TY - JOUR
T1 - CHIELD: the causal hypotheses in evolutionary linguistics database
AU - Roberts, Sean G
AU - Killin, Anton
AU - Deb, Angarika
AU - Sheard, Catherine
AU - Greenhill, Simon
AU - Sinnemaki, Kaius
AU - Segovia-Martin, Jose
AU - Nolle, Jonas
AU - Berdicevskis, Aleksandrs
AU - Humphreys-Balkwill, Archie
AU - Little, Hannah
AU - Opie, Christopher
AU - Jacques, Guillaume
AU - Bromham, Lindell
AU - Mann, Stephen
AU - Skirgård, Hedvig
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Language is one of the most complex of human traits. There are many hypotheses about how it originated, what factors shaped its diversity, and what ongoing processes drive how it changes. We present the Causal Hypotheses in Evolutionary Linguistics Database (CHIELD, https://chield.excd.org/), a tool for expressing, exploring, and evaluating hypotheses. It allows researchers to integrate multiple theories into a coherent narrative, helping to design future research. We present design goals, a formal specification, and an implementation for this database. Source code is freely available for other fields to take advantage of this tool. Some initial results are presented, including identifying conflicts in theories about gossip and ritual, comparing hypotheses relating population size and morphological complexity, and an author relation network.
AB - Language is one of the most complex of human traits. There are many hypotheses about how it originated, what factors shaped its diversity, and what ongoing processes drive how it changes. We present the Causal Hypotheses in Evolutionary Linguistics Database (CHIELD, https://chield.excd.org/), a tool for expressing, exploring, and evaluating hypotheses. It allows researchers to integrate multiple theories into a coherent narrative, helping to design future research. We present design goals, a formal specification, and an implementation for this database. Source code is freely available for other fields to take advantage of this tool. Some initial results are presented, including identifying conflicts in theories about gossip and ritual, comparing hypotheses relating population size and morphological complexity, and an author relation network.
U2 - 10.1093/jole/lzaa001
DO - 10.1093/jole/lzaa001
M3 - Article
SN - 2058-458X
VL - 5
SP - 101
EP - 120
JO - Journal of Language Evolution
JF - Journal of Language Evolution
IS - 2
ER -