google Scholar
1985–1986 The Austronesian homeland: A linguistic perspective. Asian Perspectives 261. 45–67.Google Scholar
2005 The linguistic macrohistory of the Philippines: Some speculations. In Hsiu Chuan Liao & Carl R. Galves Rubino (eds.), Current issues in Philippine linguistics and anthropology: Parangal kay Lawrence A. Reid, 31–68. Manila: Linguistic Society of the Philippines and SIL International.Google Scholar
2010 The Greater North Borneo hypothesis. Oceanic Linguistics 491. 44–118. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2014 Some recent proposals concerning the classification of the Austronesian languages. Oceanic Linguistics 531. 300–391. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2019a The Austronesian homeland and dispersal. Annual Review of Linguistics 51. 417–434. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2019b The resurrection of Proto-Philippines. Oceanic Linguistics 58(2). 153–256. 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(6097). 957–960. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bouckaert, Remco R., Claire Bowern & Quentin D. Atkinson
2018 The origin and expansion of Pama-Nyungan languages across Australia. Nature Ecology & Evolution 2(4). 741. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bowern, Claire & Quentin Atkinson
2012 Computational phylogenetics and the internal structure of Pama-Nyungan. Language, 817–845. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chang, Will, Chundra Cathcart, David Hall & Andrew Garrett
2015 Ancestry-constrained phylogenetic analysis supports the Indo-European steppe hypothesis. Language 91(1). 194–244. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Coedès, G.
1968 The Indianized states of Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Translated by Susan Brown Cowing.Google Scholar
Currie, Thomas E., Andrew Meade, Myrtille Guillon & Ruth Mace
2013 Cultural phylo-geography of the Bantu languages of Sub-Saharan Africa. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 280(1762). 20130695.Google Scholar
Dahl, Otto Chr
1951 Malgache et Maanjan: Une comparaison linguistique (Studies of the Egede Institute 3). Oslo: Egede Instituttet.Google Scholar
Felsenstein, Joseph
1992 Phylogenies from restriction sites: A maximum-likelihood approach. Evolution 46(1). 159–173.Google Scholar
Gavin, Michael C., Carlos A. Botero, Claire Bowern, Robert K. Colwell, Michael Dunn, Robert R. Dunn & Gregor Yanega
2013 Toward a mechanistic understanding of linguistic diversity. BioScience 63(7). 524–535. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gelman, Andrew, John B. Carlin, Hal S. Stern, David B. Dunson, Aki Vehtari & Donald B. Rubin
2013 Bayesian data analysis. Chapman and Hall/CRC. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gray, Russell D., David Bryant & Simon J. Greenhill
2010 On the shape and fabric of human history. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 365(1559). 3923–3933. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gray, Russell D., Alexei J. Drummond & Simon J. Greenhill
2009 Language phylogenies reveal expansion pulses and pauses in Pacific settlement. Science 323(5913). 479–483. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Greenhill, Simon J.
2014 Demographic correlates of language diversity. In Claire Bowern & Bethwyn Evans (eds.), The Routledge handbook of historical linguistics, 557–578. Routledge.Google Scholar
Grollemund, Rebecca, Simon Branford, Koen Bostoen, Andrew Meade, Chris Venditti & Mark Pagel
2015 Bantu expansion shows that habitat alters the route and pace of human dispersals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112(43). 13296–13301. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Holland, Barbara R., Katharina T. Huber, Andreas Dress & Vincent Moulton
2002 δ plots: A tool for analyzing phylogenetic distance data. Molecular Biology and Evolution 19(12). 2051–2059. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hua, Xia, Simon J. Greenhill, Marcel Cardillo, Hilde Schneemann & Lindell Bromham
2019 The ecological drivers of variation in global language diversity. Nature Communications 10(1). 1–10. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Huson, Daniel H. & David Bryant
2006 Application of phylogenetic networks in evolutionary studies. Molecular Biology and Evolution 23(2). 254–267. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Jäger, Gerhard
2013 Phylogenetic inference from word lists using weighted alignment with empirically determined weights. Language Dynamics and Change 3(2). 245–291. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kaboy, Tuton
1974 The Penan Aput. In Jérôme Rousseau (ed.), The peoples of Central Borneo 22(43). 287–293. Sarawak Museum Journal Special Issue.Google Scholar
Kass, Robert E. & Adrian E. Raftery
1995 Bayes Factors. Journal of the American Statistical Association 90(430). 773–795. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lepage, Thomas, David Bryant, Hervé Philippe & Nicolas Lartillot
2007 A general comparison of relaxed molecular clock models. Molecular Biology and Evolution 24(12). 2669–2680. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
List, Johann-Mattis
2012 SCA: Phonetic alignment based on sound classes. In D. Lassiter & M. Slavkovik (eds.), New Directions in Logic, Language and Computation. ESSLLI 2010, ESSLLI 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 74151. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
List, Johann-Mattis, Simon J. Greenhill & Russell D. Gray
2017 The potential of automatic word comparison for historical linguistics. PloS One 12(1). e0170046. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lobel, Jason William
2016 North Borneo sourcebook: Vocabularies and functors, PALI Language Texts. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Mace, Ruth & Mark Pagel
1995 A latitudinal gradient in the density of human languages in North America. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences 261(1360). 117–121. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Nettle, Daniel
1998 Explaining global patterns of language diversity. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 17(4). 354–374. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1999 Linguistic diversity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nichols, Johanna & Tandy Warnow
2008 Tutorial on computational linguistic phylogeny. Language and Linguistics Compass 2(5). 760–820. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pigeaud, Theodore G.
