Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss

Hedvig Skirgård^{1

2

3

4}, Hannah J Haynie⁵, Damián E Blasi^{1

6

7}, Harald Hammarström^{4

8}, Jeremy Collins^{4

9}, Jay J Latarche¹⁰, Jakob Lesage^{1

4

11

12

13}, Tobias Weber^{1

14}, Alena Witzlack-Makarevich¹⁵, Sam Passmore^{16

17

18}, Angela Chira¹, Luke Maurits¹⁹, Russell Dinnage²⁰, Michael Dunn^{4

8}, Ger Reesink⁹, Ruth Singer^{2

21}, Claire Bowern²², Patience Epps²³, Jane Hill²⁴, Outi Vesakoski^{25

26}, Martine Robbeets²⁷, Noor Karolin Abbas¹⁰, Daniel Auer¹, Nancy A Bakker^{1

14}, Giulia Barbos¹⁰, Robert D Borges²⁸, Swintha Danielsen^{29

30

31}, Luise Dorenbusch^{1

32}, Ella Dorn¹⁰, John Elliott³³, Giada Falcone⁸, Jana Fischer^{1

14}, Yustinus Ghanggo Ate^{3

34}, Hannah Gibson³⁵, Hans-Philipp Göbel^{1

14

36}, Jemima A Goodall¹⁰, Victoria Gruner¹, Andrew Harvey³⁷, Rebekah Hayes¹⁰, Leonard Heer¹⁴, Roberto E Herrera Miranda^{12

32

38

39}, Nataliia Hübler^{1

14}, Biu Huntington-Rainey^{10

40

41}, Jessica K Ivani⁴², Marilen Johns^{1

14}, Erika Just⁴², Eri Kashima^{2

3}, Carolina Kipf^{1

14}, Janina V Klingenberg^{1

14}, Nikita König^{14

43}, Aikaterina Koti⁸, Richard G A Kowalik⁴⁴, Olga Krasnoukhova^{45

46}, Nora L M Lindvall⁸, Mandy Lorenzen^{1

14}, Hannah Lutzenberger^{9

47}, Tânia R A Martins¹⁰, Celia Mata German¹⁰, Suzanne van der Meer⁴, Jaime Montoya Samamé⁴⁸, Michael Müller¹, Saliha Muradoglu², Kelsey Neely²³, Johanna Nickel^{1

14}, Miina Norvik^{49

50}, Cheryl Akinyi Oluoch^{1

14}, Jesse Peacock^{4

9}, India O C Pearey¹⁰, Naomi Peck^{2

51}, Stephanie Petit¹⁰, Sören Pieper¹⁴, Mariana Poblete^{48

52}, Daniel Prestipino², Linda Raabe^{1

14}, Amna Raja¹⁰, Janis Reimringer¹, Sydney C Rey^{10

53}, Julia Rizaew¹⁰, Eloisa Ruppert⁵⁴, Kim K Salmon¹, Jill Sammet^{1

14}, Rhiannon Schembri^{2

55}, Lars Schlabbach^{1

14}, Frederick W P Schmidt⁵⁶, Amalia Skilton⁵⁷, Wikaliler Daniel Smith²³, Hilário de Sousa^{4

