Ward R H, Redd A, Valencia D, Frazier B, Pääbo S
Department of Human Genetics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City 84112.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1993 Nov 15;90(22):10663-7. doi: 10.1073/pnas.90.22.10663.
The relationship between linguistic differentiation and evolutionary affinities was evaluated in three tribes of the Pacific Northwest. Two tribes (Nuu-Chah-Nulth and Bella Coola) speak Amerind languages, while the language of the third (Haida) belongs to a different linguistic phylum--Na-Dene. Construction of a molecular phylogeny gave no evidence of clustering by linguistic affiliation, suggesting a relatively recent ancestry of these linguistically divergent populations. When the evolutionary affinities of the tribes were evaluated in terms of mitochondrial sequence diversity, the Na-Dene-speaking Haida had a reduced amount of diversity compared to the two Amerind tribes and thus appear to be a biologically younger population. Further, since the sequence diversity between the two Amerind-speaking tribes is comparable to the diversity between the Amerind tribes and the Na-Dene Haida, the evolutionary divergence within the Amerind linguistic phylum may be as great as the evolutionary divergence between the Amerind and Na-Dene phyla. Hence, in the New World, rates of linguistic differentiation appear to be markedly faster than rates of biological differentiation, with little congruence between linguistic hierarchy and the pattern of evolutionary relationships.
在太平洋西北部的三个部落中评估了语言分化与进化亲缘关系。两个部落（努-查-努尔特人和贝拉库拉人）说美洲印第安语，而第三个部落（海达）的语言属于不同的语系——纳德内语系。分子系统发育的构建没有提供按语言归属聚类的证据，这表明这些语言上有差异的群体有着相对较近的祖先。当根据线粒体序列多样性评估这些部落的进化亲缘关系时，说纳德内语的海达部落的多样性比两个说美洲印第安语的部落要少，因此似乎是一个生物学上较年轻的群体。此外，由于两个说美洲印第安语的部落之间的序列多样性与美洲印第安部落和纳德内语系的海达部落之间的多样性相当，美洲印第安语系内部的进化分歧可能与美洲印第安语系和纳德内语系之间的进化分歧一样大。因此，在新世界，语言分化的速度似乎明显快于生物分化的速度，语言层次与进化关系模式之间几乎没有一致性。
