Phonemic Diversity Supports a Serial Founder Effect Model of Language Expansion from Africa

Science 15 April 2011:
Vol. 332 no. 6027 pp. 346-349
DOI: 10.1126/science.1199295

Phonemic Diversity Supports a Serial Founder Effect Model of Language Expansion from Africa

1. Quentin D. Atkinson¹,²,*

+ Author Affiliations

1. ¹Department of Psychology, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand.
2. ²Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Oxford, 64 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6PN, UK.

1. *↵E-mail: q.atkinson@auckland.ac.nz

Abstract

Human genetic and phenotypic diversity declines with distance from Africa, as predicted by a serial founder effect in which successive population bottlenecks during range expansion progressively reduce diversity, underpinning support for an African origin of modern humans. Recent work suggests that a similar founder effect may operate on human culture and language. Here I show that the number of phonemes used in a global sample of 504 languages is also clinal and fits a serial founder–effect model of expansion from an inferred origin in Africa. This result, which is not explained by more recent demographic history, local language diversity, or statistical non-independence within language families, points to parallel mechanisms shaping genetic and linguistic diversity and supports an African origin of modern human languages.