Simon J. Greenhill

Demographic shifts, inter-group contact, and environmental conditions drive language extinction and diversification

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Pacheco Coelho MT, Haynie HJ, Bowern C, Coelho RK, Greenhill SJ, Kirby KR, Rangel TF, Gavin MC. 2026. Demographic shifts, inter-group contact, and environmental conditions drive language extinction and diversification. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 293: 20242361.

Three evolutionary radiations shaped the evolution of global religious diversity.

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Ejova A, Sheehan O, Bouckaert R, Greenhill SJ, Krátký J, Kotherová S, Cigán J, Kundtová Klocová E, Kundt R, Watts J, Bulbulia J, Atkinson QD & Gray RD. 2025. Three evolutionary radiations shaped the evolution of global religious diversity. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 7.

Enduring constraints on grammar revealed by Bayesian spatiophylogenetic analyses.

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Verkerk A, Shcherbakova O, Haynie HJ, Skirgård H, Rzymski C, Atkinson QD, Greenhill SJ & Gray RD. 2025. Enduring constraints on grammar revealed by Bayesian spatiophylogenetic analyses. Nature Human Behaviour.

A solid base for scaling up: the structure of numeration systems.

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Pelland J-C, Greenhill SJ, Walworth M, & Bender A. 2025. A solid base for scaling up: the structure of numeration systems. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 380: 1937.

Different models, different assumptions, different findings.

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Shcherbakova O, Gast V, Greenhill SJ, Blasi DE, Gray RD, & Skirgård H. 2025. Different models, different assumptions, different findings: commentary on ‘Replication and methodological robustness in quantitative typology’ by Becker and Guzmán Naranjo. Linguistic Typology, 29, 587-590.

Lexibank 2: pre-computed features for large-scale lexical data.

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Blum F, List JM, Barrientos C, Englisch J, Forkel R, Greenhill SJ & Rzymski C. 2025. Lexibank 2: pre-computed features for large-scale lexical data.. Open Research Europe, 5:126.

Next generation language phylogenies

Sun, 25 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Greenhill SJ. 2025. Next generation language phylogenies. Diachronica.

R code to download the latest glottolog version

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve seen a number of R packages and scripts that cache a copy of Glottolog for users to use.

This has the problem of rapidly going stale and out of date.

Here is a simple function to always get the latest version of the data by querying the Zenodo API endpoint:

load_glottolog <- function() {
 # 1. query API endpoint
 o <- jsonlite::fromJSON('https://zenodo.org/api/records/14006636')
 # 2. get url
 latest_url <- o$files[1,]$links$self
 
 # 3. download
 glottolog_zipfile <- tempfile()
 download.file(latest_url, glottolog_zipfile, method="curl", extra='-L')
 
 # 4. find values.csv
 valuefile <- grep('values.csv$', unzip(glottolog_zipfile, list=TRUE)$Name, ignore.case=TRUE, value=TRUE)
 
 # 5. return values
 readr::read_csv(unz(glottolog_zipfile, filename = valuefile))
}

An alternative solution is to use my RCLDF Package:

Projected speaker numbers and dormancy risks of Canada’s Indigenous languages

Tue, 18 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Boissonneault M, Tallman A, Gast V & Greenhill SJ. 2025. Projected speaker numbers and dormancy risks of Canada’s Indigenous languages. Royal Society Open Science. 12241091.

Methods in Malayo-Polynesian comparative-historical linguistics

Mon, 12 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Ross M, & Greenhill SJ. 2024. Methods in Malayo-Polynesian comparative-historical linguistics. In Adelaar A & Schapper A (Eds) The Oxford Guide to the Malayo-Polynesian Languages of Southeast Asia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of Philippine languages supports a rapid migration of Malayo Polynesian languages

Sat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

King B, Greenhill SJ, Reid LA, Ross M, Walworth M, & Gray R. 2024. Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of Philippine languages supports a rapid migration of Malayo Polynesian languages. Scientific Reports, 14, 14967.

Tentatively tracing Trans‐New Guinea: A phylogenetic evaluation of potential deeper relationships.

Thu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Greenhill SJ. In Press. Tentatively tracing Trans‐New Guinea: A phylogenetic evaluation of potential deeper relationships.. In Evans N & Fedden S (Eds). The Oxford Guide to the Papuan Languages. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

The evolutionary dynamics of how languages signal who does what to whom

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Shcherbakova O, Blasi DE, Gast V, Skirgård H, Gray RD, & Greenhill SJ. 2024. The evolutionary dynamics of how languages signal who does what to whom. Scientific Reports, 14, 7259.

Variation in phoneme inventories: quantifying the problem and improving comparability

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Anderson C, Tresoldi T, Greenhill SJ, Forkel R, Gray RD & List JML. 2023. Variation in phoneme inventories: quantifying the problem and improving comparability. Journal of Language Evolution, 11, lzad011.