58}, Kristin Sverredal⁸, Daniel Valle⁵⁹, Javier Vera⁴⁸, Judith Voß^{1

14}, Tim Witte^{1

14}, Henry Wu^{2

60}, Stephanie Yam^{2

61}, Jingting Ye^{1

62}, Maisie Yong¹⁰, Tessa Yuditha^{9

63}, Roberto Zariquiey^{1

48}, Robert Forkel¹, Nicholas Evans^{2

3}, Stephen C Levinson⁴, Martin Haspelmath¹, Simon J Greenhill^{1

64}, Quentin D Atkinson⁶⁴, Russell D Gray^{1

64}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
² ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
³ Department of Linguistics, School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
⁴ Department of Language and Cognition, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
⁵ Department of Linguistics, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA.
⁶ Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁷ Human Relation Area Files, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
⁸ Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
⁹ Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
¹⁰ Department of Linguistics, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, London, UK.
¹¹ Langage, Langues et Cultures d'Afrique (LLACAN), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Villejuif, France.
¹² Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO), Paris, France.
¹³ Department of Asian and African Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
¹⁴ Frisian and General Linguistics, Department of General Linguistics, Institute for Scandinavian Studies, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Kiel, Germany.
¹⁵ Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
¹⁶ Evolution of Cultural Diversity Initiative, School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
¹⁷ Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University SFC (Shonan Fujisawa Campus), Tokyo, Japan.
¹⁸ Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, Faculty of Arts, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
¹⁹ Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
²⁰ Department of Biological Sciences, Institute of Environment, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA.
²¹ Research Unit for Indigenous Language, School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
²² Department of Linguistics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
²³ Department of Linguistics, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
²⁴ School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
²⁵ Department of Biology, Turku University, Turku, Finland.
²⁶ Department of Finnish and Finno-Ugric languages, University of Turku, Turku, Finland.
²⁷ Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany.
²⁸ Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland.
²⁹ Zentrum für Kleine und Regionale Sprachen, Friesisches Seminar, Europa-Universität Flensburg, Flensburg, Germany.
³⁰ Centro de Investigaciones Históricas y Antropológicas (CIHA), Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia.
³¹ Europa-Universität Flensburg (EUF), Flensburg, Germany.
³² Institute of Linguistics, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany.
³³ Department of Linguistics, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI, USA.
³⁴ Universitas Katolik Weetebula, Sumba Island, Indonesia.
³⁵ Department of Languages and Linguistics, University of Essex, Essex, UK.
³⁶ Department of Linguistics, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
³⁷ Faculty of Languages and Literatures, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany.
³⁸ Structure et Dynamique des Langues (SeDyl), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Villejuif, France.
³⁹ Sprachwissenschaftliches Seminar, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
⁴⁰ Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, Faculty of Brain Sciences, University College London (UCL), University of London, London, UK.
⁴¹ Institutt for Filosofi, ide- og Kunsthistorie og Klassiske Språk (IFIKK), Det Humanistisk Fakultet, Universitet i Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
⁴² Department of Comparative Linguistics, University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland.
⁴³ Department of Linguistics, European University Viadrina, Frankfur an der Oder, Germany.
⁴⁴ Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
⁴⁵ Centre for Linguistics, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands.
⁴⁶ Department of Linguistics, University of Antwerpen, Antwerpen, Belgium.
⁴⁷ Department of English Language and Linguistics, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
⁴⁸ Facultad de Letras y Ciencias Humanas, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima, Perú.
⁴⁹ Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia.
⁵⁰ Department of Modern Languages, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
⁵¹ University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany.
⁵² Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
⁵³ The Language Conservancy, Bloomington, IN, USA.
⁵⁴ Department of Linguistics, Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Linguistics (QLVL), KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
⁵⁵ Division of Ecology and Evolution, Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
⁵⁶ Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
⁵⁷ Department of Linguistics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
⁵⁸ Centre de Recherches Linguistiques sur l'Asie Orientale (CRLAO), École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Aubervilliers, France.
⁵⁹ Department of Modern Languages, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS, USA.
⁶⁰ International College for Postgraduate Buddhist Studies, Tokyo, Japan.
⁶¹ Institute for General Linguistics, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Münster, Germany.
⁶² Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
⁶³ Department of Spanish, Linguistics, and Theory of Literature (Linguistics), Faculty of Philology, University of Seville, Seville, Spain.
⁶⁴ School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.

PMID: 37075104
PMCID: PMC10115409
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adg6175

Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss

Hedvig Skirgård et al. Sci Adv. 2023.

. 2023 Apr 21;9(16):eadg6175.

doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adg6175. Epub 2023 Apr 19.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
² ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
³ Department of Linguistics, School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
⁴ Department of Language and Cognition, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
⁵ Department of Linguistics, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA.
⁶ Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁷ Human Relation Area Files, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
⁸ Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
⁹ Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
¹⁰ Department of Linguistics, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, London, UK.
¹¹ Langage, Langues et Cultures d'Afrique (LLACAN), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Villejuif, France.
¹² Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO), Paris, France.
¹³ Department of Asian and African Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
¹⁴ Frisian and General Linguistics, Department of General Linguistics, Institute for Scandinavian Studies, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Kiel, Germany.
¹⁵ Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
¹⁶ Evolution of Cultural Diversity Initiative, School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
¹⁷ Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University SFC (Shonan Fujisawa Campus), Tokyo, Japan.
¹⁸ Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, Faculty of Arts, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
¹⁹ Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
²⁰ Department of Biological Sciences, Institute of Environment, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA.
²¹ Research Unit for Indigenous Language, School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
²² Department of Linguistics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
²³ Department of Linguistics, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
²⁴ School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
²⁵ Department of Biology, Turku University, Turku, Finland.
²⁶ Department of Finnish and Finno-Ugric languages, University of Turku, Turku, Finland.
²⁷ Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany.
²⁸ Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland.
²⁹ Zentrum für Kleine und Regionale Sprachen, Friesisches Seminar, Europa-Universität Flensburg, Flensburg, Germany.
³⁰ Centro de Investigaciones Históricas y Antropológicas (CIHA), Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia.
³¹ Europa-Universität Flensburg (EUF), Flensburg, Germany.
³² Institute of Linguistics, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany.
³³ Department of Linguistics, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI, USA.
³⁴ Universitas Katolik Weetebula, Sumba Island, Indonesia.
³⁵ Department of Languages and Linguistics, University of Essex, Essex, UK.
³⁶ Department of Linguistics, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
³⁷ Faculty of Languages and Literatures, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany.
³⁸ Structure et Dynamique des Langues (SeDyl), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Villejuif, France.
³⁹ Sprachwissenschaftliches Seminar, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
⁴⁰ Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, Faculty of Brain Sciences, University College London (UCL), University of London, London, UK.
⁴¹ Institutt for Filosofi, ide- og Kunsthistorie og Klassiske Språk (IFIKK), Det Humanistisk Fakultet, Universitet i Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
⁴² Department of Comparative Linguistics, University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland.
⁴³ Department of Linguistics, European University Viadrina, Frankfur an der Oder, Germany.
⁴⁴ Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
⁴⁵ Centre for Linguistics, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands.
⁴⁶ Department of Linguistics, University of Antwerpen, Antwerpen, Belgium.
⁴⁷ Department of English Language and Linguistics, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
⁴⁸ Facultad de Letras y Ciencias Humanas, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima, Perú.
⁴⁹ Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia.
⁵⁰ Department of Modern Languages, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
⁵¹ University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany.
⁵² Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
⁵³ The Language Conservancy, Bloomington, IN, USA.
⁵⁴ Department of Linguistics, Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Linguistics (QLVL), KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
⁵⁵ Division of Ecology and Evolution, Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
⁵⁶ Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
⁵⁷ Department of Linguistics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
⁵⁸ Centre de Recherches Linguistiques sur l'Asie Orientale (CRLAO), École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Aubervilliers, France.
⁵⁹ Department of Modern Languages, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS, USA.
⁶⁰ International College for Postgraduate Buddhist Studies, Tokyo, Japan.
⁶¹ Institute for General Linguistics, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Münster, Germany.
⁶² Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
⁶³ Department of Spanish, Linguistics, and Theory of Literature (Linguistics), Faculty of Philology, University of Seville, Seville, Spain.
⁶⁴ School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.

