Language Evolution and Computation Bibliography

In a study by Cavalli-Sforza et al. (1988), the spread of anatomically modern man was reconstructed on the basis of genetic and linguistic pieces of evidence: the main conclusion was that these two approaches reflect a common underlying history, the history of our past still frozen in the genes of modern populations. The expression `genetic history' was introduced (Piazza et al. 1988) to point out that if today we find many genes showing the same geographical patterns in terms of their frequencies, this may be due to the common history of our species. A deeper exploration of the whole problem can be found in Cavalli-Sforza et al. (1994). In the following, some specific cases of structural analogies between linguistic and genetic geographical patterns will be explored that supply further and more updated information. It is important to emphasize at the outset that evidence for coevolution of genes and languages in human populations does not suggest by itself that some genes of our species determine the way we speak; this coevolution may simply be due to a common mode of transmission and mutation of genetic and linguistic units of information and common constraints of demographic factors.

The genetic information for this work came from a very large collection of gene frequencies for 'classical' (non-DNA) polymorphisms of the world aborigines. The data were grouped in 42 populations studied for 120 alleles. The reconstruction of human evolutionary history thus generated was checked with statistical techniques such as 'boot-strapping'. It changes some earlier conclusions and is in agreement with more recent ones, including published and unpublished DNA-marker results. The first split in the phylogenetic tree separates Africans from non-Africans, and the second separates two major clusters, one corresponding to Caucasoids, East Asians, Arctic populations, and American natives, and the other to Southeast Asians (mainland and insular), Pacific islanders, and New Guineans and Australians. Average genetic distances between the most important clusters are proportional to archaeological separation times. Linguistic families correspond to groups of populations with very few, easily understood overlaps, and their origin can be given a time frame. Linguistic superfamilies show remarkable correspondence with the two major clusters, indicating considerable parallelism between genetic and linguistic evolution. The latest step in language development may have been an important factor determining the rapid expansion that followed the appearance of modern humans and the demise of Neanderthals.