Societies of strangers do not speak grammatically simpler languages

Thu, 17 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Shcherbakova O, Michaelis SM, Haynie HJ, Passmore S, Gast V, Gray RD, Greenhill SJ, Blasi DE, & Skirgård H. 2023. Societies of strangers do not speak grammatically simpler languages. Science Advances, 9 (33), eadf7704.

A shared foundation of language change

Fri, 28 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Greenhill SJ. 2023. A shared foundation of language change. Science, 6656, 374-375.

Language trees with sampled ancestors support a hybrid model for the origin of Indo-European languages

Fri, 28 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Heggarty PH et al. 2023. Language trees with sampled ancestors support a hybrid model for the origin of Indo-European languages. Science, 381, abg0818.

Subgrouping in a `dialect continuum': A Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of the Mixtecan language family

Sun, 04 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Auderset S, Greenhill SJ, DiCanio CT & Campbell EW. 2023. Subgrouping in a ‘dialect continuum’: A Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of the Mixtecan language family. Journal of Language Evolution.

Kinbank: A global database of kinship terminology

Wed, 24 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Passmore S, Barth W, Greenhill SJ, Quinn K, Sheard C, Argyriou P, Birchall J, Bowern C, Calladine J, Deb A, Diederen A, Metsäranta NP, Araujo LH, Schembri R, Hickey-Hall J, Honkola T, Mitchell A, Poole L, Rácz PM, Roberts SG, Ross RM, Thomas-Colquhoun E, Evans N, Jordan FM. 2023. Kinbank: A global database of kinship terminology. PLoS One, 18(5), e0283218.

Language Phylogenies: Modelling the evolution of language.

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Greenhill SJ. 2023. Language Phylogenies. The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution, C61P1-C61P248.

Grambank’s Typological Advances Support Computational Research on Diverse Languages

Mon, 01 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Haynie H, Blasi DE, Skirgård H, Greenhill SJ, Atkinson QD, & Gray RD. Grambank’s Typological Advances Support Computational Research on Diverse Languages. In Beinborn L, Goswami K, Muradoğlu S, Sorokin A, Kumar R, Shcherbakov A, Ponti EM, Cotterell R & Vylomova E. Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Research in Computational Linguistic Typology and Multilingual NLP (SIGTYP). Association for Computational Linguistics: Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss

Wed, 19 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Skirgård H ….Greenhill SJ, Atkinson QD, & Gray RD. 2023. Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss. Science Advances, 9, eadg6175.

Modelling admixture across language levels to evaluate deep history claims

Fri, 31 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hübler N & Greenhill SJ. 2023. Modelling admixture across language levels to evaluate deep history claims. Journal of Language Evolution.

A recent northern origin for the Uto-Aztecan family

Wed, 22 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Greenhill SJ, Haynie H, Ross R, Chira A, List J-M, Campbell L, Botero C, & Gray R. 2023. A recent northern origin for the Uto-Aztecan family. Language.

Untangling the evolution of body-part terminology in Pano: conservative versus innovative traits in body-part lexicalization

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Zariquiey R, Vera J, Greenhill SJ, Valenzuela P, Gray RD, & List J-M. 2022. Untangling the evolution of body-part terminology in Pano: conservative versus innovative traits in body-part lexicalization. Interface Focus, 13(1).

A quantitative global test of the complexity trade-off hypothesis: the case of nominal and verbal grammatical marking

Thu, 08 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Shcherbakova O, Gast V, Blasi DE, Skirgård H, Gray RD, & Greenhill SJ. 2022. A quantitative global test of the complexity trade-off hypothesis: the case of nominal and verbal grammatical marking. Linguistics Vanguard.

Grammatical complexity is only weakly influenced by the sociolinguistic environment

Thu, 08 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Shcherbakova O, Michaelis SM, Haynie HJ, Greenhill SJ, Blasi DE, Gray RD, Gast V, & Skirgård H. 2022. Grammatical complexity is only weakly influenced by the sociolinguistic environment. Pp. 669-671, In Ravignani A, Asano R, Valente D, Ferretti F, Hartmann S, Hayashi M, Jadoul Y, Martins M, Oseki Y, Rodrigues ED, Vasileva O, & Wacewicz S. (Eds). Proceedings of the Joint Conference on Language Evolution (JCoLE). Joint Conference on Language Evolution (JCoLE). Nijmegen: Joint Conference on Language Evolution (JCoLE).

A global analysis of matches and mismatches between human genetic and linguistic histories.

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Barbieri C, Blasi DE, Arango-Isaza E, Sotiropoulos AG, Hammarström H, Wichmann S, Greenhill SJ, Gray RD, Forkel R, Bickel B, & Shimizu KK. 2022. A global analysis of matches and mismatches between human genetic and linguistic histories. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(47).

Phylogeographic analysis of the Bantu language expansion supports a rainforest route

Tue, 02 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Koile E, Greenhill SJ, Blasi DE, Bouckaert R, & Gray RD. 2022. Phylogeographic analysis of the Bantu language expansion supports a rainforest route. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(32) e2112853119.

