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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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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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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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35016575
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