Phylo-linguistics: Enacting darwin’s linguistic image

Abstract

Linguistics was the fi rst of the Humanities to respond to Darwin’s theory of evolution, showing how similar principles were at work to create the observed diversity of the world’s languages. In the past 15 years, a methodological shift brought this theoretical analogy to a new life by actually accommodating computational models and methods from (molecular) Phylogenetics to explore and test hypotheses about the evolution of languages and cultures, transforming the initial intuitions into a full-fl edged methodological framework with extensive applications in Linguistics and Anthropology.