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Languages Evolve in Punctuational Bursts
Open accessAbstract
Linguists speculate that human languages often evolve in rapid or punctuational bursts, sometimes associated with their emergence from other languages, but this phenomenon has never been demonstrated. We used vocabulary data from three of the world's major language groups—Bantu, Indo-European, and Austronesian—to show that 10 to 33% of the overall vocabulary differences among these languages arose from rapid bursts of change associated with language-splitting events. Our findings identify a general tendency for increased rates of linguistic evolution in fledgling languages, perhaps arising from a linguistic founder effect or a desire to establish a distinct social identity.
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Cited by
Hazen, R. M., Papineau, D., Bleeker, W., Downs, R. T., Ferry, J. M., McCoy, T. J., Sverjensky, D. A., & Yang, H. (2008) · American Mineralogist · doi:10.2138/am.2008.2955 · Cited by 701
Cognitive culture: theoretical and empirical insights into social learning strategies
Rendell, L., Fogarty, L., Hoppitt, W. J. E., Morgan, T. J. H., Webster, M. M., & Laland, K. N. (2011) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2010.12.002 · Cited by 549
Statistical universals reveal the structures and functions of human music
Savage, P. E., Brown, S., Sakai, E., & Currie, T. E. (2015) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1414495112 · Cited by 440
The relationship between genome size and metabolic rate in extant vertebrates
Gardner, J. D., Laurin, M., & Organ, C. L. (2020) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2019.0146 · Cited by 48
Metadata
- Authors
- Atkinson, Q. D., Meade, A., Venditti, C., Greenhill, S. J., & Pagel, M.
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2008-02
- Volume
- 319
- Issue
- 5863
- Pages
- 588-588
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W2005528634
- Cited by
- 346
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 473.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
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