Languages Burst Forth Rapidly

Feb. 1, 2008 -- New languages often evolve quickly, in a sudden burst of new words coined as groups of people strive to describe the world around them, says an international team of researchers.

Quentin Atkinson from the UK's University of Oxford and colleagues report their findings today in the journal Science.

Scientists debate the evolution of language in a way that parallels arguments in biological evolution.

Do most changes come about slowly and gradually or rapidly within relatively short spans of time?

To answer this question, the researchers studied sets of basic vocabulary from 490 different languages in Europe, Asia and Africa. They used the same kind of computer program biologists use to create family trees to track the appearance of related words and so trace the evolution of new languages from older ones.

"We compared things like the words for body parts, words about kinship, colors and other basic words," said researcher Simon Greenhill, a Ph.D. candidate from the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

Their results showed many of the novel words that make up new languages appear in an initial burst over a relatively short period of time.

"We're probably talking generations," said Greenhill, "maybe around 100 years."

In Bantu languages from Africa, for example, more than 30 percent of vocabulary differences between languages arose at or around the time that they split off from each other, say the researchers.

In the languages of Indonesia, Polynesia and Papua New Guinea, the rush of new words accounted for about 10 percent of differences. Several factors might account for the tendency of new languages to evolve this way, the researchers say.

For example, the changes might reflect the need of one emerging group of people to differentiate itself from another.

"Some people might exaggerate the differences between their languages to reinforce their groups," said Greenhill.

In other cases, small groups of people who become isolated might develop new ways of speaking based on the vocal quirks of their founders, he says.

For example, this might have played a part in the evolution of Polynesia's 30 or so languages, which emerged over approximately 1200 years, the researchers suggest.

Related Links:

Jennifer Viegas' blog: Born Animal

Language Origins

Commonly-Used American Slang