Lexibank, a public repository of standardized wordlists with computed phonological and lexical features

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

List JM, Forkel R, Greenhill SJ, Rzymski C, Englisch J & Gray RD. 2022. Lexibank, a public repository of standardized wordlists with computed phonological and lexical features. Scientific Data, 9(1): 316.

Managing Historical Linguistic Data for Computational Phylogenetics and Computer-Assisted Language Comparison

Wed, 05 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Tresoldi T, Rzymski C, Forkel R, Greenhill SJ, List JM, & Gray R. 2022. Managing historical linguistic data for computational phylogenetics and computer-assisted language comparison. In Andrea L. Berez-Kroeker, Bradley McDonnell, Eve Koller, & Lauren B. Collister (Eds). Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management.

Global predictors of language endangerment and the future of linguistic diversity.

Fri, 17 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Bromham L, Dinnage R, Skirgård H, Ritchie A, Cardillo M, Meakins F, Greenhill S & Hua X. 2021. Global predictors of language endangerment and the future of linguistic diversity. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 6: 163–173.

Games and enculturation: A cross-cultural analysis of cooperative goal structures in Austronesian games.

Wed, 24 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Leisterer-Peoples SM, Ross CT, Greenhill SJ, Hardecker S & Haun DBM. 2021. Games and enculturation: A cross-cultural analysis of cooperative goal structures in Austronesian games. PLOS ONE 16(11): e0259746.

Do languages and genes share cultural evolutionary history?

Thu, 07 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Greenhill SJ. 2021. Do languages and genes share cultural evolutionary history? Science Advances, eabm2472.

Visualising the languages of the world

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I was asked if there was a visualisation of global linguistic diversity. I couldn’t think of a good one, so I made this: the world’s language families. Size here is proportional to the number of languages, data are from Glottolog

A high-res PDF is available here

Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of linguistic data using BEAST.

Thu, 23 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hoffmann K, Bouckaert R, Greenhill SJ, & Kühnert D. 2021. Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of linguistic data using BEAST. Journal of Language Evolution, 6: 119–135.

Pathways to social inequality.

Mon, 12 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Haynie H, Kavanagh PH, Jordan FM, Ember CR, Gray RD, Greenhill SJ, Kirby KR, Kushnick G, Low BS, Tuff T, Vilela B, Botero C, & Gavin MC. 2021. Pathways to social inequality. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 3, E35.

Kin Against Kin: Internal Co-selection and the Coherence of Kinship Typologies.

Mon, 07 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Passmore S, Barth W, Quinn K, Greenhill SJ, Evans N, & Jordan FM. 2021. Kin Against Kin: Internal Co-selection and the Coherence of Kinship Typologies. Biological Theory, 16(3), 176–193.

Blowing in the wind: Using ‘North Wind and the Sun’ texts to sample phoneme inventories.

Sun, 06 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Baird L, Evans N, & Greenhill SJ. 2021. Blowing in the wind: Using ‘North Wind and the Sun’ texts to sample phoneme inventories. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 1-42.

Historical, archaeological and linguistic evidence test the phylogenetic inference of Viking-Age plant use.

Mon, 17 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Teixidor-Toneu I, Kool A, Greenhill SJ, Kjesrud K, Sandstedt JJ, Manzanilla V, Jordan FM. 2021. Historical, archaeological and linguistic evidence test the phylogenetic inference of Viking-Age plant use. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 376, 20200086.

The uses and abuses of tree thinking in cultural evolution.

Mon, 17 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Evans CL, Greenhill SJ, Watts J, List JM, Botero CA, Gray RD, & Kirby KR. 2021. The uses and abuses of tree thinking in cultural evolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 376, 20200056.

The Austronesian Game Taxonomy: A cross-cultural dataset of historical games.

Thu, 13 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Leisterer-Peoples SM, Hardecker S, Watts J, Greenhill SJ, Ross CT & Haun DBM. 2021. The Austronesian Game Taxonomy: A cross-cultural dataset of historical games. Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, 8, 113.

Bayesian Phylolinguistics

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Greenhill SJ, Heggarty P, & Gray RD. 2020 Bayesian Phylolinguistics. In Janda RD, Joseph BD, & Vance BS (Eds) The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Volume II, pp. 226–253. Wiley-Blackwell: New Jersey.

CHIELD: the causal hypotheses in evolutionary linguistics database.

Mon, 20 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Roberts SG, Killin A, Deb A, Sheard C, Greenhill SJ, Sinnemäki K, …, & Jordan F. 2020. CHIELD: the causal hypotheses in evolutionary linguistics database. The Journal of Language Evolution.

