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Olena Shcherbakova

Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
04103 Leipzig

phone: +49 (0) 341 3550 270
e-mail: olena_shcherbakova@[>>> Please remove the text! <<<]eva.mpg.de

About me
Curriculum Vitae
Publications

About me

plot_heatmap_B_I.svg
The scores of two dimensions of grammatical complexity (fusion and informativity) on the global tree. Many related languages resemble each other in their scores of grammatical complexity. This suggests that languages tend to faithfully inherit fusion and informativity scores from their ancestors rather than that these dimensions of grammatical complexity adapt to rapidly changing sociolinguistic environments on a global scale.

I am a doctoral researcher at the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution. I use phylogenetic methods, spatiophylogenetic modelling, and causal inference to answer big-picture questions about large-scale typological patterns and language change. Currently, I am working on my PhD dissertation that will encompass three projects testing hypotheses about the changes in grammatical structures conditioned by linguistic factors and sociolinguistic environment on a global scale. 

Curriculum Vitae

2017-2018MA in Philology, National Technical University of Ukraine "Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute"
2018Exchange Student, Friedrich Schiller University Jena
2013-2017BA in Philology, National Technical University of Ukraine "Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute"

Publications

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.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

2024

Ozaki, Y., Tierney, A., Pfordresher, P. Q., McBride, J. M., Benetos, E., Proutskova, P., Chiba, G., Liu, F., Jacoby, N., Purdy, S. C., Opondo, P., Fitch, W. T., Hegde, S., Rocamora, M., Thorne, R., Nweke, F., Sadaphal, D. P., Sadaphal, P. M., Hadavi, S., Fujii, S., Choo, S., Naruse, M., Ehara, U., Sy, L., Parselelo, M. L., Anglada-Tort, M., Hansen, N. C., Haiduk, F., Færøvik, U., Magalhães, V., Krzyżanowski, W., Shcherbakova, O., Hereld, D., Barbosa, B. S., Varella, M. A. C., van Tongeren, M., Dessiatnitchenko, P., Zar, S. Z., El Kahla, I., Muslu, O., Troy, J., Lomsadze, T., Kurdova, D., Tsope, C., Fredriksson, D., Arabadjiev, A., Sarbah, J. P., Arhine, A., Meachair, T. Ó., Silva-Zurita, J., Soto-Silva, I., Millalonco, N. E. M., Ambrazevičius, R., Loui, P., Ravignani, A., Jadoul, Y., Larrouy-Maestri, P., Bruder, C., Teyxokawa, T. P., Kuikuro, U., Natsitsabui, R., Sagarzazu, N. B., Raviv, L., Zeng, M., Varnosfaderani, S. D., Gómez-Cañón, J. S., Kolff, K., der Nederlanden, C. V. B., Chhatwal, M., David, R. M., Setiawan, I. P. G., Lekakul, G., Borsan, V. N., Nguqu, N., & Savage, P. E. (2024). Globally, songs and instrumental melodies are slower and higher and use more stable pitches than speech: A Registered Report. Science Advances, 10: eadm9797.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

Shcherbakova, O., & Allassonnière-Tang, M. (2024). Evolutionary pathways of complexity in gender systems. Journal of Language Evolution, 8(2), 120-133.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

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.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

2023

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.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

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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2022

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 (Eds.), The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the Joint Conference on Language Evolution (JCoLE) (pp. 669-671). 2666-917X: Joint Conference on Language Evolution (JCoLE).
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

2020

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.
DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

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 (Eds.), The evolution of language: proceedings of the 13th International Conference (Evolang 13) (pp. 411-413). Nijmegen: The Evolution of Language Conferences.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote