Russell Gray

Beyond sampling: an evolutionary approach to linguistic diversity

Abstract

There are at least three different questions linguists typically ask about linguistic diversity.  What is the extent of linguistic diversity? What are common patterns of linguistic diversity?  And what drives linguistic diversification? Roughly, these are Balthasar Bickel’s “what, where, why” questions. In this talk, I will outline the limitations of traditional “sampling” approaches to answering these questions. I will use data from the recently released Grambank database to illustrate the benefits of adopting a computational evolutionary approach. I will give examples showing how the combination of Grambank data and evolutionary methods can be used to quantify linguistic diversity, infer the relative importance of genealogical inheritance and geographical diffusion, test claims about putative grammatical universals and investigate drivers of grammatical complexity and linguistic disparity.  

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