Patterns of genetic admixture reveal similar rates of borrowing across diverse scenarios of language contact

Abstract

When speakers of different languages are in contact, they often borrow features like sounds, words, or syntactic patterns from one language to the other. However, the lack of historical data has hampered estimation of this effect at a global scale. We overcome this hurdle by using genetic admixture and shared geohistorical location as a proxy for population contact. We find that language pairs whose speaker populations underwent genetic admixture or that are located in the same geohistorical area exhibit notable similar increases in s Show more