Talks of the Past open seminar: From Phonology to Phylogeny: Inferring Language Trees from Cognate Word Forms
- Date
- 15 April 2026, 15:15–16:30
- Location
- Blåsenhus, Blåsenhus/seminar room 12:010
- Type
- Lecture, Seminar
- Lecturer
- David Goldstein, Human Past SCAS Fellow
- Web page
- https://www.centerforthehumanpast.se
- Organiser
- Center for the Human Past (CHP)
- Contact person
- Marzena Norling
- Phone
- 0184715512
Talks of the Past (ToP) seminars are open to anyone interested in interdisciplinary research in palaeogenetics, archaeology, and linguistics. It is a series of seminars held on the first Wednesday of each month, followed by a discussion and a fika (coffee break). The seminars are delivered in English.
Abstract
Linguistic phylogenies are commonly inferred from abstract cognate classifications that encode relationships among lexemes. Although widespread, this practice has well-recognised limitations: it discards phylogenetic signal contained in segmental word forms, restricts the range of evolutionary questions that can be addressed, and treats cognacy judgments, which are hypotheses in their own right, as observed data.
David Goldstein introduces a comparative framework that addresses these limitations by modelling the evolution of cognate word forms directly. The approach adapts the TKF91 model of molecular evolution, originally developed to account for insertion and deletion processes in DNA sequences, to linguistic data. By operating on segmental strings rather than abstract character codings, the framework enables phylogenetic inference from observable word forms and supports quantitative investigation of sound change.
