title: Languages evolve in punctuational bursts.
abstract: Linguists speculate that human languages often evolve in rapid or punctuational bursts, sometimes associated with their emergence from other languages, but this phenomenon has never been demonstrated. We used vocabulary data from three of the world's major language groups-Bantu, Indo-European, and Austronesian-to show that 10 to 33% of the overall vocabulary differences among these languages arose from rapid bursts of change associated with language-splitting events. Our findings identify a general tendency for increased rates of linguistic evolution in fledgling languages, perhaps arising from a linguistic founder effect or a desire to establish a distinct social identity.
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, Reading RG6 6AS, UK.
authors.forename: Quentin D
authors.initials: QD
authors.lastname: Atkinson
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Meade
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Venditti
authors.forename: Simon J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Greenhill
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pagel
mesh_terms: D003468:Cultural Evolution; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D014825:Vocabulary