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CHIELD: the causal hypotheses in evolutionary linguistics database

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  • Seán G Roberts
  • Anton Killin
  • Angarika Deb
  • Catherine Sheard
  • Simon J Greenhill
  • Kaius Sinnemäki
  • José Segovia-Martín
  • Jonas Nölle
  • Aleksandrs Berdicevskis
  • Archie Humphreys-Balkwill
  • Hannah Little
  • Christopher Opie
  • Guillaume Jacques
  • Lindell Bromham
  • Peeter Tinits
  • Robert M Ross
  • Sean Lee
  • Emily Gasser
  • Jasmine Calladine
  • Matthew Spike
  • Stephen Francis Mann
  • Olena Shcherbakova
  • Ruth Singer
  • Shuya Zhang
  • Antonio Benítez-Burraco
  • Ewan Thomas-Colquhoun
  • Hedvig Skirgård
  • Monica Tamariz
  • Sam Passmore
  • Thomas Pellard
  • Fiona Jordan
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<mark>Journal publication date</mark>1/08/2020
<mark>Journal</mark>Journal of Language Evolution
Issue number2
Volume5
Number of pages20
Pages (from-to)101-120
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date16/04/20
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

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.