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<p>The settlement of the Americas is one of the major episodes of prehistoric human dispersal, and involved multiple temporally and geographically uneven demographic events that continued into the Holocene. Here we suggest the possibility that these complex dynamics are reflected in the spatial structure of Indigenous linguistic diversity. On the basis of newly collated data, we find more pronounced spatial structure in linguistic diversity in North America than in South America after known genealogy and language contact are accounted for. Furthermore, we report a continent-wide gradient in aspects of sound systems and grammatical structure that mirrors early north–south dispersal paths, and that is not explained by local language contact and known phylogenetic relationships.</p>

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Gradient in grammatical structure of indigenous languages reflects pathway of human expansion in the Americas

  • 期刊论文

  • 出版模式：

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  • 发表日期：

    2025年4月24日

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  • Matthias Urban,
  • Matías Guzmán Naranjo

摘要

The settlement of the Americas is one of the major episodes of prehistoric human dispersal, and involved multiple temporally and geographically uneven demographic events that continued into the Holocene. Here we suggest the possibility that these complex dynamics are reflected in the spatial structure of Indigenous linguistic diversity. On the basis of newly collated data, we find more pronounced spatial structure in linguistic diversity in North America than in South America after known genealogy and language contact are accounted for. Furthermore, we report a continent-wide gradient in aspects of sound systems and grammatical structure that mirrors early north–south dispersal paths, and that is not explained by local language contact and known phylogenetic relationships.