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Abstract:
The impact of demography on cultural evolution has been
investigated in modelling and simulation work, but few
studies have explored this relationship with empirical
data. Importantly, no pertinent studies have controlled for
the historical non-independence of evolutionarily related
languages (Galton's Problem). Here we test the
relationship between linguistic change and population size
/ density using data from 351 Austronesian languages. To
quantify language evolution, we use phylogenetic
methods to estimate lexical replacement (word turnover)
in core vocabulary. Controlling for historical splitting
events, we use these estimates of the rates of linguistic
evolution and find (a) strong phylogenetic signal in
population size and density, (b) a significant but weak
relationship between lexical replacement and population
size, but not density, and (c) a strong effect of splitting
events on both size and density. We discuss these results
relative to the Austronesian expansion and more general
implications for language-culture coevolution.
