Spatial patterns of language evolution

The Workshop "Spatial Patterns of Language Evolution"  took place on 24th of January 2019, University of Zurich and was  organized by members of the URPP research group "Areal Morphology", as part of the SNSF project "Linguistic Morphology in Time and Space (LiMiTS)"

The workshop "Language Evolution in Geographic Space" explored how languages and linguistic properties spread and evolve across geographic regions through two primary processes: phylogeographic expansion and language contact. Phylogeographic expansion occurs when a language diversifies into several daughter languages over time, leading to changes in the original linguistic properties. Language contact, on the other hand, happens when speakers of different languages interact, potentially resulting in the exchange and spread of linguistic features.

The interplay between these processes shapes the current distribution of languages and linguistic properties across geographic space. Researchers have long studied these patterns to understand the mechanisms driving language evolution. In recent years, advances in quantitative methods from evolutionary biology have significantly advanced this research, providing new insights into the spread and diversification of languages.

The workshop focused on two main areas:

1. Reconstructing Language Evolution:
   Phylogeographic analysis has been instrumental in tracing the historical diffusion of language families. Recent studies, such as the reconstruction of the Pama-Nyungan language family’s spread across Australia (Bouckaert, et al., 2018), have demonstrated the value of these methods. Other studies, like the investigation of the British Isles as a linguistic area (Dedio, et al., forthcoming), examine how linguistic features spread across different languages without shared ancestry.

2. Interaction Between Space and Language Evolution:
   Another line of research focuses on how spatial factors influence language evolution. For instance, studies have shown that environmental conditions, such as land cover, affected the speed of the Bantu expansion in Sub-Saharan Africa (Grollemund, et al., 2015). Moreover, the distribution and diversification of languages have been found to vary based on societal factors, such as whether a society is food-producing or hunter-gathering (Derungs, et al., 2018).

Despite these advancements, the extent to which spatial factors can be generalized in language evolution remains debated (Greenhill, 2015). This workshop brought together researchers from various disciplines, including linguistics, geography, and evolutionary biology, to further explore these themes and push the boundaries of our understanding of language evolution in space.

Invited Speaker:

Marco Túlio Pacheco Coelho, a researcher at Colorado State University (USA) and Universidade Federal de Goiás (Brazil), was the keynote speaker. He presented his research on human linguistic diversity, using methods from biogeography to explore why humans speak so many languages and why these languages are unevenly distributed around the world.

The workshop provided an interdisciplinary platform for advancing discussions on the interaction between space and language evolution.