ICHL22 - Workshop proposal, CfP: "Non-cladistic approaches to language genealogy"

Mon Sep 15 13:54:11 UTC 2014

Dear historical linguists,

We would like to draw your attention to the following workshop we are
proposing to organise at the next ICHL conference.  If you are interested
in taking part in this event, you are welcome to contact us as early as
possible, using the contact details given below (and in the attached file).

Best,

Alex
_________
Alex François
LACITO-CNRS <http://lacito.vjf.cnrs.fr/membres/francois.htm>, France
Australian National University
<https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/francois-a>, Canberra
Personal homepage <http://alex.francois.free.fr>
__________________

Workshop proposal:
“*Non-cladistic approaches to language genealogy*”

*Organisers*

Siva Kalyan (Australian National University): siva.kalyan at anu.edu.au
Alexandre François (CNRS–LaCiTO, ANU): francois at vjf.cnrs.fr

To be held at the 22nd *International Conference on Historical Linguistics*
(ICHL22 <http://www.ichl22.unina.it/>),
*27–31 July 2015*, Naples.

*Rationale*

Ever since it was popularised by August Schleicher (1853, 1873), the
family-tree model has been the dominant paradigm for representing the
historical relations among the languages in a family.

The tree model is not without its strengths. Not only does it represent
patterns of relatedness among languages, but it also commits itself to
reconstructing the sequence of historical and social events that gave rise
to these patterns. Further, the formal simplicity of cladistic
representations makes it possible to apply powerful computational
techniques from biology, which have become increasingly popular in recent
years (Ringe et al. 2002, Gray et al. 2010, among many others).

However, the advantages of the tree model come at the cost of making a very
restrictive assumption: namely, that language families evolve primarily by
splitting, with subsequent loss of contact. Put another way, the tree model
assumes that once two speech varieties have started to diverge, it is no
longer possible for innovations to diffuse from one to the other. This
assumption excludes the possibility of overlapping subgroups.

Yet it is well-known that in a dialect network, innovations can diffuse
between speech varieties that have already diverged from each other
(Bloomfield 1933). Furthermore, many language families are known to have
arisen through the gradual breakup of a dialect network. In such language
families—which Ross (1988: 8) calls *linkages*—innovations diffuse in
intersecting patterns, leading naturally to the formation of overlapping
subgroups. Under a tree model, such intersecting innovations would be
explained away as instances of “(horizontal) contact”, to be contrasted
with "genealogical change"; but this is unhelpful, as it fails to recognise
that the same process of diffusion underlies all instances of language
change, whether "genealogical" or "contact-induced" (Croft 2000).

In a linkage, the assumptions of the tree model are not satisfied, and any
cladistic representation is necessarily inadequate (Heggarty et al. 2010,
François 2014, Kalyan & François forthcoming). There is thus a great need
for rigorous studies of linkages that follow the essential principles of
the Comparative Method, yet do not presuppose the validity of cladistic
approaches. Such work is indeed possible, and is capable of yielding
insights about linguistic and social history; this has already been shown
in several case studies of specific language families, such as Geraghty
(1983) on Fijian, Ross (1988) on Western Oceanic, and Toulmin (2009) on the
Kamta branch of Indo-Aryan, Magidow (2013) on Arabic dialects, among many
others.

We also need to develop new ways of representing language genealogy, which
dispense with the shortcomings of the tree model, while preserving its
strengths. Many proposals have been made in the literature (e.g. "tree
envelopes": Southworth 1964; isogloss maps: Anttila 1972; "*truncated
octopus*-like trees": Hock 1991; NeighborNet: Bryant et al. 2005; trees
with "contact edges": Nakhleh et al. 2005; "glottometric diagrams": Kalyan
& François forthcoming), yet so far there is no widely accepted,
satisfactory solution. More discussion would be welcome among historical
linguists, to achieve consensus on the best methodology (or methodologies)
to represent linguistic subgroups when they intersect.

Finally, any proposed non-cladistic representation of genealogy will raise
the question of how to interpret it in historical terms. Addressing this
requires theoretical discussion of the social conditions and mechanisms of
language change that lead to the development of a linkage (see Ross 1997,
François 2011, 2014).

Non-cladistic approaches to language genealogy are still in their infancy;
we hope that this workshop serves to spur further research into this
hitherto-neglected, but fundamentally important area.

*Scope of the workshop*

This workshop welcomes presentations which provide one or more of the
following:
1.       Data from a language family that poses problems for the
family-tree model—in particular, a language family that exhibits extensive
internal contact.
2.       Application of existing non-cladistic computational methods (e.g.
NeighborNet, multidimensional scaling, Structure [Pritchard et al. 2000],
Historical Glottometry) to an existing dataset.
3.       Innovative proposals for modeling or representing language
genealogy in a non-cladistic way.
4.       Discussion (either theoretical or with respect to a particular
language family) of the social conditions and mechanisms of language change
that are responsible for linkage-like vs. tree-like genealogies.

*Presenters  *(provisional list)

·    Paul Geraghty, “The origins of Proto Polynesian: Tokalau Fijian
revisited”
·    Paul Heggarty, “Splits, shared innovations…and the real world. How
methodological dogmas distort our ‘histories’ of languages and their
speakers.”
·    Alexander Magidow, TBA
·    (other presenters, TBA)

Prospective participants are invited to contact Alexandre François (
francois at vjf.cnrs.fr) and Siva Kalyan (sivakalyan.princeton at gmail.com) to
express their interest.  A provisional title would be welcome.

