2020/04/18 by Igor Yanovich · 18 citations
Social Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Computer Science · #Language and cultural evolution #Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies #Natural Language Processing Techniques #Homeland #Beringia #Phylogenetics #Folklore #Phylogenetic tree #Linguistics #Geography #History #Evolutionary biology #Biology #Archaeology #Political science #Philosophy #Genetics #Law #Pleistocene
paper · doi:10.1075/dia.17038.yan
published in Diachronica 37(3), 410-446 (John Benjamins Publishing Company)
openalex publication_date 2020/04/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Abstract Sicoli & Holton (2014) (PLoS ONE 9:3, e91722) use computational phylogenetics to argue that linguistic data from the putative, but likely, Dene-Yeniseian macro-family are better compatible with a homeland in Beringia (i.e., northeastern Siberia plus northwestern Alaska) than with one in central Siberia or deeper Asia. I show that a more careful examination of the data invalidates this conclusion: in fact, linguistic data do not support Beringia as the homeland. In the course of showing this, I discuss, without requiring a deep mathematical background, a number of methodological issues concerning computational phylogenetic analyses of linguistic data and drawing inferences from them. The aim is to contribute to making computational phylogenetics less of a black box for historical linguists. I conclude with a brief overview of the current evidence bearing on the Dene-Yeniseian homeland from linguistics, archaeology, folklore studies and genetics, and suggest current best practice for linguistic phylogenetics, the use of which would have helped to avoid some of the problems in Sicoli and Holton’s Dene-Yeniseian study, and in turn the percolation of those problems into subsequent synthetic interdisciplinary research.