Graff Anna, Blasi Damián E, Ringen Erik J, Bajić Vladimir, Bavelier Daphné, Shimizu Kentaro K, Pakendorf Brigitte, Barbieri Chiara, Bickel Balthasar
Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution (ISLE), University of Zurich, Zurich 8050, Switzerland.
Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Zurich 8057, Switzerland.
Sci Adv. 2025 Aug 29;11(35):eadv7521. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adv7521.
When speakers of different languages are in contact, they often borrow features like sounds, words, or syntactic patterns from one language to the other. However, the lack of historical data has hampered estimation of this effect at a global scale. We overcome this hurdle by using genetic admixture and shared geohistorical location as a proxy for population contact. We find that language pairs whose speaker populations underwent genetic admixture or that are located in the same geohistorical area exhibit notable similar increases in shared linguistic patterns across world regions and different demographic relationships, suggesting a consistent trend in borrowing rates. At the same time, the effect varies strongly across specific linguistic features. This variation is only partly explained by cognitive differences in lifelong learnability and by social functions of signaling assimilation through borrowing, leaving much randomness in which specific features are borrowed. Additionally, we find that, for some features, admixture decreases sharing, likely reflecting signals of divergence (schismogenesis) under contact.
当使用不同语言的人相互接触时，他们常常会从一种语言向另一种语言借用诸如语音、词汇或句法模式等特征。然而，缺乏历史数据阻碍了在全球范围内对这种影响的评估。我们通过使用基因混合和共同的地理历史位置作为人口接触的替代指标来克服这一障碍。我们发现，其使用者群体经历了基因混合或位于同一地理历史区域的语言对，在世界各地区和不同人口关系中呈现出显著相似的共享语言模式增加，这表明借用率存在一致趋势。与此同时，这种影响在特定语言特征上差异很大。这种差异仅部分地由终身可学性的认知差异以及通过借用进行信号同化的社会功能来解释，在具体借用哪些特征方面存在很大的随机性。此外，我们发现，对于某些特征，混合会减少共享，这可能反映了接触情况下的分化信号（分裂发生）。
