New paper by Anna Graff, Daphné Bavelier, Kentaro Shimizu, Chiara Barbieri, Balthasar Bickel and colleagues, combining linguistic with genetic data
When populations meet, they typically exchange genes. Their languages meet too, and such encounters can change languages. But how much do languages actually change through contact, and do these changes differ depending on the type of contact? To address these questions, this new study links global patterns of genetic exchange with linguistic data. The results, published in the journal Science Advances, show that contact between human populations increases the resemblance between their languages to similar extents all over the world, though the effect varies across different aspects of language.