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Title: Detecting regular sound changes in linguistics as events of concerted evolution

Abstract

Background: Concerted evolution is normally used to describe parallel changes at different sites in a genome, but it is also observed in languages where a specific phoneme changes to the same other phoneme in many words in the lexicon—a phenomenon known as regular sound change. We develop a general statistical model that can detect concerted changes in aligned sequence data and apply it to study regular sound changes in the Turkic language family. Results: Linguistic evolution, unlike the genetic substitutional process, is dominated by events of concerted evolutionary change. Our model identified more than 70 historical events of regular sound change that occurred throughout the evolution of the Turkic language family, while simultaneously inferring a dated phylogenetic tree. Including regular sound changes yielded an approximately 4-fold improvement in the characterization of linguistic change over a simpler model of sporadic change, improved phylogenetic inference, and returned more reliable and plausible dates for events on the phylogenies. The historical timings of the concerted changes closely follow a Poisson process model, and the sound transition networks derived from our model mirror linguistic expectations. Conclusions: We demonstrate that a model with no prior knowledge of complex concerted or regular changes can nevertheless infer themore » historical timings and genealogical placements of events of concerted change from the signals left in contemporary data. Our model can be applied wherever discrete elements—such as genes, words, cultural trends, technologies, or morphological traits—can change in parallel within an organism or other evolving group.« less

Authors:
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [2];  [5];  [6]
  1. Arizona State Univ., Tempe, AZ (United States)
  2. Univ. of Reading, Reading (United Kingdom)
  3. The Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM (United States); George Mason Univ., Fairfax, VA (United States). Krasnow Inst. for Advanced Study
  4. The Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM (United States); Ronin Inst., Montclair, NJ (United States)
  5. Univ. of Reading, Reading (United Kingdom); The Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM (United States)
  6. The Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM (United States); Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE
OSTI Identifier:
1201752
Alternate Identifier(s):
OSTI ID: 1234707
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-14-29463
Journal ID: ISSN 0960-9822; PII: S0960982214013736
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC52-06NA25396
Resource Type:
Journal Article: Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Current Biology
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 25; Journal Issue: 1; Journal ID: ISSN 0960-9822
Publisher:
Elsevier
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES; 99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS

Citation Formats

Hruschka, Daniel  J., Branford, Simon, Smith, Eric  D., Wilkins, Jon, Meade, Andrew, Pagel, Mark, and Bhattacharya, Tanmoy. Detecting regular sound changes in linguistics as events of concerted evolution. United States: N. p., 2014. Web. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2014.10.064.
Hruschka, Daniel  J., Branford, Simon, Smith, Eric  D., Wilkins, Jon, Meade, Andrew, Pagel, Mark, & Bhattacharya, Tanmoy. Detecting regular sound changes in linguistics as events of concerted evolution. United States. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.10.064
Hruschka, Daniel  J., Branford, Simon, Smith, Eric  D., Wilkins, Jon, Meade, Andrew, Pagel, Mark, and Bhattacharya, Tanmoy. 2014. "Detecting regular sound changes in linguistics as events of concerted evolution". United States. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.10.064. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1201752.
@article{osti_1201752,
title = {Detecting regular sound changes in linguistics as events of concerted evolution},
author = {Hruschka, Daniel  J. and Branford, Simon and Smith, Eric  D. and Wilkins, Jon and Meade, Andrew and Pagel, Mark and Bhattacharya, Tanmoy},
abstractNote = {Background: Concerted evolution is normally used to describe parallel changes at different sites in a genome, but it is also observed in languages where a specific phoneme changes to the same other phoneme in many words in the lexicon—a phenomenon known as regular sound change. We develop a general statistical model that can detect concerted changes in aligned sequence data and apply it to study regular sound changes in the Turkic language family. Results: Linguistic evolution, unlike the genetic substitutional process, is dominated by events of concerted evolutionary change. Our model identified more than 70 historical events of regular sound change that occurred throughout the evolution of the Turkic language family, while simultaneously inferring a dated phylogenetic tree. Including regular sound changes yielded an approximately 4-fold improvement in the characterization of linguistic change over a simpler model of sporadic change, improved phylogenetic inference, and returned more reliable and plausible dates for events on the phylogenies. The historical timings of the concerted changes closely follow a Poisson process model, and the sound transition networks derived from our model mirror linguistic expectations. Conclusions: We demonstrate that a model with no prior knowledge of complex concerted or regular changes can nevertheless infer the historical timings and genealogical placements of events of concerted change from the signals left in contemporary data. Our model can be applied wherever discrete elements—such as genes, words, cultural trends, technologies, or morphological traits—can change in parallel within an organism or other evolving group.},
doi = {10.1016/j.cub.2014.10.064},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1201752}, journal = {Current Biology},
issn = {0960-9822},
number = 1,
volume = 25,
place = {United States},
year = {Thu Dec 18 00:00:00 EST 2014},
month = {Thu Dec 18 00:00:00 EST 2014}
}

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Cited by: 22 works
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