What do phylogenetic trees ... like spoken language, arose much more recently (in this case, very recently, as speech is a uniquely human trait). Thus, understanding the evolutionary history ...

In the new study, Dunn and Gray's team created evolutionary trees for eight word-order features in humanity's best-described language groups -- Austronesian, Indo-European, Bantu and Uto-Aztecan.

There are currently ∼7,000 different living human languages. The peak of language diversity may have been ∼10,000 years ago when up to 20,000 different languages might have been spoken.

Thus, species tree reconstruction is an important tool in the study of biological evolution. Because languages also evolve, and consist of words that can be easily compared, a similar technique ...

New research on the rhythmic drumming and complex calls of chimpanzees could point scientists to the origins of language.

Language evolves in sudden leaps ... Pagel performed a similar analysis of genetic variation in species of trees. He found that 22% of evolutionary change came during similar periods of rapid ...

“Generating new or combined meanings by combining words is a hallmark of human language,” Catherine ... off from one another in the evolutionary tree. Not all primates show evidence of such ...

Scientists in Darwin’s time and through most of the 20th century could only work out the branches of the evolutionary tree of life by looking at the structure and appearance of animals and plants.