Hedvig Skirgård
Abteilung für Sprach- und Kulturevolution
Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie
Deutscher Platz 6
04103 Leipzig
E-Mail:
hedvig_skirgard@[>>> Please remove the text! <<<]eva.mpg.de
About me
I’m a linguist working on language diversification and change. I’m interested language variation at a macro-scale, and I’m currently working on these topics in languages of Oceania. I use computational methods, such as ancestral state reconstruction and statistical modelling to predict the grammar of proto-languages and to better understand what it is that causes languages to split. I’m also project coordinator for the Grambank project - a database of grammatical features with over 2,000 languages. In my spare time, I’m interested in maps of the Pacific and I co-host a podcast about languages and linguistics called “Because Language”.
Curriculum Vitae
| 2020 - present | Postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig. |
| 2015 - 2021 | PhD - Linguistics. Australian National University. Thesis topic: Language diversification in Remote Oceania. |
| 2019 - present | Project coordinator for the Grambank project at the Department for Linguistic and Cultural Evolution at the Max Planck for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig. |
| 2013 - 2014 | Student assistant in typological database project at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen. |
| 2011 - 2013 | Masters of Arts - Linguistics. Stockholm University. Thesis topic: Corpus study of a West-African French-lexified Pidgin (Français Tirailleur). |
| 2010 - 2011 | Pre-school teacher. Katarina Södra Skola, Stockholm. |
| 2008 - 2010 | Primary school student assistant and substitute primary school teacher. Katarina Södra Skola, Stockholm. |
| 2007 - 2011 | Bachelor in Arts - General Linguistics. Stockholm University. Thesis topic: Corpus study of double negation in Swedish dialects. |
My full and frequently updated CV can be found here.
Publications & Presentations
Skirgård, H. (2024). Disentangling ancestral state reconstruction in historical linguistics: Comparing classic approaches and new methods using Oceanic grammar. Diachronica, 41(1), 46-98. |
Open AccessSkirgard, H. (2021). Multilevel dynamics of language diversity and disparity in Oceania. PhD Thesis, Australian National University, Canberra. |
Skirgard, H., Roberts, S. G., & Yencken, L. (2017). Why are some languages confused for others? Investigating data from the Great Language Game. PLoS One, 12(4): e0165934. |
2024
Shcherbakova, O., Blasi, D. E., Gast, V., Skirgård, H., Gray, R. D., & Greenhill, S. J. (2024). The evolutionary dynamics of how languages signal who does what to whom. Scientific Reports, 14: 7259. |
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Skirgård, H. (2024). Disentangling ancestral state reconstruction in historical linguistics: Comparing classic approaches and new methods using Oceanic grammar. Diachronica, 41(1), 46-98. |
2023
Shcherbakova, O., Michaelis, S. M., Haynie, H. J., Passmore, S., Gast, V., Gray, R. D., Greenhill, S. J., Blasi, D. E., & Skirgård, H. (2023). Societies of strangers do not speak less complex languages. Science Advances, 9(33): eadf7704. |
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Shcherbakova, O., Gast, V., Blasi, D. E., Skirgård, H., Gray, R. D., & Greenhill, S. J. (2023). A quantitative global test of the complexity trade-off hypothesis: The case of nominal and verbal grammatical marking. Linguistics Vanguard, 9(s1), 155-167. |
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Skirgård, H., Haynie, H. J., Blasi, D. E., Hammarström, H., Collins, J., Latarche, J. J., Lesage, J., Weber, T., Witzlack-Makarevich, A., Passmore, S., Chira, A.-M., Maurits, L., Dinnage, R., Dunn, M., Reesink, G., Singer, R., Bowern, C., Epps, P., Hill, J., Vesakoski, O., Robbeets, M., Abbas, N. K., Auer, D., Bakker, N. A., Barbos, G., Borges, R. D., Danielsen, S., Dorenbusch, L., Dorn, E., Elliott, J., Falcone, G., Fischer, J., Ghanggo Ate, Y., Gibson, H., Göbel, H.-P., Goodall, J. A., Gruner, V., Harvey, A., Hayes, R., Heer, L., Herrera Miranda, R. E., Hübler, N., Huntington-Rainey, B., Ivani, J. K., Johns, M., Just, E., Kashima, E., Kipf, C., Klingenberg, J. V., König, N., Koti, A., Kowalik, R. G., Krasnoukhova, O., Lindvall, N. L., Lorenzen, M., Lutzenberger, H., Martins, T. R., Mata German, C., van der Meer, S., Montoya Samamé, J., Müller, M., Muradoglu, S., Neely, K., Nickel, J., Norvik, M., Oluoch, C. A., Peacock, J., Pearey, I. O., Peck, N., Petit, S., Pieper, S., Poblete, M., Prestipino, D., Raabe, L., Raja, A., Reimringer, J., Rey, S. C., Rizaew, J., Ruppert, E., Salmon, K., Sammet, J., Schembri, R., Schlabbach, L., Schmidt, F. W., Skilton, A., Smith, W. D., de Sousa, H., Sverredal, K., Valle, D., Vera, J., Voß, J., Witte, T., Wu, H., Yam, S., Ye, J., Yong, M., Yuditha, T., Zariquiey, R., Forkel, R., Evans, N., Levinson, S. C., Haspelmath, M., Greenhill, S. J., Atkinson, Q. D., & Gray, R. D. (2023). Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss. Science Advances, 9: eadg6175. |
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Haynie, H. J., Blasi, D., Skirgård, H., Greenhill, S. J., Atkinson, Q. D., & Gray, R. D. (2023). Grambank’s typological advances support computational research on diverse languages. In L. Beinborn, K. Goswami, S. Muradoğlu, A. Sorokin, R. Kumar, A. Scherbakov, E. M. Ponti, R. Cotterell, & E. Vylomova ( |
2022
Lesage, J., Haynie, H. J., Skirgård, H., Weber, T., & Witzlack-Makarevich, A. (2022). Overlooked data in typological databases: What grambank teaches us about gaps in grammars. In Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2022) (pp. 2884-2890). Paris: European Language Resources Association (ELRA). |
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Shcherbakova, O., Michaelis, S. M., Haynie, H. J., Greenhill, S. J., Blasi, D. E., Gray, R. D., Gast, V., & Skirgård, H. (2022). Grammatical complexity is only weakly influenced by the sociolinguistic envornment. In A. Ravignani, R. Asano, D. Valente, F. Ferretti, S. Hartmann, M. Hayashi, Y. Jadoul, M. Martins, Y. Oseki, E. D. Rodrigues, O. Vasileva, & S. Wacewicz ( |
2021
Bromham, L., Dinnage, R., Skirgård, H., Ritchie, A., Cardillo, M., Meakins, F., Greenhill, S. J., & Hua, X. (2021). Global predictors of language endangerment and the future of linguistic diversity. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 6, 163-173. |
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Skirgard, H. (2021). Multilevel dynamics of language diversity and disparity in Oceania. PhD Thesis, Australian National University, Canberra. |
2020
Shcherbakova, O., Skirgard, H., & Greenhill, S. J. (2020). Phylogenetic exploration of language complexity in Austronesian, Bantu and Indoeuropean language families. In A. Ravignani, C. Barbieri, M. Flaherty, Y. Jadoul, E. Lattenkamp, H. Little, K. Mudd, & T. Verhoef ( |
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Roberts, S. G., Killin, A., Deb, A., Sheard, C., Greenhill, S. J., Sinnemäki, K., Segovia-Martín, J., Nölle, J., Berdicevskis, A., Humphreys-Balkwill, A., Little, H., Opie, C., Jacques, G., Bromham, L., Tinits, P., Ross, R. M., Lee, S., Gasser, E., Calladine, J., Spike, M., Mann, S. F., Shcherbakova, O., Singer, R., Zhang, S., Benítez-Burraco, A., Kliesch, C., Thomas-Colquhoun, E., Skirgard, H., Tamariz, M., Passmore, S., Pellard, T., & Jordan, F. (2020). CHIELD: The causal hypotheses in evolutionary linguistics database. Journal of Language Evolution, 5(2), 101-120. |