Phylogenetic exploration of language complexity in Austronesian, Bantu, and Indo-European Language Families

Thu, 16 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Shcherbakova O, Skirgård H, & Greenhill SJ. 2020. Phylogenetic exploration of language complexity in Austronesian, Bantu, and Indo-European Language Families. Pp. 411-413, In Ravignani A, Barbieri C, Flaherty M, Jadoul Y, Lattenkamp E, Little H, Martins M, Mudd K, & Verhoef T (Eds). The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference (Evolang13). Nijmegen: The Evolution of Language Conferences.

The Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications, reproducible analysis of cross-linguistic polysemies

Mon, 13 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Rzymski C, Tresoldi T, Greenhill SJ, Wu M-S, Schweikhard NE, Koptjevskaja-Tamm M, Gast V, et al. 2020. The Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications, Reproducible Analysis of Cross-Linguistic Polysemies. Scientific Data 7 (1): 1–12.

Emotion semantics show both cultural variation and universal structure

Fri, 20 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Jackson JC, Watts J, Henry TR, List JM, Forkel R, Mucha PJ, Greenhill SJ, Gray RD, & Lindquist KA. 2019 Emotion semantics show both cultural variation and universal structure. Science, 366, 1517-1522.

Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan

Mon, 06 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Sagart L, Jacques G, Lai Y, Ryder RJ, Thouzeau V, Greenhill SJ, List J- M. 2019 Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201817972.

The ecological drivers of variation in global language diversity

Fri, 03 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Hua X, Greenhill SJ, Cardillo M, Schneemann H & Bromham L. 2019. The ecological drivers of variation in global language diversity. Nature Communications, 10, 2047.

Drivers of geographical patterns of North American language diversity

Wed, 27 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Pacheco Coelho MT, Barreto Pereira E, Haynie HJ, Rangel TF, Kavanagh P, Kirby KR, Greenhill SJ, Bowern C, Gray RD, Colwell RK, Evans N, & Gavin MC. 2019. Drivers of geographical patterns of North American language diversity. Proceedings of the Royal Society, B, Biological Sciences, 286: 20190242.

Treemaker

Mon, 08 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Greenhill, SJ. 2018. Treemaker: A Python library for creating a Newick formatted tree from a set of classification strings. Journal of Open Source Software, 3(31), 1040.

ICHL24 Panel: Computational and Phylogenetic Historical Linguistics

Fri, 07 Sep 2018 09:35:38 +0000

Workshop Panel at the 24th International Conference on Historical Linguistics

(Australian National University in Canberra, Australia from July 1st-5th 2019.)

Recent years have seen an influx of computational and phylogenetic methods into historical linguistics. These “phylolinguistic’’ approaches have been used to explore the origins and subgrouping of language families including Austronesian (Gray, Drummond, and Greenhill 2009), Bantu (Grollemund et al. 2015), Indo-European (Bouckaert et al. 2012; Chang and Michael 2014), Pama-Nyungan (Bowern and Atkinson 2012; Bouckaert, Bowern, and Atkinson 2018), Timor-Alor-Pantar (Robinson and Holton 2012) and Uralic (Honkola et al. 2013). Other studies have investigated the stability of linguistic features (Dediu and Levinson 2012; Greenhill et al. 2017) or explored the evolution of language systems from colors (Haynie and Bowern 2016), numbers (Calude and Verkerk 2016), word order (Dunn et al. 2011) and grammatical features (Dunn et al. 2017; Widmer et al. 2017).

Parasites and politics: why cross-cultural studies must control for relatedness, proximity and covariation

Fri, 07 Sep 2018 09:29:53 +0000

Bromham L, Hua X, Cardillo M, Schneemann H & Greenhill SJ. 2018. Parasites and politics: why cross-cultural studies must control for relatedness, proximity and covariation. Royal Society Open Science, 5, 191100.

CLICS2: An Improved Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications Assembling Lexical Data with Help of Cross-Linguistic Data Formats

Wed, 22 Aug 2018 07:19:56 +0000

List J-M, Greenhill SJ, Anderson C, Mayer T, Tresoldi T & Forkel R. 2018. CLICS2: An Improved Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications Assembling Lexical Data with Help of Cross-Linguistic Data Formats. Linguistic Typology, 22: 277-306.

Sequence Comparison in Computational Historical Linguistics: Phonetic Alignments and Cognate Detection with LingPy 2.6.

Wed, 20 Jun 2018 08:34:09 +0000

List J-M, Forkel R, Greenhill SJ, Tresoldi T & Walworth M. 2018. Sequence Comparison in Computational Historical Linguistics: Phonetic Alignments and Cognate Detection with LingPy 2.6. Journal of Language Evolution, 3(2): 130-144.

Post-Marital Residence Patterns Show Lineage-Specific Evolution

Wed, 20 Jun 2018 08:31:15 +0000

Moravec JC, Atkinson QD, Bowern C, Greenhill SJ, Jordan D, Ross RM, Gray RD, Marsland S & Cox MP. 2018. Post-Marital Residence Patterns Show Lineage-Specific Evolution. Evolution and Human Behavior, 39(6): 594-601.

