Current Research Topics
Understanding language and culture is central to understanding what it means to be human. The Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution (DLCE) investigates the origins, diversity, and history of the world’s languages and cultural systems. We aim to explain why human societies are strikingly varied - and why they also show some important commonalities.
At the heart of the DLCE’s work is a truly interdisciplinary approach that brings together linguists, anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, computer scientists, and social scientists. This multidisciplinary environment reflects a core insight of the department: explaining cultural and linguistic diversity requires both deep empirical knowledge of individual societies and languages as well as explicit, testable models of how cultural systems change over time. We combine cutting-edge evolutionary theory, computational modelling, and detailed field research to explore how languages and cultures evolve through processes such as transmission, contact, innovation, and loss.
A central component of our methodology is the development of standardised cross-linguistic data formats that enable robust, consistent comparison across diverse languages and cultures. These formats facilitate the integration of data from multiple sources, ensuring compatibility between different linguistic typologies, databases, and analytical methods. By standardising key elements such as grammatical features, semantic domains, and phonological representations, we allow for scalable, cross-linguistic research and provide a common framework for collaboration.
Our commitment to data standardisation is reflected in our flagship linked, global databases, including Grambank, Lexibank, D-PLACE and Numeralbank. Grambank is a large-scale database that provides detailed data on grammatical structures, allowing us to analyse syntactic, morphological, and phonological variation across the world’s languages. Lexibank is a comprehensive resource for basic vocabulary and cognate sets, providing a foundation for historical linguistic studies. D-PLACE is a comprehensive, cross-cultural database that integrates linguistic, cultural, and environmental data to support research on human cultural evolution, enabling the study of how language, social structures, and environmental factors interact across diverse societies. Numeralbank compiles data on numeral systems, enabling the study of the evolution and typological diversity of number systems across languages. Through this approach, the DLCE has created a powerful digital ecosystem that supports large-scale, reproducible analyses of linguistic and cultural evolution. This ecosystem opens windows onto the evolution of linguistic diversity, human history, cognition and culture. Through these efforts, the DLCE is at the forefront of integrating computational evolutionary approaches with traditional linguistic and anthropological research, providing a robust foundation for cross-disciplinary research into human history, cognition, and cultural evolution.