Lingformant » Historical linguistics

Language Structure Is Partly Determined by Social Structure, Says Penn Psychology Study

Vili Maunula — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 08:09:01 +0000

Psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Memphis have released a new study on linguistic evolution that challenges the prominent hypothesis for why languages differ throughout the world. The study argues that human languages may adapt more like biological organisms than previously thought and that the more common and popular the language, the simpler its construction to facilitate its survival.

Full article: University of Pennsylvania

Computers unlock more secrets of the mysterious Indus Valley script

Vili Maunula — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 05:50:10 +0000

Four-thousand years ago, an urban civilization lived and traded on what is now the border between Pakistan and India. During the past century, thousands of artifacts bearing hieroglyphics left by this prehistoric people have been discovered. Today, a team of Indian and American researchers are using mathematics and computer science to try to piece together information about the still-unknown script.

Full article: University of Washington News

Language change can be traced using gigantic text archives

Vili Maunula — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 16:07:22 +0000

Historical collections that include everything ever written in a dozen American and British newspapers since they started are now available electronically. Donald MacQueen from Uppsala University, Sweden, has carried out the first comprehensive study that makes use of this resource in order to track changes in language usage, a method that makes it possible to attain an entirely new degree of precision in dating.

Full article: Physorg

Indus script encodes language, reveals new study of ancient symbols

Vili Maunula — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:59 +0000

A University of Washington computer scientist has led a statistical study of the Indus script, comparing the pattern of symbols to various linguistic scripts and nonlinguistic systems, including DNA and a computer programming language. The results, published online Thursday by the journal Science, found the Indus script’s pattern is closer to that of spoken words, supporting the hypothesis that it codes for an as-yet-unknown language.

Full article: University of Washington News

Scientists discover oldest words in the English language and predict which ones are likely to disappear in the future

Vili Maunula — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 18:57:01 +0000

Scientists at the University of Reading have discovered that ‘I’, ‘we’, ‘who’ and the numbers ‘1′, ‘2′ and ‘3′ are amongst the oldest words, not only in English, but across all Indo-European languages. What’s more, words like ’squeeze’, ‘guts’, ’stick’, ‘throw’ and ‘dirty’ look like they are heading for history’s dustbin – along with a host of others.

Full article: University of Reading

Pacific People Spread From Taiwan, Language Evolution Study Shows

Vili Maunula — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:06:36 +0000

New research into language evolution suggests most Pacific populations originated in Taiwan around 5,200 years ago. Scientists at The University of Auckland have used sophisticated computer analyses on vocabulary from 400 Austronesian languages to uncover how the Pacific was settled. …

Full article: Science Daily

Language driven by culture, not biology

Vili Maunula — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 10:24:22 +0000

Language in humans has evolved culturally rather than genetically, according to a study by UCL (University College London) and US researchers. By modelling the ways in which genes for language might have evolved alongside language itself, the study showed that genetic adaptation to language would be highly unlikely, as cultural conventions change much more rapidly than genes. Thus, the biological machinery upon which human language is built appears to predate the emergence of language. …

Full article: Eurekalert

New life for Middle English: Norwegian detective work gives new knowledge of the English language

Vili Maunula — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:24:33 +0000

After several years of detective work, philologists at the University of Stavanger in Norway have collected a unique collection of texts online. Now they’re about to start the most comprehensive analysis of middle English ever. …

Full article: AlphaGalileo.

Can parasites influence the language we speak?

Vili Maunula — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:18:41 +0000

What do parasites and mountains have in common? They both keep populations apart and drive evolution, say researchers. In the absence of geographical barriers such as mountains and oceans, parasite “wedges” keep populations of the same species apart, say Corey Fincher and Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico in the US. They claim this can provide the opportunity for populations and even new languages to evolve separately.

Full news article: New Scientist

Siberian, Native American Languages Linked — A First

Vili Maunula — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 08:59:14 +0000

A fast-dying language in remote central Siberia shares a mother tongue with dozens of Native American languages spoken thousands of miles away, new research confirms. The finding may allow linguists to weigh in on how the Americas were first settled, according to Edward Vajda, director of the Center for East Asian Studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham. …

Read the full article at National Geographic

Languages evolve in sudden leaps, not creeps

Vili Maunula — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 08:50:31 +0000

Language evolves in sudden leaps, according to a statistical study of three major language groups. The finding challenges the slow-and-steady model held by many linguists and matches evidence that genetic evolution follows a similar path. …

Read the full science news article at New Scientist

Jade and language travelled together

Vili Maunula — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 06:23:16 +0000

Skilled jade craftsmen may have helped to spread the Austronesian languages. …

Read the full news article at Nature Science News

Harvard scientists predict the future of the past tense

Vili Maunula — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 10:08:49 +0000

Verbs evolve and homogenize at a rate inversely proportional to their prevalence in the English language, according to a formula developed by Harvard University mathematicians who’ve invoked evolutionary principles to study our language over the past 1,200 years, from “Beowulf” to “Canterbury Tales” to “Harry Potter.” …

Read the full news release at Havard University news room

Language ‘mutations’ affect least-used words

Vili Maunula — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 10:05:41 +0000

As languages evolve over centuries and millennia, the most frequently used words tend to remain unaltered, while rarer words are more likely to change. This tendency was long suspected, but has now been proven rigorously for the first time by two new studies. The results show that the tools of evolutionary biology can be applied to study the evolution of cultural artefacts like language. …

Read the full news article at New Scientist

Linguists seek a time when we spoke as one

Vili Maunula — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 07:11:30 +0000

A controversial research project is trying to trace all human language to a common root. … Headed by Nobel Laureate physicist Murray Gell-Mann, the international Evolution of Human Languages (EHL) project is developing a freely accessible etymological database of the world’s languages. Where possible, EHL linguists are attempting to reconstruct â€“ and then compare â€“ ancestor languages, moving ever closer to the first human language. Viewed by many linguists as a fringe movement, the project has attracted much criticism. Many linguists say that historical languages cannot be studied beyond an 8,000-year threshold; they change too much, they say. Some take issue with the project’s methods: A few words shared among reconstructed languages doesn’t prove a familial relationship, they insist, especially far back in time. …

Read the full news article at USA Today