IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/palcom/v12y2025i1d10.1057_s41599-025-04986-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do ‘language trees with sampled ancestors’ really support a ‘hybrid model’ for the origin of Indo-European? Thoughts on the most recent attempt at yet another IE phylogeny

Author

Listed:
  • Alexei S. Kassian

    (Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration
    Institute for Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences)

  • George Starostin

    (National Research University Higher School of Economics
    Santa Fe Institute)

Abstract

In this paper, we present a brief critical analysis of the data, methodology, and results of the most recent publication on the computational phylogeny of the Indo-European family (Heggarty et al. 2023), comparing them to previous efforts in this area carried out by (roughly) the same team of scholars (informally designated as the “New Zealand school”), as well as concurrent research by scholars belonging to the “Moscow school” of historical linguistics. We show that the general quality of the lexical data used as the basis for classification has significantly improved from earlier studies, reflecting a more careful curation process on the part of qualified historical linguists involved in the project; however, there remain serious issues when it comes to marking cognation between different characters, such as failure (in many cases) to distinguish between true cognacy and areal diffusion and the inability to take into account the influence of the so-called derivational drift (independent morphological formations from the same root in languages belonging to different branches). Considering that both the topological features of the resulting consensus tree and the established datings contradict historical evidence in several major aspects, these shortcomings may partially be responsible for the results. Our principal conclusion is that the correlation between the number of included languages and the size of the list may simply be insufficient for a guaranteed robust topology; either the list should be drastically expanded (not a realistic option for various practical reasons) or the number of compared taxa be reduced, possibly by means of using intermediate reconstructions for ancestral stages instead of multiple languages (the principle advocated by the Moscow school).

Suggested Citation

  • Alexei S. Kassian & George Starostin, 2025. "Do ‘language trees with sampled ancestors’ really support a ‘hybrid model’ for the origin of Indo-European? Thoughts on the most recent attempt at yet another IE phylogeny," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 12(1), pages 1-10, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palcom:v:12:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-025-04986-7
    DOI: 10.1057/s41599-025-04986-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41599-025-04986-7
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41599-025-04986-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Russell D. Gray & Quentin D. Atkinson, 2003. "Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin," Nature, Nature, vol. 426(6965), pages 435-439, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Klaus Desmet & Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín & Romain Wacziarg, 2009. "The political economy of ethnolinguistic cleavages," Working Papers 2009-17, Instituto Madrileño de Estudios Avanzados (IMDEA) Ciencias Sociales.
    2. Victor Ginsburgh & Shlomo Weber, 2020. "The Economics of Language," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(2), pages 348-404, June.
    3. Joseph Flavian Gomes, 2020. "The health costs of ethnic distance: evidence from sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 25(2), pages 195-226, June.
    4. Aparicio Fenoll, Ainoa & Kuehn, Zoë, 2016. "Education Policies and Migration across European Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 9755, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Ainhoa Aparicio Fenoll & Zoë Kuehn, 2017. "Compulsory Schooling Laws and Migration Across European Countries," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 54(6), pages 2181-2200, December.
    6. Stanisz, Tomasz & Drożdż, Stanisław & Kwapień, Jarosław, 2023. "Universal versus system-specific features of punctuation usage patterns in major Western languages," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    7. Desmet, Klaus & Ortuño-Ortín, Ignacio & Wacziarg, Romain, 2012. "The political economy of linguistic cleavages," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 322-338.
    8. Petroni, Filippo & Serva, Maurizio, 2010. "Measures of lexical distance between languages," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(11), pages 2280-2283.
    9. Ginsburgh, Victor & Weber, Shlomo, 2015. "Linguistic Distances and their Use in Economics," CEPR Discussion Papers 10640, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Matthew J. Baker, 2021. "Foundations of the Age-Area Hypothesis," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-17, December.
    11. Simone Pompei & Vittorio Loreto & Francesca Tria, 2011. "On the Accuracy of Language Trees," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(6), pages 1-11, June.
    12. Stelios Michalopoulos, 2012. "The Origins of Ethnolinguistic Diversity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1508-1539, June.
    13. Carl Müller-Crepon & Yannick Pengl & Nils-Christian Bormann, 2022. "Linking Ethnic Data from Africa (LEDA)," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 59(3), pages 425-435, May.
    14. Takuma Tanaka, 2025. "Mean-reverting self-excitation drives evolution: phylogenetic analysis of a literary genre, waka, with a neural language model," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 12(1), pages 1-10, December.
    15. Stelios Michalopoulos, 2008. "The Origins of Ethnolinguistic Diversity: Theory and Evidence," Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University 0725, Department of Economics, Tufts University.
    16. Nico Neureiter & Peter Ranacher & Nour Efrat-Kowalsky & Gereon A. Kaiping & Robert Weibel & Paul Widmer & Remco R. Bouckaert, 2022. "Detecting contact in language trees: a Bayesian phylogenetic model with horizontal transfer," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-14, December.
    17. Victor GINSBURGH & Shlomo WEBER, 2016. "Linguistic distances and ethnolinguistic fractionalization and disenfranchisement indices," LIDAM Reprints CORE 2855, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    18. Aguilar, Elliot & Ghirlanda, Stefano, 2015. "Modeling the genealogy of a cultural trait," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 1-8.
    19. Victor Zitian Chen & John Cantwell, 2022. "An evolutionary view of institutional complexity," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 32(3), pages 1071-1090, July.
    20. Klaus Desmet & Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín & Shlomo Weber, 2017. "Peripheral diversity: transfers versus public goods," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 49(3), pages 787-823, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palcom:v:12:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-025-04986-7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.nature.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.