Reconstructing the evolutionary history of languages from non-lexical data

University Of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia MO

Investigators

Abstract

Five thousand years ago, populations from west-central Africa started to migrate and spread into central, eastern and southern Africa in what is considered to be the most influential event in African history. The area of origin is known to be linguistically extremely heterogenous, and the modern languages spoken there display unique features. This project focuses on these salient features by compiling the first database of lexical data and grammatical properties of these languages. Computational and phylogenetic methods applied to these new linguistic data will provide a better understanding of the origin and the causes of linguistic divergence. Additionally, the collection and analysis of these different types of linguistic data will sharpen our understanding of how language evolves and will elucidate the different evolution rates of different components of language. This project focuses on the study of underdocumented and underdescribed languages. The data will be analyzed with computational and phylogenetic methods that will generate novel insights into the first steps of the expansion from west-central Africa. Statistical analyses will be conducted in order to measure rates of evolution for the different components of the languages in order to understand their evolutionary dynamics. The project will not only contribute a better understanding of African history but also help the discipline of historical linguistics refine its methods by identifying the optimal datasets (lexical or grammatical) to use for phylogenetic analyses of any language family. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.