1962 Java in the 14th century: A study in cultural history. The Nāgara-Kěrtāgama by Rakawi Prapanca of Majapahit, 1365 AD, vol. 31. The Hague: The Netherlands Institute for International Cultural Relations, 3rd edn.Google Scholar
Rama, Taraka
2018 Similarity dependent Chinese Restaurant Process for cognate identification in multilingual wordlists. In Proceedings of the 22nd Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning, 271–281. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Rama, Taraka, Johann-Mattis List, Johannes Wahle & Gerhard Jäger
2018 Are automatic methods for cognate detection good enough for phylogenetic reconstruction in historical linguistics? In Proceedings of the 2018 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human language technologies, volume 2 (short papers), 393–400. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Rambaut, Andrew
2012 Figtree v1. 4.Google Scholar
Ritchie, Andrew M. & Simon Y W. Ho
2019 Influence of the tree prior and sampling scale on Bayesian phylogenetic estimates of the origin times of language families. Journal of Language Evolution 4(2). 108–123. Crossref. URL 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
2012 Mrbayes 3.2: Efficient Bayesian phylogenetic inference and model choice across a large model space. Systematic Biology 61(3). 539–542. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ross, Malcolm
1988 Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian languages of western Melanesia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Google Scholar
Sagart, Laurent, Guillaume Jacques, Yunfan Lai, Robin J. Ryder, Valentin Thouzeau, Simon J. Greenhill & Johann-Mattis List
2019 Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116(21). 10317–10322. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sandin, Benedict
1994 Sources of Iban traditional history (Sarawak Museum Journal Special Monograph 7). Kuching: Sarawak Museum.Google Scholar
Sellato, Bernard
1994 Nomads of the Bornean rainforest: The economics, politics, and ideology of settling down. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Translated by Stephanie Morgan.Google Scholar
2001 Forest, resources and people in Bulungan. Elements for a history of settlement, trade, and social dynamics in Borneo, 1880–2000. Bogor: Center for International Forestry Research.Google Scholar
Smith, Alexander D.
2015a On the classification of Kenyah and Kayanic languages. Oceanic Linguistics 53(2). 333–357. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2015b Sebop, Penan, and Kenyah internal linguistic classification. Borneo Research Bulletin 461. 172–193.Google Scholar
2017a The languages of Borneo: A comprehensive classification. Ph.D. thesis, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.
2017b The Western Malayo-Polynesian problem. Oceanic Linguistics 56(2). 435–490. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2018 The Barito linkage hypothesis with a note on the position of Basap. Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistic Society 111. 13–34.Google Scholar
2019a A reconstruction of Proto-Segai-Modang. Oceanic Linguistics 58(2). 353–385. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2019b A second look at Proto-Land Dayak vowels. Oceanic Linguistics 58(1). 110–142. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wichmann, Søren & Taraka Rama
2020 Testing methods of homeland detection using synthetic data. bioRxiv Crossref. URL https://​www​.biorxiv​.org​/content​/early​/2020​/09​/03​/2020​.09​.03​.280826
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
1994 Estimating the pattern of nucleotide substitution. Journal of Molecular Evolution 39(1). 105–111. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, Chi, Tanja Stadler, Seraina Klopfstein, Tracy A. Heath & Fredrik Ronquist
2015 Total-evidence dating under the fossilized birth-death process. Systematic Biology 65(2). 228–249. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, Menghan, Shi Yan, Wuyun Pan & Li Jin
2019 Phylogenetic evidence for Sino-Tibetan origin in northern China in the Late Neolithic. Nature 569(7754). 112. CrossrefGoogle Scholar