Taras Zakharko

The paper shows that genetic diversity is inversely correlated with linguistic diversity, with isolation promoting linguistic diversification and contact promoting homogenization.

This study tests whether writing affects language evolution and use, finding no significant impact on hierarchy depth, sentence length, or clause combining in 30 and 59 languages.

The paper uses phylogenetic modeling to show that languages tend to minimize syntactic hierarchy in grammar, with cultural variation, likely due to learning costs.