CONGRUENCE OF GENETIC AND LINGUISTIC EVOLUTION IN CHINA

We have studied the pattern of similarities among Chinese dialects, analysing lexical and phonological information using two different tree methods (average linkage and neighbor-joining). Agreement between the two methods was better when lexical, or lexical plus phonological data were used. This implies that lexical changes occur at a more regular rate than phonological changes. The pattern of linguistic similarity was compared with the genetic one, as exemplified by the study of surnames in a recent monograph (Du et al. in press). Surname distances are highly correlated with genetic distances, and, like them, reflect migrational history. We found a statistically significant correlation between linguistic distance and surname distance. Both languages and surnames are less correlated with geography or with history, namely chronological information of the major episodes of conquest and settlement in China during the last 3000 years. The observed congruence of genetic and linguistic evolution is a consequence of the similarity of their mechanisms of transmission. Under certain conditions languages are transmitted vertically (from parents to children), as are genes or surnames. Other mechanisms (horizontal or oblique) may also be involved in the case of languages and, to a lesser extent, of surnames; these mechanisms would tend to obscure the correlation.