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Structural Phylogenetic Signal Fails at Deep Time: A Bayesian Treebank Analysis of the Transeurasian Languages
1School of International Studies, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China.
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
|July 28, 2026
Summary
This study tested structural linguistic features for phylogenetic signal in Transeurasian languages. Structural features did not recover deep genealogical relationships, instead reflecting typological similarity.
Area of Science:
- Historical linguistics
- Computational linguistics
- Phylogenetics
Background:
- Quantitative phylogenetics typically uses lexical cognates.
- Investigating structural linguistic features for genealogical signal is less common.
- Deep time depth challenges phylogenetic reconstruction.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess genealogical signal from structural features in Transeurasian languages.
- To determine if this signal persists at deep time depths.
- To compare findings with Indo-European language family reconstruction.
Main Methods:
- Computed 29 structural features across 28 languages (Transeurasian and outgroups).
- Developed new Universal Dependencies treebanks for under-documented languages.
- Tested phylogenetic signal using Pagel's λ and Blomberg's K, with Bayesian and distance-based tree inference.
Main Results:
- Structural signal was insufficient to reconstruct Transeurasian relationships at proposed depths.
- Signal tests favored a flat three-way division, with word-order parameters showing strongest signal.
- Tree inference resulted in polytomies, with outgroup grouping indicating typological similarity over shared descent.
Conclusions:
- Structural features do not reliably recover deep genealogical signal in Transeurasian languages.
- At deep time depths, structural features reflect typological similarity, not shared ancestry.
- The study provides new treebanks and a framework for analyzing genealogical signal in structural data.
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