1. CHIELD: The causal hypotheses in evolutionary linguistics database
- Author
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Lindell Bromham, Guillaume Jacques, Aleksandrs Berdicevskis, Antonio Benítez-Burraco, Anton Killin, Hedvig Skirgard, Christopher Opie, Sean G. Roberts, Jonas Nölle, Matthew Spike, Monica Tamariz, Olena Shcherbakova, Ruth Singer, Emily Gasser, Sean Lee, Jasmine Calladine, Robert M. Ross, Hannah Little, Angarika Deb, Shuya Zhang, Thomas Pellard, Catherine Sheard, José Segovia-Martín, Peeter Tinits, Simon J. Greenhill, Archie Humphreys-Balkwill, Sam Passmore, Ewan Thomas-Colquhoun, Stephen Francis Mann, Christian Kliesch, Kaius Sinnemäki, Fiona M. Jordan, Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution (DLCE), Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH), Max-Planck-Gesellschaft-Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Centre de Recherches Linguistiques sur l'Asie Orientale (CRLAO), École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS)-Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (Inalco)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Australian National University (ANU), MCS, Argonne National Laboratory [Lemont] (ANL), Universidad de Sevilla. Departamento de Lengua Española, Lingüística y Teoría de la Literatura, European Union (UE). H2020, European Research Council (ERC), Academy of Finland, Australian Research Council, Leverhulme Trust, John Templeton Fund, University of Helsinki, General Linguistics, GramAdapt, and Department of Languages
- Subjects
SELECTION ,LEARNERS ,Linguistics and Language ,Relation (database) ,Computer science ,Inference ,FREQUENCY ,computer.software_genre ,01 natural sciences ,050105 experimental psychology ,010104 statistics & probability ,CULTURAL-EVOLUTION ,Developmental Neuroscience ,Gossip ,WORD-ORDER ,Formal specification ,Developmental and Educational Psychology ,Selection (linguistics) ,6121 Languages ,LANGUAGES ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,causal inference ,0101 mathematics ,[SHS.LANGUE]Humanities and Social Sciences/Linguistics ,Sociocultural evolution ,database ,Evolutionary linguistics ,Database ,05 social sciences ,COLLABORATIONS ,Causal inference ,PATTERNS ,INFERENCE ,DIRECTED ACYCLIC GRAPHS ,causal graphs ,computer - Abstract
Language is one of the most complex of human traits. There are many hypotheses about how it originated, what factors shaped its diversity, and what ongoing processes drive how it changes. We present the Causal Hypotheses in Evolutionary Linguistics Database (CHIELD, https://chield.excd.org/), a tool for expressing, exploring, and evaluating hypotheses. It allows researchers to integrate multiple theories into a coherent narrative, helping to design future research. We present design goals, a formal specification, and an implementation for this database. Source code is freely available for other fields to take advantage of this tool. Some initial results are presented, including identifying conflicts in theories about gossip and ritual, comparing hypotheses relating population size and morphological complexity, and an author relation network. European Research Council (ERC) 639291 Academy of Finland 296212 European Research Council (ERC) 805371 Australian Research Council FL130100111 Leverhulme Trust CF-2016-435 Australian Research Council FL130100141 John Templeton Fund 40128
- Published
- 2020