Languages Evolve in Punctuational Bursts

by: Quentin D Atkinson, Andrew Meade, Chris Venditti, Simon J Greenhill, Mark Pagel

Science, Vol. 319, No. 5863. (1 February 2008), 588.

View FullText article

DOI, HighWire, LangEv, Pubmed, Hubmed

Reviews [Write a review of this article]

There are no reviews of this article

Find related articles from these CiteULike users

baronka, fintelk, rvosa, junwang4, briordan, brant, gigijms

Find related articles with these CiteULike tags

burst, evolution, language, language-change, language-evolution, lexicostatistics, rates, real-data, vocabulary

Abstract

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 groupsBantu, Indo-European, and Austronesianto 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. 10.1126/science.1149683

@article{citeulike:2316678, abstract = {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 groupsBantu, Indo-European, and Austronesianto 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. 10.1126/science.1149683}, author = {Atkinson, Quentin D. and Meade, Andrew and Venditti, Chris and Greenhill, Simon J. and Pagel, Mark }, citeulike-article-id = {2316678}, doi = {10.1126/science.1149683}, journal = {Science}, keywords = {language-evolution}, month = {February}, number = {5863}, pages = {588+}, posted-at = {2008-02-16 03:12:59}, priority = {2}, title = {Languages Evolve in Punctuational Bursts}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1149683}, volume = {319}, year = {2008} }

RIS record

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:2316678 L3 - citeulike-article-id:2316678 TI - Languages Evolve in Punctuational Bursts JF - Science VL - 319 IS - 5863 SP - 588 N2 - 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 groupsBantu, Indo-European, and Austronesianto 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. 10.1126/science.1149683 KW - language-evolution AU - Atkinson, Quentin AU - Meade, Andrew AU - Venditti, Chris AU - Greenhill, Simon AU - Pagel, Mark PY - 2008/02/01/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1149683 ER -

RIS BibTeX