Formal Syntax and Deep History

Frontiers in Psychology

Giuseppe Longobardi¹  Andrea Ceolin²  Cristina Guardiano³  Monica Alexandrina Irimia³ 

[1] Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York, York, United Kingdom;Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States;Dipartimento di Comunicazione ed Economia, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Reggio Emilia, Italy;

关键词: phylogenetics;    formal syntax;    parameters;    language reconstruction;    biolinguistics;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2020.488871

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

We show that, contrary to long-standing assumptions, syntactic traits, modeled here within the generative biolinguistic framework, provide insights into deep-time language history. To support this claim, we have encoded the diversity of nominal structures using 94 universally definable binary parameters, set in 69 languages spanning across up to 13 traditionally irreducible Eurasian families. We found a phylogenetic signal that distinguishes all such families and matches the family-internal tree topologies that are safely established through classical etymological methods and datasets. We have retrieved “near-perfect” phylogenies, which are essentially immune to homoplastic disruption and only moderately influenced by horizontal convergence, two factors that instead severely affect more externalized linguistic features, like sound inventories. This result allows us to draw some preliminary inferences about plausible/implausible cross-family classifications; it also provides a new source of evidence for testing the representation of diversity in syntactic theories.

【 授权许可】

CC BY