RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Structural Phylogenetics and the Reconstruction of Ancient Language History
JF Science
JO Science
FD American Association for the Advancement of Science
SP 2072
OP 2075
DO 10.1126/science.1114615
VO 309
IS 5743
A1 Dunn, Michael
A1 Terrill, Angela
A1 Reesink, Ger
A1 Foley, Robert A.
A1 Levinson, Stephen C.
YR 2005
UL http://science.sciencemag.org/content/309/5743/2072.abstract
AB The contribution of language history to the study of the early dispersals of modern humans throughout the Old World has been limited by the shallow time depth (about 8000 ± 2000 years) of current linguistic methods. Here it is shown that the application of biological cladistic methods, not to vocabulary (as has been previously tried) but to language structure (sound systems and grammar), may extend the time depths at which language data can be used. The method was tested against well-understood families of Oceanic Austronesian languages, then applied to the Papuan languages of Island Melanesia, a group of hitherto unrelatable isolates. Papuan languages show an archipelago-based phylogenetic signal that is consistent with the current geographical distribution of languages. The most plausible hypothesis to explain this result is the divergence of the Papuan languages from a common ancestral stock, as part of late Pleistocene dispersals.