Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals

Nature volume 473, pages 79–82 (2011)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Languages vary widely but not without limit. The central goal of linguistics is to describe the diversity of human languages and explain the constraints on that diversity. Generative linguists following Chomsky have claimed that linguistic diversity must be constrained by innate parameters that are set as a child learns a language1,2. In contrast, other linguists following Greenberg have claimed that there are statistical tendencies for co-occurrence of traits reflecting universal systems biases3,4,5, rather than absolute constraints or parametric variation. Here we use computational phylogenetic methods to address the nature of constraints on linguistic diversity in an evolutionary framework6. First, contrary to the generative account of parameter setting, we show that the evolution of only a few word-order features of languages are strongly correlated. Second, contrary to the Greenbergian generalizations, we show that most observed functional dependencies between traits are lineage-specific rather than universal tendencies. These findings support the view that—at least with respect to word order—cultural evolution is the primary factor that determines linguistic structure, with the current state of a linguistic system shaping and constraining future states.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Two word-order features plotted onto maximum clade credibility trees of the four language families.
Figure 2: Summary of evolutionary dependencies in word order for four language families.
Figure 3: The transition probabilities between states leading to object–verb and adposition–noun alignments in Austronesian and Indo-European.

References

  1. Baker, M. The Atoms of Language (Basic Books, 2001)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Chomsky, N. Lectures on Government and Binding (Foris, 1981)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Greenberg, J. H. in Universals of Grammar (ed. Joseph H. Greenberg ) 73–113 (MIT Press, 1963)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Dryer, M. in Language Typology and Syntactic Description Vol. I Clause Structure 2nd edn (ed. Shopen, T. ) 61–131 (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  5. Hawkins, J. A. in Language Universals (eds Christiansen, M. H., Collins, C. & Edelman, S. ) 54–78 (Oxford University Press, 2009)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  6. Croft, W. Evolutionary linguistics. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 37, 219–234 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Chomsky, N. Knowledge of Language: its Nature, Origin and Use (Praeger, 1986)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Lightfoot, D. W. The child’s trigger experience—degree-0 learnability. Behav. Brain Sci. 12, 321–334 (1989)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Dryer, M. S. The Greenbergian word order correlations. Language 68, 81–138 (1992)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Mace, R. & Pagel, M. The comparative method in anthropology. Curr. Anthropol. 35, 549–564 (1994)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Bakker, P. in Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Typology (ed. Song, J. J. ) (Oxford University Press, 2010)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Cysouw, M. in Quantative Linguistics: An International Handbook (eds Altmann, G., Köhler, R. & Piotrowski, R. ) 554–578 (Mouton de Gruyter, 2005)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Pagel, M., Meade, A. & Barker, D. Bayesian estimation of ancestral character states on phylogenies. Syst. Biol. 53, 673–684 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Gordon, R. G. J. Ethnologue: Languages of the World 15th edn (SIL International, 2005)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Gray, R. D., Drummond, A. J. & Greenhill, S. J. Language phylogenies reveal expansion pulses and pauses in Pacific settlement. Science 323, 479–483 (2009)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  16. Gray, R. D. & Atkinson, Q. D. Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin. Nature 426, 435–439 (2003)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  17. Guthrie, M. Comparative Bantu Vol. 2 (Gregg International, 1971)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Diamond, J. & Bellwood, P. Farmers and their languages: the first expansions. Science 300, 597–603 (2003)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Campbell, L. American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America 133–138 (Oxford University Press, 1997)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Kemp, B. M. et al. Evaluating the farming/language dispersal hypothesis with genetic variation exhibited by populations in the Southwest and Mesoamerica. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 107, 6759–6764 (2010)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  21. Pagel, M. & Meade, A. Bayesian analysis of correlated evolution of discrete characters by reversible-jump Markov chain Monte Carlo. Am. Nat. 167, 808–825 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Dyen, I., Kruskal, J. B. & Black, P. An Indo-European classification, a lexicostatistical experiment. Trans. Am. Phil. Soc. 82, 1–132 (1992)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Greenhill, S. J., Blust, R. & Gray, R. D. The Austronesian basic vocabulary database: from bioinformatics to lexomics. Evol. Bioinform. 4, 271–283 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Holden, C. J. Bantu language trees reflect the spread of farming across sub-Saharan Africa: a maximum-parsimony analysis. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 269, 793–799 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Haspelmath, M., Dryer, M. S., Gil, D. & Comrie, B. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online (Max Planck Digital Library, 2008)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Raftery, A. Approximate Bayes factors and accounting for model uncertainty in generalised linear models. Biometrika 83, 251–266 (1996)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  27. Cela-Conde, C. & Marty, G. Noam Chomsky’s minimalist program and the philosophy of mind. An interview. Syntax 1, 19–36 (1998)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Reesink, G., Singer, R. & Dunn, M. Explaining the linguistic diversity of Sahul using population models. PLoS Biol. 7, e1000241 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Evans, N. & Levinson, S. C. The myth of language universals: language diversity and its importance for cognitive science. Behav. Brain Sci. 32, 429–492 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank M. Liberman for comments on our initial results and F. Jordan and G. Reesink for comments on drafts of this paper. L. Campbell, J. Hill, W. Miller and R. Ross provided and coded the Uto-Aztecan lexical data.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Post Office Box 310, 6500 AH Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Michael Dunn & Stephen C. Levinson

  2. Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Kapittelweg 29, 6525 EN Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Michael Dunn & Stephen C. Levinson

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland 1142, New Zealand

    Simon J. Greenhill & Russell D. Gray

  4. Computational Evolution Group, University of Auckland, Auckland 1142, New Zealand

    Simon J. Greenhill

Authors
  1. Michael Dunn
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Simon J. Greenhill
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Stephen C. Levinson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Russell D. Gray
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

R.D.G. and M.D. conceived and designed the study. S.J.G., R.D.G. and M.D. provided lexical data and phylogenetic trees. M.D. coded word-order data, and conducted the phylogenetic comparative analyses with S.J.G. All authors were involved in discussion and interpretation of the results. All authors contributed to the writing with S.C.L. and M.D. having leading roles; M.D., R.D.G. and S.J.G. produced the Supplementary Information.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael Dunn.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

The file contains Supplementary Data, Methods and Analysis, Supplementary Figures 1-4 with legends, Supplementary Results and additional references. (PDF 1188 kb)

PowerPoint slides

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Dunn, M., Greenhill, S., Levinson, S. et al. Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals. Nature 473, 79–82 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09923

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09923

This article is cited by

Comments

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing