Genetic and linguistic comparisons reveal complex sex-biased transmission of language features

Abstract

Cultural practices can shape the transmission of learned behaviors by affecting who learns from whom. If cultural traditions cause people to tend to learn languages from mothers or maternal relatives, this biased cultural transmission could create a closer-than-expected association between language variation and maternally inherited genetic variation. We use genetic, linguistic, and ethnographic information from populations across the world to find evidence of sex-biased transmission at both global and local scales. We account for the relationships between genes, languages, and geography to find that language transmission may have a local-level sex bias in certain regions of the world, and that the effects of ethnographic traits, such as descent and postmarital residence, are inconsistent at a global level. Keywords: cultural evolution, genetic analyses, phonemes, language features, ethnographic data