2017
Skirgard, H., Roberts, S. G., & Yencken, L. (2017). Why are some languages confused for others? Investigating data from the Great Language Game. PLoS One, 12(4): e0165934. |
2016
Skirgard, H. (2016). Variation – where does it come from? A corpus to investigate variation in Samoan. In Measina a Sāmoa: E sui faiga, ae tumau faavae. Papers presented at the Measina a Sāmoa Conference 15 –17 November 2016 National University of Sāmoa, Le Papaigalagala. (pp. 257-284). |
2013
Skirgard, H. (2013). Français Tirailleur Pidgin: A corpus study. Master Thesis, Stockholm University. |
2010
Skirgard, H. (2010). Finns det dubbelnegation i svenska dialekter?: -inte..e i två Hälsingemål. Bachelor Thesis, Stockholm University. |
2021
Skirgard, H. (2021). Reconstructing Oceanic grammar. Talk presented at 15th International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics. Olomouc, Czech Republic. 2021-06-28 - 2021-07-01. |
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Verkerk, A., Haynie, H., Gray, R. D., Greenhill, S., Shcherbakova, O., & Skirgard, H. (2021). Testing Greenberg’s universals on a global scale. Talk presented at 43. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft. Freiburg (Online). 2021-02-23 - 2021-02-26. |
2020
Skirgård, H. (2020). Non-linguistic factors predicting language diversification in large scale comparisons. Presentation at “Building Bridges Between Typology, Sociolinguistics, and Contact Linguistics: Concepts, Methods, and Challenges of Developing a “Sociolinguistic Typology”” Workshop at the Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society (ALS).
2019
Skirgård, H. (2019). Language Diversification in Remote Oceania. Final Oral Presentation at the linguistics seminar series at the Australian National University, Canberra
Evans, Haynie, Skirgård & Greenhill (2019). Inferring the stability of grammatical structures in major language families. Presentation at the International Conference on Historical Linguistic, Canberra
2018
Kalyan & Skirgård (2018). Diversification inAustronesian languages: Are lexicon and grammar affected differently? Presentation at the conference for New Ways of Analyzing Variation - Asia-Pacific, Brisbane
2017
Skirgård & Haynie (2017). Practical considerations for using data from several typological databases. Presentation at the workshop “Design principles and comparisons of typological databases” at the Biennial Meeting of the Association for Linguistic Typology, Canberra
2016
Skirgård, H. (2016). Variation – where does it come from? a corpus to investigate variation in Samoan. Presentation at the Measina conference on Samoan language and culture at the National University of Samoa
2015
Skirgård, Roberts & Yencken (2015). Crowdsourcing lin- guistic judgements - What can we learn from the Great Language Game? Presentation at Scale-Up Workshop at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Language Dynamics, Canberra
Hammarström, H., Levinson, S. C., Skirgård, H., & Nijmegen, M. P. I. (2015). Simple Correlated Evolution of Typological. Presentation at Causality in the language sciences workshop at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
2014
Skirgård, H. (2014).Corpus studies of Pidgins - the case of West African Français Tirailleur Pidgin. Presentation at seminar series at the CCGT-group at the University of Antwerpen. Antwerpen, Belgium
2013
Skirgård, H. (2013). What is non-emphatic Double Negation? - the case of Swedish. Presentation at the workshop “Negation: Meillet’s spiral (Jespersen’s cycle) and beyond.” at the 46th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea. Split, Croatia