Comment on “Phonemic Diversity Supports a Serial Founder Effect Model of 
Language Expansion from Africa”

Cysouw, Michael; Dediu, Dan; Moran, Steven

doi:10.1126/science.1208841

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Comment on “Phonemic Diversity Supports a Serial Founder Effect Model of Language Expansion from Africa”

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Dediu, Dan
M. Cysouw and D. Dediu contributed equally to this work;
Language and Genetics Department, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, External Organizations;

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http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2012/02/09/335.6069.657-b.DC1.html
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Cysouw_et_al_2012_Comment_Science.pdf
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Cysouw-Dediu-Moran-2012-SOM.pdf
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Cysouw-Dediu-Moran-2012-Fig1.pdf
(Supplementary material), 190KB

Citation

Cysouw, M., Dediu, D., & Moran, S. (2012). Comment on “Phonemic Diversity Supports a Serial Founder Effect Model of Language Expansion from Africa”. Science, 335, 657-b. doi:10.1126/science.1208841.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0012-1937-4

Abstract

We show that Atkinson’s (Reports, 15 April 2011, p. 346) intriguing proposal—that global
linguistic diversity supports a single language origin in Africa—is an artifact of using suboptimal
data, biased methodology, and unjustified assumptions. We criticize his approach using more
suitable data, and we additionally provide new results suggesting a more complex scenario for the
emergence of global linguistic diversity.