An inverse correlation between structural linguistic and human genetic diversity

Abstract

Languages have highly diverse structures—e.g. some place verbs first, others elsewhere—and this diversity is remarkably uneven across the globe. In some regions, languages show a variety of verb placements, while in others they share the same. By linking population genetic and linguistic data, we show that relatively isolated regions (with low levels of genetic diversity) exhibit higher degrees of structural diversity across languages, whereas regions with local histories of more contact and migration (higher genetic diversity) tend toward lower levels of structural linguistic diversity. This inverse correlation between linguistic and genetic diversity highlights that hotspots of linguistic diversity, reflective of relative isolation, are crucial windows into the flexibility of the language faculty and the dynamics of linguistic evolution. Keywords: language contact, population genetics, linguistic diversity