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Language trees support the express-train sequence of Austronesian expansion

A Corrigendum to this article was published on 08 February 2001

Abstract

Languages, like molecules, document evolutionary history. Darwin1 observed that evolutionary change in languages greatly resembled the processes of biological evolution: inheritance from a common ancestor and convergent evolution operate in both. Despite many suggestions2,3,4, few attempts have been made to apply the phylogenetic methods used in biology to linguistic data. Here we report a parsimony analysis of a large language data set. We use this analysis to test competing hypotheses—the “express-train”5 and the “entangled-bank”6,7 models—for the colonization of the Pacific by Austronesian-speaking peoples. The parsimony analysis of a matrix of 77 Austronesian languages with 5,185 lexical items produced a single most-parsimonious tree. The express-train model was converted into an ordered geographical character and mapped onto the language tree. We found that the topology of the language tree was highly compatible with the express-train model.

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Figure 1: The express train to Polynesia model of the Austronesian colonization of the Pacific (adapted from refs 5 and 22).
Figure 2: A phylogenetic approach to testing a colonization sequence.
Figure 3: Phylogenetic tree of 77 Austronesian languages.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to R. Blust for making the Austronesian Comparative Dictionary available to us. We thank M. Corballis, R. Green and A. Rodrigo for comments on the manuscript; R. Clark for advice; and H. Tse for programming assistance.

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Correspondence to Russell D. Gray.

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Gray, R., Jordan, F. Language trees support the express-train sequence of Austronesian expansion . Nature 405, 1052–1055 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35016575

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