Reconstructing the evolutionary history of languages from non-lexical data

五千年前，非洲中西部的人口开始迁移，并扩散到非洲中部、东部和南部，这被认为是非洲历史上最具影响力的事件。起源地区在语言上是极其异质的，在那里使用的现代语言显示出独特的特征。本项目通过编制这些语言的第一个词汇数据和语法特性数据库，重点关注这些显著特征。将计算和系统发育方法应用于这些新的语言数据将有助于更好地理解语言分歧的起源和原因。此外，收集和分析这些不同类型的语言数据将加深我们对语言如何进化的理解，并将阐明语言的不同组成部分的不同进化速度。这个项目的重点是研究未被充分记录和描述的语言。这些数据将用计算和系统发育的方法进行分析，这将对从非洲中西部扩张的第一步产生新的见解。将进行统计分析，以衡量语言的不同组成部分的进化速度，以便了解它们的进化动态。该项目不仅有助于更好地了解非洲历史，而且通过确定用于任何语系系统发育分析的最佳数据集（词汇或语法），还有助于历史语言学学科改进其方法。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Five thousand years ago, populations from west-central Africa started to migrate and spread into central, eastern and southern Africa in what is considered to be the most influential event in African history. The area of origin is known to be linguistically extremely heterogenous, and the modern languages spoken there display unique features. This project focuses on these salient features by compiling the first database of lexical data and grammatical properties of these languages. Computational and phylogenetic methods applied to these new linguistic data will provide a better understanding of the origin and the causes of linguistic divergence. Additionally, the collection and analysis of these different types of linguistic data will sharpen our understanding of how language evolves and will elucidate the different evolution rates of different components of language.This project focuses on the study of underdocumented and underdescribed languages. The data will be analyzed with computational and phylogenetic methods that will generate novel insights into the first steps of the expansion from west-central Africa. Statistical analyses will be conducted in order to measure rates of evolution for the different components of the languages in order to understand their evolutionary dynamics. The project will not only contribute a better understanding of African history but also help the discipline of historical linguistics refine its methods by identifying the optimal datasets (lexical or grammatical) to use for phylogenetic analyses of any language family.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.