The Bantu expansion transformed the linguistic, economic, and cultural composition of sub-
Saharan Africa. However, the exact dates and routes taken by the ancestors of the speakers …

This paper introduces CogNet, a new, large-scale lexical database that provides cognates—
words of common origin and meaning—across languages. The database currently contains …

This article offers a brief overview of historical linguistics and explores the value of historical
sign linguistics. The specific focus of the article is on the question of the extent to which the …

In current practice, when dating the root of a Bayesian language phylogeny the researcher is
required to supply some of the information beforehand, including a distribution of root ages …

We propose a program for a computational analysis, based on large scale datasets, of deep
conceptual and formal structures, representing the mechanisms of historical transformations …

Alignments, ie, position-wise comparisons of two or more strings or ordered lists are of
utmost practical importance in computational biology and a host of other fields, including …

Evolutionary processes have been described not only in biology but also for a wide range of
human cultural activities including languages and law. In contrast to the evolution of DNA or …

Studies of cross-linguistic colexification, a linguistic phenomenon that occurs when one
language encodes two or more concepts with the same word, have revealed insights into …

Historical processes manifest remarkable diversity. Nevertheless, scholars have long
attempted to identify patterns and categorize historical actors and influences with some …

Grammatical forms are said to evolve via two main mechanisms. These are, respectively, the
'descent'mechanism, where current forms can be seen to have descended (albeit with …