Simon J. Greenhill
Associate Professor and Co-Director, Centre for Computational Evolution · School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland
I study language and cultural evolution — why and how humans created the remarkable diversity of languages we see today, and what they reveal about our shared prehistory.
Using Bayesian phylogenetic methods, I explore how the Austronesian peoples settled the Pacific and how linguistic structures co-evolve, and I build large-scale databases to uncover the processes driving language and cultural evolution. Find me on Bluesky, GitHub, or at the University of Auckland.
Selected publications
rcldf: R library for reading CLDF files
@article{Greenhill2026, title = {rcldf: R library for reading CLDF files}, author = {Greenhill, Simon J.}, journal = {Journal of Open Source Software}, volume = {11}, number = {125}, pages = {10811}, publisher = {The Open Journal}, year = {2026}, doi = {10.21105/joss.10811}, url = {https://simon.net.nz/articles/rcldf/}, }Demographic shifts, inter-group contact, and environmental conditions drive language extinction and diversification
@article{Coelho2026, title = {Demographic shifts, inter-group contact, and environmental conditions drive language extinction and diversification}, author = {Coelho, Marco Túlio Pacheco and Haynie, Hannah J. and Bowern, Claire and Colwell, Robert K. and Greenhill, Simon J. and Kirby, Kathryn R. and Rangel, Thiago F. and Gavin, Michael C.}, journal = {Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences}, volume = {293}, number = {2063}, publisher = {The Royal Society}, year = {2026}, doi = {10.1098/rspb.2024.2361}, url = {https://simon.net.nz/articles/demographic-shifts-intergroup-contact-language-extinction/}, }Three evolutionary radiations shaped the evolution of global religious diversity.
@article{Ejova2025, title = {Three evolutionary radiations shaped the evolution of global religious diversity.}, author = {Ejova, Anastasia and Sheehan, Oliver and Bouckaert, Remco R. and Greenhill, Simon J. and Krátký, Jan and Kotherová, Silvie and Cigán, Jakub and Klocová, Eva Kundtová and Kundt, Radek and Watts, Joseph and Bulbulia, Joseph and Atkinson, Quentin D. and Gray, Russell D.}, journal = {Evolutionary Human Sciences}, volume = {7}, publisher = {Cambridge University Press (CUP)}, year = {2025}, doi = {10.1017/ehs.2025.10027}, url = {https://simon.net.nz/articles/global-religious-diversity/}, }Enduring constraints on grammar revealed by Bayesian spatiophylogenetic analyses.
@article{Verkerk2025, title = {Enduring constraints on grammar revealed by Bayesian spatiophylogenetic analyses.}, author = {Verkerk, Annemarie and Shcherbakova, Olena and Haynie, Hannah J. and Skirgård, Hedvig and Rzymski, Christoph and Atkinson, Quentin D. and Greenhill, Simon J. and Gray, Russell D.}, journal = {Nature Human Behaviour}, volume = {10}, number = {1}, pages = {126--136}, publisher = {Springer Science and Business Media LLC}, year = {2025}, doi = {10.1038/s41562-025-02325-z}, url = {https://simon.net.nz/articles/enduring-constraints-on-grammar/}, }
Projects
Languages of Barrier Islands, Sumatra
Description, History and Typology
The Barrier Islands Languages project is a project funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant (DP230102019) titled: “Languages of Barrier Islands, Sumatra: Description, History and Typology”.
This project will run between 2023 and 2027 and investigate under-/undocumented Austronesian languages of the Barrier Islands, including Mentawai, (Simaluaya) Nias, Semeulue and Sikule, as well as neighbouring Northwest Sumatra languages, such as Simalungun Batak. New knowledge will be generated into the languages, cultures and societies of the region and be made freely available to the public.
Research will uncover past migration patterns in Southeast Asia, advance language theory, such as linguistic typology and language change, and support the computational modelling of Austronesian for future language technologies.
Grambank
a database of structural (typological) features of language
Grambank is a database of structural (typological) features of language. It consists of 195 logically independent features (most of them binary) spanning all subdomains of morphosyntax. The Grambank feature questionnaire has been filled in, based on reference grammars, for 2,467 languages. The aim is to eventually reach as many as 3,500 languages. The database can be used to investigate deep language prehistory, the geographical-distribution of features, language universals and the functional interaction of structural features.
Kinbank
Database of Kinship terminology
Kinbank is a database of kinship terminologies to be used for exploring cross-linguistic diversity in kinship organisation. The database includes 1229 languages and a set of 100 core kin types between Grandparents and Grandchildren, and between Parent’s siblings, and Parent’s siblings’ children. A major advantage of Kinbank is the focused language family sampling and sampling based on occurrence in existing anthropological databases (e.g. d-place.org), allowing us to test the relationship between languages and behaviour. This allows the use of phylogenetic methods to reconstruct the states of proto-kinship, account for common ancestry in models of kinship change, and test for correlated evolution between linguistic and behavioural patterns.
Lexibank
a public repository of standardized wordlists with computed phonological and lexical features
The past decades have seen substantial growth in digital data on the world’s languages. At the same time, the demand for cross-linguistic datasets has been increasing, as witnessed by numerous studies devoted to diverse questions on human prehistory, cultural evolution, and human cognition. Unfortunately, most published datasets lack standardization which makes their comparison difficult. Here, we present a new approach to increase the comparability of cross-linguistic lexical data. We have designed workflows for the computer-assisted lifting of datasets to Cross-Linguistic Data Formats, a collection of standards that make these datasets more Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR). We test the Lexibank workflow on 100 lexical datasets from which we derive an aggregated database of wordlists in unified phonetic transcriptions covering more than 2000 language varieties. We illustrate the benefits of our approach by showing how phonological and lexical features can be automatically inferred, complementing and expanding existing cross-linguistic datasets.
GELATO
GEnes and LAnguages TOgether
The GeLaTo dataset is a worldwide diversity panel of available population genetic samples matched with databases of linguistic, cultural and environmental diversity. Population genetic samples are assigned to existing GlottoCodes, following ethnolinguistic criteria: the data is filtered following the indication of geneticists, linguists, cultural anthropologists and historians. The dataset provides elaborated summary statistics such as genetic diversity within a population, genetic proximity between pairs of populations, sharing of identical motifs, and demographic history reconstructions.
CLICS3
Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications
The original Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications (CLICS), has established a computer-assisted framework for the interactive representation of cross-linguistic colexification patterns. It has proven to be a useful tool for various kinds of investigation into cross-linguistic semantic associations, ranging from studies on semantic change, patterns of conceptualization, and linguistic paleontology. But CLICS has also been criticized for obvious shortcomings. Building on standardization efforts reflected in the CLDF initiative and novel approaches for fast, efficient, and reliable data aggregation, CLICS² expanded the original CLICS database. CLICS³ - the third installment of CLICS - exploits the framework pioneered in CLICS² to more than double the amount of data aggregated in the database.