Evolution of Human Languages

The Evolution of Human Languages (EHL) project is a historical-comparative linguistics research project hosted by the Santa Fe Institute.[1][2] It aims to provide a detailed genealogical classification of the world's languages.[3]

The project was founded in 2001 by Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann when he decided to partner with Sergei Starostin and Merritt Ruhlen to map out the evolutionary tree of human languages. Initial funding was provided by the Santa Fe Institute and the MacArthur Foundation.[4] It is currently led by Russian linguist Georgiy Starostin, the son of Sergei Starostin.[5]

Many of the project's members belong to the Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics, including Georgiy Starostin and Ilia Peiros.[6] Other project members include Vaclav Blazek, John D. Bengtson, Edward Vajda, and other linguists.

Overview

The Evolution of Human Languages (EHL) is an international project – of which Georgiy Starostin inherited his father's membership – on "the linguistic prehistory of humanity" coordinated by the Santa Fe Institute. The project distinguishes about 6,000 languages currently spoken around the world, and aims to provide a detailed classification similar to the accepted classification of biological species.

Their idea is that "all representatives of the species Homo sapiens presumably share a common origin, [so] it would be natural to suppose – although this is a goal yet to be achieved – that all human languages also go back to some common source. Most existing classifications, however, do not go beyond some 300-400 language families that are relatively easy to discern. This restriction has natural reasons: languages must have been spoken and constantly evolving for at least 40,000 years (and quite probably more), while any two languages separated from a common source inevitably lose almost all superficially common features after some 6,000-7,000 years".[7]

Global Lexicostatistical Database
See also: ASJP list and Swadesh list

In 2011, the Global Lexicostatistical Database (GLD) was launched as part of the EHL project. It includes basic word lists of 110 items each for many of the world's languages.[8] The 110-word list is a modified 100-item Swadesh list consisting of the original 100 Swadesh list items, in addition to the following 10 additional words from the Swadesh–Yakhontov list:[9]

  1. far
  2. heavy
  3. near
  4. salt
  5. short
  6. snake
  7. thin
  8. wind
  9. worm
  10. year

The database makes use of the Unified Transcription System (UTS), designed specifically for the database.[10]

A 50-word list of "ultra-stable" items for lexicostatiscal use with the database was also proposed in 2010:[11]

  1. we
  2. two
  3. I
  4. eye
  5. thou
  6. who
  7. fire
  8. tongue
  9. stone
  10. name
  11. hand
  12. what
  13. die
  14. heart
  15. drink
  16. dog
  17. louse (head)
  18. moon
  19. fingernail
  20. blood
  21. one
  22. tooth
  23. new
  24. dry (e.g. of clothes)
  25. eat
  26. tail
  27. hair (of head)
  28. water
  29. nose
  30. not
  31. mouth
  32. ear
  33. bird
  34. bone
  35. sun
  36. smoke
  37. tree
  38. ashes
  39. rain
  40. star
  41. leaf
  42. kill
  43. foot
  44. horn
  45. hear
  46. meat (as food)
  47. egg
  48. black
  49. head
  50. night

See also

References
  1. "Evolution of Human Languages: An international project on the linguistic prehistory of humanity". ehl.santafe.edu. Santa Fe Institute. Retrieved December 31, 2012.
  2. Velasquez-Manoff, Moises (July 20, 2007). "Linguists seek a time when we spoke as one". USA Today. Retrieved December 31, 2012.
  3. Mark Pagel, Quentin D. Atkinson, Andreea S. Calude, Andrew Meade. Ultraconserved words point to deep language ancestry across Eurasia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences May 2013, 110 (21) 8471-8476; doi:10.1073/pnas.1218726110
  4. "Evolution of Human Languages": current state of affairs (March 2014).
  5. Woodward, Richard B. "The Man Who Loved Languages: A Scholar with the Ability and Audacity to Rebuild the Tower of Babel Died a Year Ago, but His Controversial Project Lives on." The American Scholar 75, no. 4 (2006): 44-57. Accessed December 27, 2020.
  6. Evolution of Human Languages - The Participants.
  7. "Evolution of Human Languages - An Introduction" at Santafe.edu, retrieved 25 October 2007. New link, see here. Accessed Oct 27, 2009.
  8. Starostin, George (ed.) 2011-2019. The Global Lexicostatistical Database. Moscow: Higher School of Economics, & Santa Fe: Santa Fe Institute. Accessed on 2020-12-26.
  9. A. Kassian, G. Starostin et al.: The Swadesh wordlist. An attempt at semantic specification. Journal of Language Relationship, No. 4 (2010). P. 46–89.
  10. Unified Transcription System (UTS) for the Global Lexicostatical Database.
  11. Starostin, George. Preliminary lexicostatistics as a basis for language classification: A new approach. Journal of Language Relationship, No. 3 (2010). P. 79–116.
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