Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution

Director: Prof. (Univ. Auckland) Dr. Russell Gray

Understanding language and culture is fundamental to understanding what it is to be human. The Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution aims to describe and explain the major patterns of linguistic and cultural variation across the globe. To achieve this aim, we bring together anthropologists, computer scientists, evolutionary biologists, linguists and social scientists. Together, we tackle these challenges by developing novel language documentation methods, standard cross-linguistic data formats, global linguistic and cultural databases, and analyses that utilise evolutionary theories and computational methods. This thoroughly interdisciplinary approach enables us to combine the quantitative rigour of the natural sciences with the insights that only come from maintaining close contact with the primary linguistic and cultural data.