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

Michael Dunn (), Simon J. Greenhill, Stephen C. Levinson and Russell D. Gray
Additional contact information
Michael Dunn: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Post Office Box 310
Simon J. Greenhill: University of Auckland
Stephen C. Levinson: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Post Office Box 310
Russell D. Gray: University of Auckland

Nature, 2011, vol. 473, issue 7345, 79-82

Abstract: A third way with words Two prominent theories for how languages evolve suggest that certain grammatical structures should be widely conserved, either because they reflect the way the brain works (Chomsky) or because they are logically connected to other structures (Greenberg). Testing these theories conclusively has been difficult without reliable information on how languages are related. Applying phylogenetic methods to more than a third of the world's 7,000 extant languages, and focusing on word order, Dunn et al. show that most seemingly universal structures are shared only between languages within the same family. This suggests that cultural evolution, rather than either of the two previous theories, explains the majority of linguistic structure.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09923 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:473:y:2011:i:7345:d:10.1038_nature09923

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature09923

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().