A comparison of worldwide phonemic and genetic variation in human populations.

ABSTRACT: Worldwide patterns of genetic variation are driven by human demographic history. Here, we test whether this demographic history has left similar signatures on phonemes-sound units that distinguish meaning between words in languages-to those it has left on genes. We analyze, jointly and in parallel, phoneme inventories from 2,082 worldwide languages and microsatellite polymorphisms from 246 worldwide populations. On a global scale, both genetic distance and phonemic distance between populations are significantly correlated with geographic distance. Geographically close language pairs share significantly more phonemes than distant language pairs, whether or not the languages are closely related. The regional geographic axes of greatest phonemic differentiation correspond to axes of genetic d

SUBMITTER: Creanza N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4321277 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature