Ultraconserved words point to deep language ancestry across Eurasia

Pagel, M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7287-8865, Atkinson, Q. D., Calude, A. and Meade, A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7095-7711 (2013) Ultraconserved words point to deep language ancestry across Eurasia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 110 (21). pp. 8471-8476. ISSN 0027-8424 doi: 10.1073/pnas.1218726110

Abstract/Summary

The search for ever deeper relationships among the World’s languages is bedeviled by the fact that most words evolve too rapidly to preserve evidence of their ancestry beyond 5,000 to 9,000 y. On the other hand, quantitative modeling indicates that some “ultraconserved” words exist that might be used to find evidence for deep linguistic relationships beyond that time barrier. Here we use a statistical model, which takes into account the frequency with which words are used in common everyday speech, to predict the existence of a set of such highly conserved words among seven language families of Eurasia postulated to form a linguistic superfamily that evolved from a common ancestor around 15,000 y ago. We derive a dated phylogenetic tree of this proposed superfamily with a time-depth of ∼14,450 y, implying that some frequently used words have been retained in related forms since the end of the last ice age. Words used more than once per 1,000 in everyday speech were 7- to 10-times more likely to show deep ancestry on this tree. Our results suggest a remarkable fidelity in the transmission of some words and give theoretical justification to the search for features of language that might be preserved across wide spans of time and geography.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/32405
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Biological Sciences > Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Uncontrolled Keywords	cultural evolution phylogeny historical linguistics
Publisher	National Academy of Sciences
Download/View statistics	View download statistics for this item