Comment on Pigoli et al

Wed, 20 Jun 2018 08:29:16 +0000

Greenhill SJ. 2018. Comment on Pigoli et al. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, C, Applied Statistics, 67(5): 1135-1136.

Cross-Linguistic Data Formats, advancing data sharing and re-use in comparative linguistics

Wed, 20 Jun 2018 08:29:16 +0000

Forkel R, List J-M, Greenhill SJ, Bank S, Rzymski C, Cysouw M, Hammarström H, Haspelmath M & Kaiping GA & Gray RD. 2018. Cross-linguistic Data Formats, advancing data sharing and reuse in comparative linguistics. Scientific Data, 5:180205.

What smartphone apps may contribute to language evolution research

Wed, 20 Jun 2018 08:29:16 +0000

Morin O, Winters J, Müller T, Morisseau T, Etter C & Greenhill SJ. 2018. What smartphone apps may contribute to language evolution research. Journal of Language Evolution, 3(2): 91-93.

Population Size and the Rate of Language Evolution: A Test Across Indo-European, Austronesian, and Bantu Languages

Fri, 27 Apr 2018 14:51:16 +0000

Greenhill SJ, Hua X, Welsh CF, Schneemann H & Bromham L. 2018. Population Size and the Rate of Language Evolution: A Test Across Indo-European, Austronesian, and Bantu Languages. Frontiers in Psychology, 9:576.

A Bayesian phylogenetic study of the Dravidian language family

Wed, 03 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Kolipakam V, Jordan FM, Dunn M, Greenhill SJ, Bouckaert R, Gray RD & Verkerk A. 2018. A Bayesian phylogenetic study of the Dravidian language family. Royal Society Open Science 5: 171504.

The evolutionary dynamics of language systems

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 10:51:10 +0000

Greenhill SJ, Wu C-H, Hua X, Dunn M, Levinson S, & Gray, RD. 2017. The evolutionary dynamics of language systems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: USA, 114(42):E8822-E8829.

The Potential of Automatic Word Comparison for Historical Linguistics

Sat, 28 Jan 2017 08:14:45 +0000

List J-M, Greenhill SJ, & Gray RD. 2017. The Potential of Automatic Word Comparison for Historical Linguistics. PLoS ONE 12(1): e0170046.

A Combined Comparative and Phylogenetic Analysis of the Chapacuran Language Family

Tue, 12 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Birchall J, Dunn M & Greenhill SJ. 2016. A Combined Comparative and Phylogenetic Analysis of the Chapacuran Language Family. International Journal of American Linguistics 82(3). 255–284.

D-PLACE: A Global Database of Cultural, Linguistic and Environmental Diversity

Fri, 08 Jul 2016 19:53:53 +0000

Kirby KR, Gray RD, Greenhill SJ, Jordan FM, Gomes-Ng S, Bibiko H-J, Blasi D, Botero CA, Bowern C, Ember CR, Leehr D, Low BS, McCarter J, Divale W, Gavin MC. 2016. D-PLACE: A Global Database of Cultural, Linguistic and Environmental Diversity. PLoS ONE 11(7): e0158391.

Cultural and Environmental Predictors of Pre-European Deforestation on Pacific Islands

Sun, 29 May 2016 10:07:46 +0000

Atkinson QD, Coomber T, Passmore S, Greenhill SJ, & Kushnick G. 2016. Cultural and Environmental Predictors of Pre-European Deforestation on Pacific Islands. PLoS ONE 11(5): e0156340.

Overview: Debating the effect of environment on language

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 00:54:38 +0000

Greenhill SJ. 2016. Overview: Debating the effect of environment on language. Journal of Language Evolution, 1, 30-32.

Phylogemetric: A Python library for calculating phylogenetic network metrics

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 00:54:38 +0000

Greenhill SJ. 2016. Phylogemetric: A Python library for calculating phylogenetic network metrics. Journal of Open Source Software, 1(2), 28.

Links between language diversity and species richness can be confounded by spatial autocorrelation

Wed, 04 Mar 2015 08:42:58 +0000

Cardillo M, Bromham L, Greenhill SJ. 2015. Links between language diversity and species richness can be confounded by spatial autocorrelation. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 282: 20142986.

Broad supernatural punishment but not moralizing high gods precede the evolution of political complexity

Wed, 04 Mar 2015 03:07:13 +0000

Watts J, Greenhill SJ, Atkinson QD, Currie TE, Bulbulia J & Gray RD. 2015. Broad supernatural punishment but not moralizing high gods precede the evolution of political complexity in Austronesia. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 20142556.

TransNewGuinea.org: An Online Database of New Guinea Languages

Tue, 03 Mar 2015 00:52:01 +0000

Greenhill SJ. 2015. TransNewGuinea.org: An Online Database of New Guinea Languages. PLoS ONE 10(10): e0141563.

