Contact and phylogeny in Island Melanesia

Dunn, Michael

doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2007.10.026

Cited by 14 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…dated branching events) to produce a reliable chronology for Aslian languages, so we have chosen to report only the compound measure showing amount of change. Dunn (2008) gives a non-mathematical introduction to the techniques of Bayesian phylogenetic inference. Following Gray and others, we have employed the cognate-gain, word loss model of language change, which treats languages coded for reflexes of cognate classes.…”

Section: Character-based Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aslian linguistic prehistory

Dunn

Burenhult

Kruspe

et al. 2011

DIA

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This paper analyzes newly collected lexical data from 26 languages of the Aslian subgroup of the Austroasiatic language family using computational phylogenetic methods. We show the most likely topology of the Aslian family tree, discuss rooting and external relationships to other Austroasiatic languages, and investigate differences in the rates of diversification of different branches. Evidence is given supporting the classification of Jah Hut as a fourth top level subgroup of the family. The phylogenetic positions of known geographic and linguistic outlier languages are clarified, and the relationships of the little studied Aslian languages of Southern Thailand to the rest of the family are explored

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Section: Character-based Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aslian linguistic prehistory

Dunn

Burenhult

Kruspe

et al. 2011

DIA

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“…In addition, there are in fact good reasons to begin from the assumption that incremental spatial change accounts for the true diffusional process. In particular, linguistic data demonstrably shows spatial autocorrelation (Dunn 2009)-spatial dispersion tracks language genealogy-as would be expected under a Brownian process.…”

Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 60%

Time and Place in the Prehistory of the Aslian Languages

Dunn¹,

Kruspe²,

Burenhult³

2013

Human Biology

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The Aslian language family, located in the Malay Peninsula and southern Thai Isthmus, consists of four distinct branches comprising some 18 languages. These languages predate the now dominant Malay and Thai. The speakers of Aslian languages exhibit some of the highest degree of phylogenetic and societal diversity present in Mainland Southeast Asia today, among them a foraging tradition particularly associated with locally ancient, Pleistocene genetic lineages. Little advance has been made in our understanding of the linguistic prehistory of this region or how such complexity arose. In this article we present a Bayesian phylogeographic analysis of a large sample of Aslian languages. An explicit geographic model of diffusion is combined with a cognate birth-word death model of lexical evolution to infer the location of the major events of Aslian cladogenesis. The resultant phylogenetic trees are calibrated against dates in the historical and archaeological record to infer a detailed picture of Aslian language history, addressing a number of outstanding questions, including (1) whether the root ancestor of Aslian was spoken in the Malay Peninsula, or whether the family had already divided before entry, and (2) the dynamics of the movement of Aslian languages across the peninsula, with a particular focus on its spread to the indigenous foragers. Abstract The Aslian language family, located in the Malay Peninsula and southern Thai Isthmus, consists of four distinct branches comprising some 18 languages. These languages predate the now dominant Malay and Thai. The speakers of Aslian languages exhibit some of the highest degree of phylogenetic and societal diversity present in Mainland Southeast Asia today, among them a foraging tradition particularly associated with locally ancient, Pleistocene genetic lineages. Little advance has been made in our understanding of the linguistic prehistory of this region or how such complexity arose. In this article we present a Bayesian phylogeographic analysis of a large sample of Aslian languages. An explicit geographic model of diffusion is combined with a cognate birth-word death model of lexical evolution to infer the location of the major events of Aslian cladogenesis. The resultant phylogenetic trees are calibrated against dates in the historical and archaeological record to infer a detailed picture of Aslian language history, addressing a number of outstanding questions, including (1) whether the root ancestor of Aslian was spoken in the Malay Peninsula, or whether the family had already divided before entry, and (2) the dynamics of the movement of Aslian languages across the peninsula, with a particular focus on its spread to the indigenous foragers.

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“…We will take the opportunity here to outline in a little detail the three major steps of the analysis described in the target paper. Additionally, readers are referred to the supplementary materials to Dunn et al 2011a which provide a basic description of the model testing approach, and Dunn et al 2008, Dunn 2009, Dunn et al 2011b for introductions to Bayesian phylogenetic methods applied to language. (Outside linguistics these methods are very well established; see Huelsenbeck et al 2001, Felsenstein 2004: Chapter 18 for useful expositions.)…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the methods are relatively new in linguistics and can no doubt be improved, we don't think they have the fatal flaws attributed to them. It is perhaps unfortunate that the rapid development of evolutionary methods in linguistics has taken place largely in a parallel literature, but nevertheless there are substantial introductions and explications for linguists (see, e.g., McMahon & McMahon 2005, Dunn et al 2008, Dunn 2009.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Universal typological dependencies should be detectable in the history of language families

Levinson

Greenhill

Gray

et al. 2011

Linguistic Typology

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1. Introduction We claim that making sense of the typological diversity of languages demands a historical/evolutionary approach.We are pleased that the target paper (Dunn et al. 2011a) has served to bring discussion of this claim into prominence, and are grateful that leading typologists have taken the time to respond (commentaries denoted by boldface). It is unfortunate though that a number of the commentaries in this issue of LT show significant misunderstandings of our paper. Donohue thinks we were out to show the stability of typological features, but that was not our target at all (although related methods can be used to do that: see, e.g., Greenhill et al. 2010a, Dediu 2011a). Plank seems to think we were arguing against universals of any type, but our target was in fact just the implicational universals of word order that have been the bread and butter of typology. He also seems to think we ignore diachrony, whereas in fact the method introduces diachrony centrally into typological reasoning, thereby potentially revolutionising typology (see Cysouw’s commentary). Levy & Daumé think we were testing for lineage-specificity, whereas that was in fact an outcome (the main finding) of our testing for correlated evolution. Dryer thinks we must account for the distribution of language types around the world, but that was not our aim: our aim was to test the causal connection between linguistic variables by taking the perspective of language evolution (diversification and change). Longobardi & Roberts seem to think we set out to extract family trees from syntactic features, but our goal was in fact to use trees based on lexical cognates and hang reconstructed syntactic states on each node of these trees, thereby reconstructing the processes of language change

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Contact and phylogeny in Island Melanesia

Cited by 14 publications

References 26 publications

Aslian linguistic prehistory

Aslian linguistic prehistory

Time and Place in the Prehistory of the Aslian Languages

Universal typological dependencies should be detectable in the history of language families

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