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Geography and language divergence: The case of Andic languages
Ezequiel Koile1,2, Ilia Chechuro2, George Moroz1
1Linguistic Convergence Laboratory, HSE University, Moscow, Russia.
Plos One
|May 26, 2022
Summary
Geographic distance correlates with linguistic divergence in East Caucasian languages. Qualitative language classifications may implicitly include geography, potentially biasing genealogical studies.
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Computational Linguistics
- Historical Linguistics
Background:
- The East Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian) language family, specifically its Andic branch, presents a unique case for studying language evolution.
- Understanding the interplay between phylogenetic relationships and geographic distribution is crucial for accurate language classification.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the correlation between phylogenetic and geographic distances within the Andic branch of the East Caucasian languages.
- To compare the fit of different phylogenetic reconstruction methods (qualitative vs. cognacy-based) with geographic data.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of phylogenetic and geographic distances for Andic languages.
- Evaluation of multiple alternative phylogenies.
- Comparison of qualitative classifications against cognacy-based phylogenies in relation to geographic proximity.
Main Results:
- A significant correlation was found between geographic distances and linguistic divergence across various phylogenies.
- Qualitative language classifications demonstrated a stronger correlation with geographic distribution compared to cognacy-based phylogenies.
- This suggests a potential implicit geographic bias in qualitative classification methods.
Conclusions:
- Geographic factors may be implicitly incorporated into qualitative language classification systems.
- Approaches to genealogical classification that do not rely solely on cognacy risk including geography-related influences.
- Further research is needed to disentangle the effects of geography and shared ancestry in language evolution.
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