ArticleTheory in biosciences = Theorie in den Biowissenschaften2010
Language trees not equal gene trees.
Article in Theory in biosciences = Theorie in den Biowissenschaften, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- A global analysis of matches and mismatches between human genetic and linguistic histories.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Kia kaua te reo e rite ki te moa, ka ngaro: do not let the language suffer the same fate as the moa.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2020Article
- Genetic and linguistic histories in Central Asia inferred using approximate Bayesian computations.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2017Article
- Human population history revealed by a supertree approach.Scientific reports · 2016Article
- Language shift, bilingualism and the future of Britain's Celtic languages.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2010Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Darwin saw similarities between the evolution of species and the evolution of languages, and it is now widely accepted that similarities between related languages can often be interpreted in terms of a bifurcating descent history ('phylogenesis'). Such interpretations are supported when the distributions of shared and unshared traits (for example, in terms of etymological roots for elements of basic vocabulary) are analysed using tree-building techniques and found to be well-explained by a phylogenetic model. In this article, we question the demographic assumption which is sometimes made when a tree-building approach has been taken to a set of cultures or languages, namely that the resulting tree is also representative of a bifurcating population history. Using historical census data relating to Gaelic- and English-speaking inhabitants of Sutherland (Highland Scotland), we have explored the dynamics of language death due to language shift, representing the extreme case of lack of congruence between the genetic and the culture-historical processes. Such cases highlight the important role of selective cultural migration (or shifting between branches) in determining the extinction rates of different languages on such trees.
Indexed as
Identifiers
20532998What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.