Languages evolve in punctuational bursts
Languages evolve in punctuational bursts
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DOI：
10.1126/science.1149683
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发表时间：
2008-02-01
期刊：
影响因子：
56.9
通讯作者：
Pagel, Mark
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Atkinson, Quentin D.;Meade, Andrew;Pagel, Mark
语言学家推测，人类语言经常以快速或标点符号的方式进化，有时与它们从其他语言中出现有关，但这种现象从未被证明过。我们使用的词汇数据来自世界上三个主要的语言群体-班图语，印欧语和南岛语-表明，这些语言之间的整体词汇差异的10%至33%来自与语言分裂事件相关的快速变化。我们的研究结果确定了一个总体趋势，即在羽翼未丰的语言中，语言进化的速度加快，这可能是由于语言的创始人效应或建立一个独特的社会身份的愿望。
Linguists speculate that human languages often evolve in rapid or punctuational bursts, sometimes associated with their emergence from other languages, but this phenomenon has never been demonstrated. We used vocabulary data from three of the world's major language groups—Bantu, Indo-European, and Austronesian—to show that 10 to 33% of the overall vocabulary differences among these languages arose from rapid bursts of change associated with language-splitting events. Our findings identify a general tendency for increased rates of linguistic evolution in fledgling languages, perhaps arising from a linguistic founder effect or a desire to establish a distinct social identity.