Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37240.
Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37240.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2024 Nov 26;121(48):e2322881121. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2322881121. Epub 2024 Nov 18.
The history of people's movements and interactions shapes both genetic and linguistic variation. Genes and languages are transmitted separately and their distributions reflect different aspects of human history, but some demographic processes can cause them to be similarly distributed. In particular, forms of societal organization, including movements in and out of a community, may have shaped the transmission of both genes and languages. If children were more likely to learn their mother's language than their father's when their parents were from populations that spoke different languages or dialects, then language variation might show a closer association with maternally transmitted genetic markers than autosomal ones; this association could be further reinforced if children reside with predominantly maternal kin. We analyze the worldwide relationship between linguistic and genomic variation, leveraging the sex-biased transmission of X chromosomes to assess whether language has tended to be preferentially transmitted along the male or female line. In addition, we measure the effects of postmarital residence with female kin, matrilineal descent, and endogamy on the covariation of mitochondrial DNA and languages, using mtDNA because genomic data were available for very few populations with these ethnographic traits. We find that while there is little evidence for a consistent or widespread sex bias in the transmission of language, such biased transmission may have occurred locally in several parts of the world and might have been influenced by population-level ethnographic characteristics, such as female-based descent or residence patterns. Our results highlight the complex relationships between genes, language, ethnography, and geography.
人类的迁徙和互动历史塑造了基因和语言的多样性。基因和语言是分别传递的，它们的分布反映了人类历史的不同方面，但一些人口过程可能导致它们以相似的方式分布。特别是社会组织形式，包括在社区内外的迁移，可能塑造了基因和语言的传播。如果父母来自语言或方言不同的群体，那么当孩子更有可能从母亲那里学习语言而不是从父亲那里学习语言时，语言的变化可能与母系遗传标记的关联比常染色体更密切；如果孩子与主要是母系亲属一起居住，这种关联可能会进一步加强。我们利用 X 染色体的性别偏传来分析语言和基因组变异之间的全球关系，以评估语言是否倾向于沿着男性或女性的线优先传递。此外，我们还衡量了与女性亲属的婚后居住、母系血统和内婚制对线粒体 DNA 和语言的共变的影响，使用线粒体 DNA 是因为只有极少数具有这些民族学特征的人群有基因组数据。我们发现，虽然语言传播中几乎没有一致或普遍的性别偏见的证据，但这种有偏见的传播可能在世界上的几个地方局部发生过，并且可能受到人口水平的民族学特征的影响，如基于女性的血统或居住模式。我们的研究结果突出了基因、语言、民族学和地理之间复杂的关系。