PMID: 37075104
PMCID: PMC10115409
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adg6175

Abstract

While global patterns of human genetic diversity are increasingly well characterized, the diversity of human languages remains less systematically described. Here, we outline the Grambank database. With over 400,000 data points and 2400 languages, Grambank is the largest comparative grammatical database available. The comprehensiveness of Grambank allows us to quantify the relative effects of genealogical inheritance and geographic proximity on the structural diversity of the world's languages, evaluate constraints on linguistic diversity, and identify the world's most unusual languages. An analysis of the consequences of language loss reveals that the reduction in diversity will be strikingly uneven across the major linguistic regions of the world. Without sustained efforts to document and revitalize endangered languages, our linguistic window into human history, cognition, and culture will be seriously fragmented.

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Figures

**Fig. 1.. Variance explained by phylogeny and geography.**
Each point is a Grambank feature. The panels represent different domains of grammar that the features are associated with: (A) clausal, (B) nominal domain, (C) pronominal domain, and (D) verbal domain. A high value indicates that a large part of the variance is explained by either space (y axis) or phylogeny (x axis). The ellipses represent the standard deviation of the joint posterior, tilted for the covariance.

**Fig. 2.. Grammatical similarity in the Grambank sample of languages.**
The color coding represents the distribution of languages according to the first three principal components (PCs) mapped onto RGB color space (PC1, red; PC2, green; PC3, blue). Similarity in color indicates similarity in grammatical structure on the first three dimensions. See fig. S15 for loading of Grambank features on the first two components and fig. S16 for correlation with theoretical metrics.

**Fig. 3.. Distribution of the 12 largest families in our dataset in Grambank design space.**
The x axis represents the first principal component (PC1), and the y axis represents the second principal component (PC2). All languages are plotted, and for each facet, one family is highlighted in a different color. Austronesian languages, which are known for lacking gender and having little morphology, are found on the far left.

**Fig. 4.. Decline of functional richness associated with language loss.**
Top: Bars representing functional richness relative to the current diversity of the world’s languages are shown in light green, and functional richness of nonthreatened languages in the same areas are shown in dark green. Functional richness declines in all areas, with some regions showing dramatic decreases. Bottom: Threatened (gray) and nonthreatened (black) languages are plotted over a convex hull (green) that represents the overall area of functional space [x and y, representing two dimensions of a principal coordinate analysis on the Grambank feature set] occupied by languages of the area.

See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

1. H. Hammarström, R. Forkel, M. Haspelmath, S. Bank, glottolog/glottolog: Glottolog Database 4.5 as CLDF (v4.5) [Data set] (Zenodo, 2021); 10.5281/zenodo.5772649. - DOI
1. M. H. Christiansen, N. Chater,Language as shaped by the brain. Behav. Brain Sci. 31, 489–509 (2008). - PubMed
1. B. Bickel, A. Witzlack-Makarevich, K. K. Choudhary, M. Schlesewsky, I. Bornkessel-Schlesewsky,The neurophysiology of language processing shapes the evolution of grammar: Evidence from case marking. PLOS ONE 10, e0132819 (2015). - PMC - PubMed
1. J. Nichols, Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time (University of Chicago Press, 1992).
1. P. Muysken, From Linguistic Areas to Areal Linguistics (John Benjamins, 2008).

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Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss

Affiliations

Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss

Authors

Affiliations

Abstract

Figures

References

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources

Full Text Sources