Scientists apply genetic methods to linguistics

Stéphane Joost and Noemi Romano. Alain Herzog / EPFL - Scientists have produced a series of maps showing historical migration events, including the migration of mountain farmers native to Upper Valais who began to settle in German-speaking Switzerland in the 13th century, by applying methods from population genetics - but using linguistic data rather than genes. Transposing methods from population genetics to linguistics might sound like a far-fetched idea. But this is precisely the novel approach employed by a group of scientists at EPFL's Laboratory of Geographic Information Systems (LASIG). The research had its genesis in eastern Switzerland with SADS, a linguistic atlas project that captured morphosyntactic features in the language spoken by 3,000 residents of 383 Swiss German-speaking municipalities. "A colleague at the University of Zurich working on the spatial distribution of linguistic features contacted us at LASIG and asked us to help determine the geographical origins of Swiss German dialects," says Stéphane Joost, a Senior Scientist at LASIG. "I was drawn to the idea of doing this kind of cross-disciplinary research.