{"title":"Formal linguistics as a cue to demographic history.","authors":"Giuseppe Longobardi, Andrea Ceolin, Aaron Ecay, Silvia Ghirotto, Cristina Guardiano, Monica-Alexandrina Irimia, Dimitris Michelioudakis, Nina Radkevich, Davide Pettener, Donata Luiselli, Guido Barbujani","doi":"10.4436/JASS.94031","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Beyond its theoretical success, the development of molecular genetics has brought about the possibility of extraordinary progress in the study of classification and in the inference of the evolutionary history of many species and populations. A major step forward was represented by the availability of extremely large sets of molecular data suited to quantitative and computational treatments. In this paper, we argue that even in cognitive sciences, purely theoretical progress in a discipline such as linguistics may have analogous impact. Thus, exactly on the model of molecular biology, we propose to unify two traditionally unrelated lines of linguistic investigation: 1) the formal study of syntactic variation (parameter theory) in the biolinguistic program; 2) the reconstruction of relatedness among languages (phylogenetic taxonomy). The results of our linguistic analysis have thus been plotted against data from population genetics and the correlations have turned out to be largely significant: given a non-trivial set of languages/populations, the description of their variation provided by the comparison of systematic parametric analysis and molecular anthropology informatively recapitulates their history and relationships. As a result, we can claim that the reality of some parametric model of the language faculty and language acquisition/transmission (more broadly of generative grammar) receives strong and original support from its historical heuristic power. Then, on these grounds, we can begin testing Darwin's prediction that, when properly generated, the trees of human populations and of their languages should eventually turn out to be significantly parallel. </p>","PeriodicalId":48668,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Anthropological Sciences","volume":"94 ","pages":"147-55"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6000,"publicationDate":"2016-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Anthropological Sciences","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.4436/JASS.94031","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2015/4/11 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Beyond its theoretical success, the development of molecular genetics has brought about the possibility of extraordinary progress in the study of classification and in the inference of the evolutionary history of many species and populations. A major step forward was represented by the availability of extremely large sets of molecular data suited to quantitative and computational treatments. In this paper, we argue that even in cognitive sciences, purely theoretical progress in a discipline such as linguistics may have analogous impact. Thus, exactly on the model of molecular biology, we propose to unify two traditionally unrelated lines of linguistic investigation: 1) the formal study of syntactic variation (parameter theory) in the biolinguistic program; 2) the reconstruction of relatedness among languages (phylogenetic taxonomy). The results of our linguistic analysis have thus been plotted against data from population genetics and the correlations have turned out to be largely significant: given a non-trivial set of languages/populations, the description of their variation provided by the comparison of systematic parametric analysis and molecular anthropology informatively recapitulates their history and relationships. As a result, we can claim that the reality of some parametric model of the language faculty and language acquisition/transmission (more broadly of generative grammar) receives strong and original support from its historical heuristic power. Then, on these grounds, we can begin testing Darwin's prediction that, when properly generated, the trees of human populations and of their languages should eventually turn out to be significantly parallel.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Anthropological Sciences (JASs) publishes reviews, original papers and notes concerning human paleontology, prehistory, biology and genetics of extinct and extant populations. Particular attention is paid to the significance of Anthropology as an interdisciplinary field of research. Only papers in English can be considered for publication. All contributions are revised by the editorial board together with the panel of referees.