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Science 23 September 2005:
Vol. 309. no. 5743, pp. 2007 - 2008
DOI: 10.1126/science.1119276
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Perspectives

EVOLUTION:
Pushing the Time Barrier in the Quest for Language Roots

Russell Gray

The challenge of tracing the history of the world's languages faces a serious problem--words change far too rapidly to reveal deep historical links. In his Perspective, Gray discusses language analyses by Dunn et al. in which a database of structural linguistic features was created and computational methods derived from evolutionary biology were applied. The approach offers new hope for uncovering these ancient connections.

The author is in the Department of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland 92019, New Zealand. E-mail: rd.gray{at}auckland.ac.nz

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)