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Population Size and the Rate of Language Evolution: A Test Across Indo-European, Austronesian, and Bantu Languages

What role does speaker population size play in shaping rates of language evolution? There has been little consensus on the expected relationship between rates and patterns of language change and speaker population size, with some predicting faster rates of change in smaller populations, and others e...

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Autores principales: Greenhill, Simon J., Hua, Xia, Welsh, Caela F., Schneemann, Hilde, Bromham, Lindell
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5934942/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29755387
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00576
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author Greenhill, Simon J.
Hua, Xia
Welsh, Caela F.
Schneemann, Hilde
Bromham, Lindell
author_facet Greenhill, Simon J.
Hua, Xia
Welsh, Caela F.
Schneemann, Hilde
Bromham, Lindell
author_sort Greenhill, Simon J.
collection PubMed
description What role does speaker population size play in shaping rates of language evolution? There has been little consensus on the expected relationship between rates and patterns of language change and speaker population size, with some predicting faster rates of change in smaller populations, and others expecting greater change in larger populations. The growth of comparative databases has allowed population size effects to be investigated across a wide range of language groups, with mixed results. One recent study of a group of Polynesian languages revealed greater rates of word gain in larger populations and greater rates of word loss in smaller populations. However, that test was restricted to 20 closely related languages from small Oceanic islands. Here, we test if this pattern is a general feature of language evolution across a larger and more diverse sample of languages from both continental and island populations. We analyzed comparative language data for 153 pairs of closely-related sister languages from three of the world's largest language families: Austronesian, Indo-European, and Niger-Congo. We find some evidence that rates of word loss are significantly greater in smaller languages for the Indo-European comparisons, but we find no significant patterns in the other two language families. These results suggest either that the influence of population size on rates and patterns of language evolution is not universal, or that it is sufficiently weak that it may be overwhelmed by other influences in some cases. Further investigation, for a greater number of language comparisons and a wider range of language features, may determine which of these explanations holds true.
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spelling pubmed-59349422018-05-11 Population Size and the Rate of Language Evolution: A Test Across Indo-European, Austronesian, and Bantu Languages Greenhill, Simon J. Hua, Xia Welsh, Caela F. Schneemann, Hilde Bromham, Lindell Front Psychol Psychology What role does speaker population size play in shaping rates of language evolution? There has been little consensus on the expected relationship between rates and patterns of language change and speaker population size, with some predicting faster rates of change in smaller populations, and others expecting greater change in larger populations. The growth of comparative databases has allowed population size effects to be investigated across a wide range of language groups, with mixed results. One recent study of a group of Polynesian languages revealed greater rates of word gain in larger populations and greater rates of word loss in smaller populations. However, that test was restricted to 20 closely related languages from small Oceanic islands. Here, we test if this pattern is a general feature of language evolution across a larger and more diverse sample of languages from both continental and island populations. We analyzed comparative language data for 153 pairs of closely-related sister languages from three of the world's largest language families: Austronesian, Indo-European, and Niger-Congo. We find some evidence that rates of word loss are significantly greater in smaller languages for the Indo-European comparisons, but we find no significant patterns in the other two language families. These results suggest either that the influence of population size on rates and patterns of language evolution is not universal, or that it is sufficiently weak that it may be overwhelmed by other influences in some cases. Further investigation, for a greater number of language comparisons and a wider range of language features, may determine which of these explanations holds true. Frontiers Media S.A. 2018-04-27 /pmc/articles/PMC5934942/ /pubmed/29755387 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00576 Text en Copyright © 2018 Greenhill, Hua, Welsh, Schneemann and Bromham. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Greenhill, Simon J.
Hua, Xia
Welsh, Caela F.
Schneemann, Hilde
Bromham, Lindell
Population Size and the Rate of Language Evolution: A Test Across Indo-European, Austronesian, and Bantu Languages
title Population Size and the Rate of Language Evolution: A Test Across Indo-European, Austronesian, and Bantu Languages
title_full Population Size and the Rate of Language Evolution: A Test Across Indo-European, Austronesian, and Bantu Languages
title_fullStr Population Size and the Rate of Language Evolution: A Test Across Indo-European, Austronesian, and Bantu Languages
title_full_unstemmed Population Size and the Rate of Language Evolution: A Test Across Indo-European, Austronesian, and Bantu Languages
title_short Population Size and the Rate of Language Evolution: A Test Across Indo-European, Austronesian, and Bantu Languages
title_sort population size and the rate of language evolution: a test across indo-european, austronesian, and bantu languages
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5934942/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29755387
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00576
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