Pulotu: Database of Austronesian Supernatural Beliefs and Practices

Tue, 03 Mar 2015 00:50:09 +0000

Watts J, Sheehan O, Greenhill SJ, Gomes-Ng S, Atkinson QD, Bulbulia J & Gray RD. 2015. Pulotu: Database of Austronesian Supernatural Beliefs and Practices. PLoS ONE 10(9): e0136783.

Rate of language evolution is affected by population size

Wed, 04 Feb 2015 22:48:54 +0000

Bromham L, Hua X, Fitzpatrick T, & Greenhill SJ. 2015. Rate of language evolution is affected by population size. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. 201419704.

Evolution and Language: Phylogenetic Analyses

Sun, 01 Feb 2015 03:08:36 +0000

Greenhill SJ. 2015. Evolution and Language: Phylogenetic Analyses. In The International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2nd Edition. Wright, JD (Ed). Elsevier: Oxford.

Research priorities in historical-comparative linguistics: A view from Asia, Australia and the Pacific

Tue, 19 Aug 2014 00:39:53 +0000

Koch H, Mailhammer R, Blust R, Bowern C, Daniels D, François A, Greenhill SJ, Joseph B, Reid L, Ross M & Sidwell P. 2014. Research priorities in historical-comparative linguistics: A view from Asia, Australia and the Pacific. Diachronica, 31:2, 267-278.

The evolution of traditional knowledge: environment shapes medicinal plant use in Nepal

Wed, 12 Feb 2014 21:46:38 +0000

Saslis-Lagoudakis CH, Hawkins JA, Greenhill SJ, Pendry CA, Watson MF, Tuladhar-Douglas W, Baral SR & Savolainen V. 2014. The evolution of traditional knowledge: Environment shapes medicinal plant use in Nepal. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 281: 20132768.

Demographic correlates of language diversity

Thu, 02 Jan 2014 10:15:32 +0000

Greenhill SJ. 2014. Demographic correlates of language diversity. In Bowern C & Evans B (Eds). The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics. Routledge: London.

First Shots Fired For The Phylogenetic Revolution in Religious Studies: a Commentary on David Sloan Wilson

Wed, 13 Nov 2013 23:06:29 +0000

Bulbulia J, Atkinson QD, Greenhill SJ & Gray RD. 2013. First Shots Fired For The Phylogenetic Revolution in Religious Studies: a Commentary on David Sloan Wilson. Cliodynamics.

Why do religious cultures evolve slowly? The cultural evolution of cooperative calling and the historical study of religions

Wed, 13 Nov 2013 23:01:58 +0000

Bulbulia J, Atkinson QD, Gray RD & Greenhill SJ. 2013. Why do religious cultures evolve slowly? The cultural evolution of cooperative calling and the historical study of religionsIn: Mind, Morality and Magic: Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies. I. Czachesz & R. Uro (Eds.), Durham. Acumen.

A Lexicostatistical Study of the Khasian Languages: Khasi, Pnar, Lyngngam, and War

Tue, 21 May 2013 23:37:40 +0000

Nagaraja KS, Sidwell P & Greenhill SJ. 2013. A Lexicostatistical Study of the Khasian Languages: Khasi, Pnar, Lyngngam, and War. Mon-Khmer Studies Journal, 42, 1-11.

Population structure and cultural geography of a folktale in Europe

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 03:00:11 +0000

Ross RM, Greenhill SJ & Atkinson QD. 2013. Population structure and cultural geography of a folktale in Europe. Proceedings of the Royal Society, B. 280, 20123065.

Phylogenetic models of language change: Three new questions.

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 10:18:06 +0000

Gray RD, Greenhill SJ & Atkinson QD. 2013. Phylogenetic models of language change: Three new questions. In Richerson PJ and Christiansen MH (Eds). Cultural Evolution: Society, Technology, Language, and Religion. MIT Press: Cambridge.

Basic vocabulary and Bayesian phylolinguistics: Issues of understanding and representation

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 22:58:35 +0000

Greenhill SJ, & Gray RD. 2012. Basic vocabulary and Bayesian phylolinguistics: Issues of understanding and representation. Diachronica, 29(4): 523-537.

Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Bouckaert R, Lemey P, Dunn M, Greenhill SJ, Alekseyenko AV, Drummond AJ, Gray RD, Suchard MA, Atkinson QD. 2012. Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family. Science, 337: 957-960.

Universal typological dependencies should be detectable in the history of language families

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 22:53:43 +0000

Levinson SC, Greenhill SJ, Gray RD & Dunn M. 2011. Universal typological dependencies should be detectable in the history of language families. Linguistic Typology, 15: 509-534.

Levenshtein distances fail to identify language relationships accurately

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 22:26:31 +0000

Greenhill SJ. 2011. Levenshtein distances fail to identify language relationships accurately. Computational Linguistics, 37(4): 689-698.

POLLEX-Online: The Polynesian Lexicon Project Online

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Greenhill SJ & Clark R. 2011. POLLEX-Online: The Polynesian Lexicon Project Online. Oceanic Linguistics, 50(2), 551-559.

Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 19:15:58 +0000

Dunn M, Greenhill SJ, Levinson SC & Gray RD. 2011. Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals. Nature. 473, 79–82.

Language evolution and human history: what a difference a date makes

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 20:29:48 +0000

Gray RD, Atkinson QD & Greenhill SJ. 2011. Language evolution and human history: what a difference a date makes. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B, 366, 1090-1100.

Rise and fall of political complexity in island South-East Asia and the Pacific

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 18:53:29 +0000

Currie TE, Greenhill SJ, Gray RD, Hasegawa T & Mace R. 2010. Rise and fall of political complexity in island South-East Asia and the Pacific. Nature, 467:801-804.

On the shape and fabric of human history

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 06:40:11 +0000

Gray RD, Bryant D & Greenhill SJ. 2010. On the shape and fabric of human history. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B, 365:3923-3933.

Is horizontal transmission really a problem for phylogenetic comparative methods? A simulation study using continuous cultural traits

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 06:26:03 +0000

Currie TE, Greenhill SJ & Mace R. 2010. Is horizontal transmission really a problem for phylogenetic comparative methods? A simulation study using continuous cultural traits. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B, 365:3903-3912.

The shape and tempo of language evolution

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 07:51:13 +0000

Greenhill SJ, Atkinson QD, Meade A & Gray RD. 2010. The shape and tempo of language evolution. Proceedings of the Royal Society, B, 277:2443-2450.

How Accurate and Robust Are the Phylogenetic Estimates of Austronesian Language Relationships?

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:20:50 +0000

Greenhill SJ, Drummond AJ & Gray RD. 2010. How Accurate and Robust Are the Phylogenetic Estimates of Austronesian Language Relationships? PLoS ONE, 5(3): e9573.

Deleting duplicate records in Mendeley

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 03:52:23 +0000

I’ve recently been playing around with the program Mendeley for storing my massive collection of academic papers in PDF format. Mendeley looks to be a really useful bit of software, but at the moment it’s rather horrifically buggy. A major problem I’ve been running into is that it’s quite happy to import duplicate PDFs. This lead to much amusement when I set Mendeley to watch my collection of papers, and it decided to parse and import all of the papers every time it started up. Before long, Mendeley was trying to extract meta-data for ~20,000 PDFs…

Darwin, language, and two great Pacific voyages

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Greenhill SJ, & Gray RD. 2009. Darwin, language, and two great Pacific voyages. New Zealand Science Review, 66: 97-101.

r8spermute

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 02:09:35 +0000

This is a small program to assess how robust divergence times are based on the calibrations given to the program r8s.

genbank-download

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:42:42 +0000

genbank-download is a small script to download nucleotide sequences from genbank using an accession number.

Austronesian language phylogenies: Myths and misconceptions about Bayesian computational methods

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 01:07:26 +0000

Greenhill SJ & Gray RD. 2009. Austronesian language phylogenies: Myths and misconceptions about Bayesian computational methods. In Austronesian historical linguistics and culture history: a festschrift for Robert Blust (Pp 375-397). A. Adelaar & A. Pawley (Eds). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.

Does horizontal transmission invalidate cultural phylogenies?

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:50:21 +0000

Greenhill SJ, Currie TE & Gray RD. 2009. Does horizontal transmission invalidate cultural phylogenies? Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 276: 2299-2306.

Matrilocal residence is ancestral in Austronesian societies

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Jordan FM, Gray RD, Greenhill SJ & Mace R. 2009. Matrilocal residence is ancestral in Austronesian societies. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 276:1957-1964.

Language Phylogenies Reveal Expansion Pulses and Pauses in Pacific Settlement

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Gray RD, Drummond AJ, & Greenhill SJ. 2009. Language Phylogenies Reveal Expansion Pulses and Pauses in Pacific Settlement. Science, 323: 479-483.

The Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database: From Bioinformatics to Lexomics

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 04:21:23 +0000

Greenhill SJ, Blust R, & Gray RD. 2008. The Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database: From Bioinformatics to Lexomics. Evolutionary Bioinformatics, 4:271-283.

Languages evolve in punctuational bursts

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Atkinson QD, Meade A, Venditti C, Greenhill SJ & Pagel M. 2008. Languages evolve in punctuational bursts. Science, 319, 588.

The Pleasures and Perils of Darwinizing Culture (with phylogenies)

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Gray RD, Greenhill SJ & Ross RM. 2007. The Pleasures and Perils of Darwinizing Culture (with phylogenies). Biological Theory, 2(4): 360-375.

Simple webserver file alteration monitoring using integrit

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 06:06:32 +0000

This shows us once again, that any software you run on your website needs to be kept up-to-date immediately, but what shocked me was that so many people out there running websites and are not watching them for file changes. They had no idea that their sites had been hacked until they went and looked for it.

