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Introduction

All human languages perform the same function, and the set of distinctions that they use to do so is probably highly constrained. The constraints come from the universal architecture of the human mind, which influences language form through the way it hears, articulates, remembers, and learns. However, within these constraints, there is latitude for variation from language to language. For example, the major categories of subject, verb, and object vary in their typical order, and some languages signal grammatical distinctions primary by syntax, or the combinatorics of words, whereas others achieve this mainly through morphology, or the internal mutation of words. What determines the historical evolution of any particular language across the possibility space formed by these different options? In this issue of PNAS, Dediu and Ladd (1) present evidence suggestive of an answer that has seldom been considered before, which is that interpopulation genetic differences may play a role.

@article{nettle07languageAndGenesPNAS,
  author={Daniel Nettle},
  title={Language and genes: A new perspective on the origins of human cultural diversity},
  journal={PNAS},
  year={2007},
  month={June},
  volume={104},
  number={26},
  pages={10755-10756},
  note={commentary},
  doi={10.1073/pnas.0704517104},
  url={http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/paper/nettle07languageAndGenesPNAS.html}
}

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