Records of the "Evolution and Language reading group" (first series)

Meeting 1 - Evolutionary Linguistics (November 3rd 2008)

Venue: 15:00-16:30, room 264

Reading:

Croft, William. 2008. Evolutionary Linguistics. Annual Review of Anthropology. 37:219-234.

Abstract

Both qualitative concepts and quantitative methods from evolutionary biology have been applied to linguistics. Many linguists have noted the similarity between biological evolution and language change, but usually have employed only selective analogies or metaphors. The development of generalized theories of evolutionary change (Dawkins and Hull) has spawned models of language change on the basis of such generalized theories. These models have led to the positing of new mechanisms of language change and new types of selection that may not have biological parallels. Quantitative methods have been applied to questions of language phylogeny in the past decade. Research has focused on widely accepted families with cognates already established by the comparative method (Indo-European, Bantu, Austronesian). Increasingly sophisticated phylogeny reconstruction models have been applied to these families to resolve questions of subgrouping, contact, and migration. Little progress has been made so far in analyzing sound correspondences in the cognates themselves.

Available from the ARA website [PDF] [HTML]

Meeting 2 - Species (November 17th 2008)

Venue: 15:00-16:30, room 264

It clearly emerged from last meeting that we need to think more about the notion of species. We will discuss the following two short papers (suggested by Dan) on the species problem from the general perspective of evolutionary theory; We are particularly interested in the notion that a language forms a population in the same way that a species does (Croft 2008:223 discussing Mufwene). Nick has provided excerpts from Croft and Mufwene with fuller statements on the language-species parallel.

PDFs of all the readings are available for download below:

• Hey, Jody. 2001. The mind of the species problem. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 16:326-329
• Wilkins, John S. 2003. How to be a chaste species pluralist-realist: The origins of species modes and the synapomorphic species concept. Biology and Philosophy 18:621-638.
• Excerpt from Mufwene, S. S. 2008. Language Evolution: Contact, Competition, and Change. London: Continuum
• Excerpt from Croft, William. 2000. Explaining Language Change:An Evolutionary Approach. Longman

Meeting 3 - Bayesian phylogenetic inference, December 1st 2008

Venue: 15:00-16:30, room 264

This session we're going to start discussing phylogenetics. It's a big theme, and a new one for many, so we'll get started with a review article.

• Mark Holder and Paul O. Lewis. 2003. Phylogeny estimation: traditional and Bayesian approaches. Nature Reviews Genetics 4:275-284.
• If Holder and Lewis is too much or not enough, then you might be interested in another short, accessible review:
  John P. Huelsenbeck, Fredrik Ronquist, Rasmus Nielsen, Jonathan P. Bollback. 2001. Bayesian Inference of Phylogeny and Its Impact on Evolutionary Biology. Science 294:2310-2314

Meeting 4 - Language phylogeny, December 16th 2008

Venue: 15:00-16:30, Midi-Planck meeting room

Note that this meeting not on the regular day and not at the regular place. A few of the regular participants will be unable to make this meeting, but we decided that it was better to go ahead an have it than to stop early for the year.

We will continue our discussion of Bayesian phylogenetics. This time we'll focus on a linguistic example:

• Greenhill, S. J. & Gray, R.D. (2005). Testing Population Dispersal Hypotheses: Pacific Settlement, Phylogenetic Trees, and Austronesian Languages. In: The Evolution of Cultural Diversity: Phylogenetic Approaches. Editors: R. Mace, C. Holden, & S. Shennan. Publisher: UCL Press.
  

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  Abstract. Dispersals have been commonplace throughout the history of genus homo (Templeton 2002). However, it is only recently that scenarios about human population expansions have begun to be studied again after a long period of marginalisation (Anthony 1990; Burmeister 2000 and associated commentaries). Some authors, such as Diamond and Bellwood (2003), have argued that dispersals, especially those linked to the development of agriculture, are the "most important process in Holocene human history" (p 597). (...) Unfortunately, many expansion scenarios are little more than plausible narratives. A common feature of these narratives is the assertion that a particular line of evidence (archaeological, linguistic or genetic) is "consistent with" the scenario. "Consistent with" covers a multitude of sins. Rigorous tests require a measure of exactly how well the data matches the proposed scenario. They also require an explicit evaluation of alternative hypotheses. Perhaps the data are equally "consistent with" many alternative hypotheses. Given the interest in hypotheses about human dispersal scenarios, a framework for the rigorous evaluation of these hypotheses is clearly desirable. Here we describe our attempts to apply a phylogenetic framework to linguistic data in an effort to test one of these scenarios—the Austronesian expansion.

Meeting 5 - Cultural Evolution. Monday 23rd February 2009

Venue: 15:00-16:30, Midi-Planck meeting room

Reading

Mesoudi, Alex, Andrew Whiten and Kevin Laland. 2006. Towards a unified science of cultural evolution. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29:4:329-347

Abstract

We suggest that human culture exhibits key Darwinian evolutionary properties, and argue that the structure of a science of cultural evolution should share fundamental features with the structure of the science of biological evolution. This latter claim is tested by outlining the methods and approaches employed by the principal subdisciplines of evolutionary biology and assessing whether there is an existing or potential corresponding approach to the study of cultural evolution. Existing approaches within anthropology and archaeology demonstrate a good match with the macroevolutionary methods of systematics, paleobiology, and biogeography, whereas mathematical models derived from population genetics have been successfully developed to study cultural microevolution. Much potential exists for experimental simulations and field studies of cultural microevolution, where there are opportunities to borrow further methods and hypotheses from biology. Potential also exists for the cultural equivalent of molecular genetics in “social cognitive neuroscience,” although many fundamental issues have yet to be resolved. It is argued that studying culture within a unifying evolutionary framework has the potential to integrate a number of separate disciplines within the social sciences.

Meeting 6 - Bayesian Model Testing. Monday 16th March 2009

Venue: 15:00-16:30, Midi-Planck meeting room

Three short readings this week (eight pages in all!):

Readings

• Pagel, Mark; Atkinson, Quentin D.; Meade, Andrew. 2007. Frequency of word-use predicts rates of lexical evolution throughout Indo-European history . Nature, 449:717-720.
• Quentin D. Atkinson, Andrew Meade, Chris Venditti, Simon J. Greenhill, Mark Pagel. 2008. Languages Evolve in Punctuational Bursts. Science, 319:588
• Gray, Russell D., Drummond, Alexei J., & Greenhill, Simon J. 2009. Language Phylogenies Reveal Expansion Pulses and Pauses in Pacific Settlement. Science, 323: 479-483.