Can a linguistic serial founder effect originating in Africa explain the worldwide phonemic cline?
dc.contributor.author
dc.date.accessioned
2017-01-24T07:56:50Z
dc.date.available
2017-01-24T07:56:50Z
dc.date.issued
2016-04-27
dc.identifier.issn
1742-5689
dc.identifier.uri
dc.description.abstract
It has been proposed that a serial founder effect could have caused the present observed pattern of global phonemic diversity. Here we present a model that simulates the human range expansion out of Africa and the subsequent spatial linguistic dynamics until today. It does not assume copying errors, Darwinian competition, reduced contrastive possibilities or any other specific linguistic mechanism. We show that the decrease of linguistic diversity with distance (from the presumed origin of the expansion) arises under three assumptions, previously introduced by other authors: (i) an accumulation rate for phonemes; (ii) small phonemic inventories for the languages spoken before the out-of-Africa dispersal; (iii) an increase in the phonemic accumulation rate with the number of speakers per unit area. Numerical simulations show that the predictions of the model agree with the observed decrease of linguistic diversity with increasing distance from the most likely origin of the out-of-Africa dispersal. Thus, the proposal that a serial founder effect could have caused the present observed pattern of global phonemic diversity is viable, if three strong assumptions are satisfied
dc.description.sponsorship
This work was supported in part by ICREA (Academia Humanities award to J.F.), MINECO (grants nos. SimulPast-CSD-2010-00034 and FIS-2012-31307) and the Fundacio´n BBVA (grant no. Neodigit-PIN2015E)
dc.format.mimetype
application/pdf
dc.language.iso
eng
dc.publisher
Royal Society (Gran Bretanya)
dc.relation
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/MINECO//FIS2012-31307/ES/PROPAGACION DE FRENTES EN SISTEMAS COMPLEJOS MULTIDISCIPLINARES/
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Reproducció digital del document publicat a: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2016.0185
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© Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 2016, vol. 13, p. 20160185
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Articles publicats (D-F)
dc.rights
Attribution 3.0 Spain
dc.rights.uri
dc.subject
dc.title
Can a linguistic serial founder effect originating in Africa explain the worldwide phonemic cline?
dc.type
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
dc.rights.accessRights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.embargo.terms
Cap
dc.type.version
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
dc.identifier.doi
dc.identifier.idgrec
025189
dc.contributor.funder
dc.relation.ProjectAcronym
dc.identifier.eissn
1742-5662