Zariquiey Roberto, Vera Javier, Greenhill Simon J, Valenzuela Pilar, Gray Russell J, List Johann-Mattis
Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima, Peru.
School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
Interface Focus. 2022 Dec 9;13(1):20220053. doi: 10.1098/rsfs.2022.0053. eCollection 2023 Feb 6.
Although language-family specific traits which do not find direct counterparts outside a given language family are usually ignored in quantitative phylogenetic studies, scholars have made ample use of them in qualitative investigations, revealing their potential for identifying language relationships. An example of such a family specific trait are body-part expressions in Pano languages, which are often lexicalized forms, composed of bound roots (also called body-part prefixes in the literature) and non-productive derivative morphemes (called here body-part formatives). We use various statistical methods to demonstrate that whereas body-part roots are generally conservative, body-part formatives exhibit diverse chronologies and are often the result of recent and parallel innovations. In line with this, the phylogenetic structure of body-part roots projects the major branches of the family, while formatives are highly non-tree-like. Beyond its contribution to the phylogenetic analysis of Pano languages, this study provides significative insights into the role of grammatical innovations for language classification, the origin of morphological complexity in the Amazon and the phylogenetic signal of specific grammatical traits in language families.
虽然在定量系统发育研究中，特定语系的特征（在给定语系之外找不到直接对应物）通常会被忽略，但学者们在定性研究中充分利用了这些特征，揭示了它们在识别语言关系方面的潜力。这种特定语系特征的一个例子是帕诺语中的身体部位表达方式，它们通常是词汇化形式，由粘着词根（在文献中也称为身体部位前缀）和非生成性派生词素（这里称为身体部位构词成分）组成。我们使用各种统计方法来证明，虽然身体部位词根通常较为保守，但身体部位构词成分表现出不同的年代顺序，并且往往是近期并行创新的结果。与此一致的是，身体部位词根的系统发育结构反映了该语系的主要分支，而构词成分则高度不像树形结构。除了对帕诺语的系统发育分析有所贡献外，这项研究还为语法创新在语言分类中的作用、亚马逊地区形态复杂性的起源以及语系中特定语法特征的系统发育信号提供了重要见解。
