In addition to its theoretical impact, the development of molecular biology has brought about the possibility of extraordinaryhistorical progress in the study of phylogenetic classification of different species and human populations (especially cf. CavalliSforza et al., 1994, among others).We argue that parametric analyses of grammatical diversity in theoretical linguistics, stemming from Chomsky (1981), can prompt analogous progress in the historical classification of language families, by showing that abstract syntactic properties are reliable indicators of phylogenetic relations. The pursuit of this approach radically questions the traditional belief in the orthogonality of grammatical typology and language genealogy, broadly supporting Nichols’ (1992) program, and ultimately contributes to establishing formal grammar as a population science and historical linguistics as animportant part of cognitive inquiry

Objectives: The notion that patterns of linguistic and biological variation may cast light on each other and on population histories dates back to Darwin's times; yet, turning this intuition into a proper research program has met with serious methodological difficulties, especially affecting language comparisons. This article takes advantage of two new tools of comparative linguistics: a refined list of Indo‐European cognate words, and a novel method of language comparison estimating linguistic diversity from a universal inventory of grammatical polymorphisms, and hence enabling comparison even across different families. We corroborated the method and used it to compare patterns of linguistic and genomic variation in Europe. Materials and Methods: Two sets of linguistic distances, lexical and syntactic, were inferred from these data and compared with measures of geographic and genomic distance through a series of matrix correlation tests. Linguistic and genomic trees were also estimated and compared. A method (Treemix) was used to infer migration episodes after the main population splits. Results: We observed significant correlations between genomic and linguistic diversity, the latter inferred from data on both Indo‐European and non‐Indo‐European languages. Contrary to previous observations, on the European scale, language proved a better predictor of genomic differences than geography. Inferred episodes of genetic admixture following the main population splits found convincing correlates also in the linguistic realm. Discussion: These results pave the ground for previously unfeasible cross‐disciplinary analyses at the worldwide scale, encompassing populations of distant language families. Am J Phys Anthropol 157:630–640, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The Parametric Comparison Method (PCM, Guardiano & Longobardi 2005, Longobardi & Guardiano 2009) is grounded on the assumption that syntactic parameters are more appropriate than other traits for use as comparanda for historical reconstruction, because they are able to provide unambiguous correspondences and objective measurements, thus guaranteeing wide-range applicability and quantitative exactness. This article discusses a set of experiments explicitly designed to evaluate the impact of parametric syntax in representing historical relatedness, and performed on a selection of 26 contemporary Indo-European varieties. The results show that PCM is in fact able to correctly identify genealogical relations even from modern languages only, performing as accurately as lexical methods, and that its effectiveness is not limited by interference effects such as ‘horizontal’ transmission. PCM is thus validated as a powerful tool for the analysis of historical relationships not only on a long-range perspective (as suggested by Longobardi & Guardiano 2009), but even on more focused, though independently well-known domains.

The Parametric Comparison Method (PCM, Guardiano & Longobardi 2005, Longobardi & Guardiano 2009) is grounded on the assumption that syntactic parameters are more appropriate than other traits for use as comparanda for historical reconstruction, because they are able to provide unambiguous correspondences and objective measurements, thus guaranteeing wide-range applicability and quantitative exactness. This article discusses a set of experiments explicitly designed to evaluate the impact of parametric syntax in representing historical relatedness, and performed on a selection of 26 contemporary Indo-European varieties. The results show that PCM is in fact able to correctly identify genealogical relations even from modern languages only, performing as accurately as lexical methods, and that its effectiveness is not limited by interference effects such as ‘horizontal’ transmission. PCM is thus validated as a powerful tool for the analysis of historical relationships not only on a long-range perspective (as suggested by Longobardi & Guardiano 2009), but even on more focused, though independently well-known domains

We show that, contrary to long-standing assumptions, syntactic traits, modeled here within the generative biolinguistic framework, provide insights into deep-time language history. To support this claim, we have encoded the diversity of nominal structures using 94 universally definable binary parameters, set in 69 languages spanning across up to 13 traditionally irreducible Eurasian families. We found a phylogenetic signal that distinguishes all such families and matches the family-internal tree topologies that are safely established through classical etymological methods and datasets. We have retrieved “near-perfect” phylogenies, which are essentially immune to homoplastic disruption and only moderately influenced by horizontal convergence, two factors that instead severely affect more externalized linguistic features, like sound inventories. This result allows us to draw some preliminary inferences about plausible/implausible cross-family classifications; it also provides a new source of evidence for testing the representation of diversity in syntactic theories.