simon-ho / languagegenesprehistory

Language, Genes, and Prehistory

Friday 14 June 2019 University of Sydney

Workshop overview

Linguistics and genetics have traditionally pursued different approaches to the reconstruction of human prehistories, applying different methods and often working at different time-scales (Blench, Ross and Sanchez-Mazas 2008). In recent years, however, research has emerged which attempts a direct correlation of linguistic and genetic indicators of population migrations (Poloni, Sanchez-Mazas et al 2008; van Driem 2014), and a rapidly growing field of inquiry applies methods developed in the context of computational phylogenetics and cladistics to various types of language data to derive probabilistic models of language evolution and, therefore, language relationships (Gray and Atkinson 2003; Dunn, Burenhult et al 2011; Zhang, Shi et al 2019, among many others).

This day-long interdisciplinary workshop will bring together world-leading scholars from the University of Sydney, Australian National University, and University of Bern to focus on intersections between theory and method in evolutionary biology and linguistics, with a special focus on the Asia-Pacific region. A two-hour software clinic will also be convened (please bring your own laptop). Students and early career researchers are particularly encouraged.

For more information contact Carl Bodnaruk ([email protected])

Hands-on exercise

After lunch, Simon Ho will work through a tutorial on Language Phylogenies, written by Simon Greenhill and Konstantin Hoffman from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

The tutorial involves the use of the phylogenetic software BEAST2 to analyse lingustic data from 20 languages in Polynesia. BEAST2 is a complex piece of software and is primarily used to analyse genetic data. The tutorial is quite heavy on technical detail, but each step will be explained by Simon during the workshop session.

If you would like to follow this tutorial on your own laptop, please install the following software before coming to the workshop. All of these are free to download and should work on all platforms (Mac, Windows, and Unix).

• BEAST2 - please also install the packages mentioned in the tutorial section "Installing necessary packages"
• Tracer

The data set that will be analysed in the tutorial can be downloaded via the link on the left-hand side of the tutorial page.

If you have any questions about this component of the workshop, please contact Simon Ho ([email protected]). If you are interested in learning more about phylogenetics, you are welcome to apply to register for the Sydney Phylogenetics Workshop. This is a free 2-day workshop that is held annually at the University of Sydney; the next will be held on 15–16 July 2019. To find out more, please download a workshop flyer.