*Important dates*

Deadline for workshop proposals:  20 September 2014

Notification of acceptance of workshop proposals:  20 October 2014

Deadline for submission of abstracts for general sessions and workshops:  30
January 2015

Notification of acceptance of papers for general sessions and workshops:  30
March 2015

*References*

Anttila, Raimo. 1972. *An introduction to historical and comparative
linguistics*. New York: Macmillan.

Bloomfield, Leonard. 1933. *Language*. New York: Holt.

Bryant, David, Flavia Filimon and Russell D. Gray. 2005. Untangling our
past: Languages, Trees, Splits and Networks. In R. Mace, C. Holden & S.
Shennan (eds.), *The Evolution of Cultural Diversity: Phylogenetic
Approaches*. London: UCL Press. 69–85.  [link
<http://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCgQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Flanguage.psy.auckland.ac.nz%2Ffiles%2Fbryant_et_al2005%2Fbryant_et_al2005.pdf&ei=sugWVNvkOI2Xat2GgfgH&usg=AFQjCNHYSxsDjZjyZK8hEa5rLaPEXGOQMA&sig2=mivJkEZ2ctqluFGtrh3hRw&bvm=bv.75097201,d.d2s&cad=rja>
]

Croft, William A. 2000. *Explaining language change: an evolutionary
approach* (Longman Linguistics Library). Harlow, England: Longman.

François, Alexandre. 2011. Social ecology and language history in the
northern Vanuatu linkage: A tale of divergence and convergence. *Journal of
Historical Linguistics *1(2):175–246.  [link
<https://www.academia.edu/3256435/Social_ecology_and_language_history_in_the_northern_Vanuatu_linkage_A_tale_of_divergence_and_convergence>
]

François, Alexandre. 2014. Trees, waves and linkages: models of language
diversification. In Claire Bowern & Bethwyn Evans (eds.), *The Routledge
handbook of historical linguistics*, 161–189. New York: Routledge. [link
<https://www.academia.edu/4806233/Trees_Waves_and_Linkages_Models_of_Language_Diversification>
]

Geraghty, Paul A. 1983. *The history of the Fijian languages* (Oceanic
Linguistics Special Publication No. 19). Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press.

Gray, Russell D., David Bryant & Simon J. Greenhill. 2010. On the shape and
fabric of human history. *Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B*
365(1559). 3923–3933.  [link
<http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1559/3923.abstract>]

Heggarty, Paul, Warren Maguire & April McMahon. 2010. Splits or waves?
Trees or webs? How divergence measures and network analysis can unravel
language histories. *Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B*
365(1559). 3829–3843. [link
<http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1559/3829.abstract>]

Hock, Hans Henrich. 1991. *Principles of Historical Linguistics*. 2nd
edition. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Kalyan, Siva & Alexandre François. Forthcoming. Freeing the Comparative
Method from the tree model: A framework for Historical Glottometry. In
Ritsuko Kikusawa & Lawrence A. Reid (eds.), *Let’s Talk about Trees:
Tackling problems in representing phylogenic relationships among languages*
(Senri Ethnological Studies). Ōsaka: National Museum of Ethnology. [link
<http://bit.ly/SK-AF_HG>]

Magidow, Alexander. 2013. *Towards a Sociohistorical Reconstruction of
Pre-Islamic Arabic Dialect Diversity*. PhD dissertation. Middle Eastern
Studies, University of Texas, Austin. 492 pp. [link
<http://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/21378>]

Nakhleh, Luay, Don Ringe & Tandy Warnow. 2005. Perfect phylogenetic
networks: a new methodology for reconstructing the evolutionary history of
natural languages. *Language* 81(2). 382–420.  [link
<http://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCgQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cs.rice.edu%2F~nakhleh%2FPapers%2F81.2nakhleh.pdf&ei=3usWVP-YFYzmaML2gOAF&usg=AFQjCNGySxYKuql6W_ZIpps-h1bm2jtJ1w&sig2=fT6uhmeQD5eLwEKACVXEyw&bvm=bv.75097201,d.d2s>
]

Pritchard, Jonathan K., Matthew Stephens and Peter Donnelly. 2000.
Inference of population structure using multilocus genotype data. *Genetics*
155. 945–959.  [link <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1461096/>]

Ringe, Don, Tandy Warnow & Ann Taylor. 2002. Indo-European and
computational cladistics. *Transactions of the Philological Society*
100(1). 59–129.

Ross, Malcolm D. 1988. *Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian languages of
Western Melanesia* (Pacific Linguistics, Series C – 98). Canberra: Pacific
Linguistics.

Ross, Malcolm D. 1997. Social networks and kinds of speech-community event.
In Roger Blench & Matthew Spriggs (eds.), *Archaeology and language 1:
theoretical and methodological orientations*, 209–261. London: Routledge.

Schleicher, August. 1853. Die ersten Spaltungen des indogermanischen
Urvolkes. In Johann Gustav Droysen & G. W. Nitzsch (eds.), *Allgemeine
Monatsschrift für Wissenschaft und Literatur*, 786–787. Braunschweig: C. A.
Schwestchke & Sohn.

Schleicher, August. 1873. *Die Darwinsche Theorie und die
Sprachwissenschaft: Offenes Sendschreiben an Herrn Dr. Ernst Häckel, o.
Professor der Zoologie und Director des zoologischen Museums an der
Universität Jena*. 2nd edition. Weimar: Hermann Böhlau.

Southworth, Franklin C. 1964. Family-tree diagrams. *Language* 40(4).
557–565.

Toulmin, Matthew. 2009. *From linguistic to sociolinguistic reconstruction:
the Kamta historical subgroup of Indo-Aryan* (Pacific Linguistics 604).
Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
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