Linguistic and social typology: The Austronesian migrations and phoneme inventories

Abstract

There is a challenging issue for linguistic typology which involves the rela

Rate of language evolution is affected by population size

“…This process is distinct from the founder effect, which predicts loss of diversity associated with colonization events (11,12). Although a small population of founders cannot carry all of the genetic alleles of a large parent population, it may be possible for a small number of speakers to use all of the basic vocabulary from the parent language (40).…”

“…The observation that rate of gain of new words is greater in larger populations is compatible with the establishment of new words by a process analogous to positive selection. An alternative explanation for this pattern is that smaller populations might have denser social networks that tend to be conservatizing, enforcing linguistic norms and resisting change (5,11,38).…”

“…It has been suggested that larger populations will generate more innovations and are less prone to random loss of cultural elements (8)(9)(10), but may have less efficient diffusion of innovations than smaller populations (4). Alternatively, languages spoken by small isolated populations of speakers may have lower rates of loss if they maintain tighter cultural norms that improve transmission and resist change (11). Rates of change might be accelerated by founder effects when a new population is started from a small number of colonists, which could result in loss of elements from the ancestral language (11)(12)(13).…”

“…Alternatively, languages spoken by small isolated populations of speakers may have lower rates of loss if they maintain tighter cultural norms that improve transmission and resist change (11). Rates of change might be accelerated by founder effects when a new population is started from a small number of colonists, which could result in loss of elements from the ancestral language (11)(12)(13). Population size might also influence language complexity if small populations can develop greater linguistic complexity (11), whereas large, widespread languages that are often learned by adults may become simplified (14).…”

“…Rates of change might be accelerated by founder effects when a new population is started from a small number of colonists, which could result in loss of elements from the ancestral language (11)(12)(13). Population size might also influence language complexity if small populations can develop greater linguistic complexity (11), whereas large, widespread languages that are often learned by adults may become simplified (14). Conversely, it has been suggested that the average rate of word turnover is essentially the same in all languages (15)(16)(17), or that it is determined primarily by other factors such as language contact (6,18).…”