Query PubMed for citation information using a DOI and Python

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 14:01:44 +0000

Here’s a simple little script to query PubMed for a Digitial Object Identifier (a DOI)

benchmarking .htaccess performance

Sun, 27 Aug 2006 11:37:07 +0000

One of the common tips to increasing Apache performance is to turn off the per-directory configuration files (aka .htaccess files) and merge them all into your main Apache server configuration file (httpd.conf).

Jeremy raised an interesting question about when the performance loss caused by using many htaccess files is offset by the ease of maintenance. He’s arguing - and I agree - that it makes sense to keep the configuration locally inside .htaccess files, despite the performance loss as these are easier to maintain….

Processing mod_security audit logs with logwatch

Sat, 26 Aug 2006 07:40:56 +0000

This is a quick and dirty LogWatch script to process mod_security audit logs. I had a google, and couldn’t find any released scripts, so here’s my one.

process a url query string in PHP

Wed, 26 Jul 2006 13:33:07 +0000

A PHP function to parse a url and extract its arguments.

Protecting MySQL from SQL Injection Attacks with PHP.

Sun, 04 Jun 2006 12:58:07 +0000

This is intended as a brief guide to protecting your MySQL database from SQL injection attacks. Unfortunately, a large amount of the code that I’ve seen written by people on forums, and in countless crappy PHP tutorials lurking around on the net, and in the many websites that display the “magic breeding slashed-quote” show that many people just do not understand what’s going on and how to protect themselves against SQL injection attacks.

Testing Population Dispersal Hypotheses: Pacific Settlement, Phylogenetic Trees, and Austronesian Languages

Thu, 29 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Greenhill SJ & Gray RD. 2005. Testing Population Dispersal Hypotheses: Pacific Settlement, Phylogenetic Trees, and Austronesian Languages. In:The Evolution of Cultural Diversity: Phylogenetic Approaches. Editors: R Mace, C Holden, & S Shennan. Publisher: UCL Press.

Languages of Barrier Islands, Sumatra

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 12:33:44 +1200

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.

grambank

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 12:33:43 +1200

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

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 12:33:43 +1200

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

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 12:33:43 +1200

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

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 12:33:42 +1200

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

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 12:33:40 +1200

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.

CLDF

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 12:33:38 +1200

The amount of available digital data for the languages of the world is constantly increasing. Unfortunately, most of the digital data are provided in a large variety of formats and therefore not amenable for comparison and re-use. The Cross-Linguistic Data Formats initiative proposes new standards for two basic types of data in historical and typological language comparison (word lists, structural datasets) and a framework to incorporate more data types (e.g. parallel texts, and dictionaries). The new specification for cross-linguistic data formats comes along with a software package for validation and manipulation, a basic ontology which links to more general frameworks, and usage examples of best practices.

Pulotu

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 12:33:35 +1200

Pulotu, the proto-Polynesian word for the abode of the gods, is a database of supernatural beliefs and practices across Austronesian cultures. The database includes 137 Austronesian cultures and 63 variables on religion, history, society, and the natural environment. This database is specifically designed to test evolutionary hypotheses of religious belief and practice, with a primary focus on the traditional state of cultures. A major advantage of Pulotu is that robust language phylogenies are available for Austronesian cultures. This enables the use of phylogenetic comparative methods which provide the ability to reconstruct the states of proto-cultures, account for common ancestry in cross-cultural analysis, and test for correlated evolution between traits.

D-PLACE

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 12:33:33 +1200

From the foods we eat, to who we can marry, to the types of games we teach our children, the diversity of cultural practices in the world is astounding. Yet, our ability to visualize and understand this diversity is often limited by the ways it traditionally has been documented and shared: on a culture-by-culture basis, in locally-told stories or difficult-to-access books and articles. D-PLACE represents an attempt to bring together this dispersed corpus of information.

TransNewGuinea.org

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 12:33:33 +1200

TransNewGuinea.org is a database of the Trans-New Guinea language family and friends. The Trans-New Guinea language family currently occupies most of the interior of New Guinea. This family is possibly the third largest in the world with 400 languages and is tentatively thought to have originated with root-crop agriculture around 10,000 years ago. However, vanishingly little is known about this family’s history.

POLLEX

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 12:33:31 +1200

The Polynesian Lexicon Project Online is a large-scale comparative dictionary of Polynesian languages.

The Polynesian lexicon project, POLLEX, was initiated in 1965 by Bruce Biggs in order to provide a large-scale comparative dictionary of Polynesian languages. Since then, POLLEX has grown to include over 55,000 reflexes of more than 4,700 reconstructed forms in 68 languages. These data have enabled many fundamental advances in Polynesian linguistics and prehistory. At almost half a century old, POLLEX is one of the longest-standing databases of linguistic information, and has moved through various incarnations, from type- writer and edge-punched cards, through microfiche to mainframe computer.

ABVD

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 12:33:28 +1200

The Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database is the world’s largest cross-linguistic database of the Pacific. It contains ~300,000 lexical items from ~1,600 languages spoken throughout the Pacific region.