Atelier Histoire et Ecologie des Langues, Igor Yanovich (Tübingen): HOW (NOT) TO USE GENETIC DATA FOR HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS
14h00-15h30
ISH-Ennat Leger
With the wider availability of genetic data, it is natural to want to use them in order to solve long-standing puzzles in linguistics. In this talk, I will discuss some seemingly attractive ways to use genetic data for that purpose, which however under closer inspection do not work. In other words, this talk is about how (not) to interpret genetic evidence when trying to solve historical-linguistic puzzles, and what we-linguists may want from geneticists in order to move forward on this together. The specific methods I will discuss include PCA, Admixture, and Globetrotter, and possibly the (unpublished) tool MOSAIC.