Investigating environmental effects on phonology using diachronic models

Hartmann, Frederik, Roberts, Sean ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5990-9161, Valdes, Paul and Grollemund, Rebecca 2024. Investigating environmental effects on phonology using diachronic models. Evolutionary Human Sciences 6 , e8. 10.1017/ehs.2023.33

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Abstract

Previous work has proposed various mechanisms by which the environment may affect the emergence of linguistic features. For example, dry air may cause careful control of pitch to be more effortful, and so affect the emergence of linguistic distinctions that rely on pitch such as lexical tone or vowel inven- tories. Criticisms of these proposals point out that there are both historical and geographic confounds that need to be controlled for. We take a causal inference approach to this problem to design the most detailed test of the theory to date. We analyse languages from the Bantu language family, using prior geographic-phylogenetic tree of relationships to establish where and when languages were spoken. This is combined with estimates of humidity for those times and places, taken from historical climate models. We then estimate the strength of causal relationships in a causal path model, controlling for various influences of inheritance and borrowing. We find no evidence to support the previous claims that humidity affects the emergence of lexical tone. This study shows how using causal inference approaches lets us test complex causal claims about the cultural evolution of language.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GF Human ecology. Anthropogeography P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
ISSN:	2513-843X
Funders:	AHRC
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	4 December 2023
Date of Acceptance:	25 November 2023
Last Modified:	07 Mar 2024 13:11
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/164465

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