Using linguistic trees as models of population history in combination with ethnographic data on kinship, the authors of the present study reconstruct post-marital residence rules of early Austronesian societies. Analyses include a Markov-chain Monte Carlo comparative method implemented in a Bayesian phylogenetic framework.

This paper builds on previous Austronesian dispersal research that indicated rituals and social complexity gave rise to each other, by examining if marital residence and initiation rites co-evolved during the dispersal. Using a phylogenetic test and initiation data from 79 societies, the authors found evidence that female and male initiation rites co-evolved during the dispersal and were most stable when both initiation rites were present. The authors also suggest that proto-Austronesian society probably lacked initiation rites and such rites only developed later.

How is the evolution of language shaped by speaker population size? Through comparative data analyses of 153 language pairs from the Austronesian, Indo-European, and Niger-Congo language families, the authors find that the influence of population size on language evolution is not the same in the three language families. Only in Indo-European languages did a smaller population size of language-speakers significantly predict more word loss.

Researchers examine post-marital residence patterns across five language phylogenies encompassing 371 ethnolinguistic groups. These language families are the Austronesian (Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific), Bantu (Sub-Saharan Africa), Indo-European (Eurasia), Pama-Nyungan (Australia), and Uto-Aztecan (Western USA and Mesoamerica). Contrary to the study's predictions, post-marital residence patterns did not evolve in similar ways across geographical regions but at a pace specific to its lineage.

Textor encapsulates cross-cultural findings on marital residence relating to cultural, environmental, psychological, and social phenomena.

Previous research has found that words are replaced faster in language vocabularies the less the word is used, whereas words that are used more frequently endure longer. Drawing from this theory, the authors of this article propose two questions: 1) Is the rate of replacement for Indo-European kinship terms correlated with their usage frequency? 2) How does this relationship differ between kinship terms and core vocabulary? Using phylogenetic comparative methods to analyze 10 kinship categories from 47 Indo-European languages, the authors find that more frequently used kinship terms tend to be replaced at a much slower rate than less frequently used words. Furthermore, this relationship between word replacement rate and usage frequency is stronger for kinship terms than it is for core vocabulary terms.

This study tests an adaptational theory of military organization. Test of the relationship between population, residence type and military organization are presented; findings support the hypotheses.

Using phylogenetic comparative methods, the study explores the evolution of kinship terminologies within 176 societies in Austronesian, Bantu, and Uto-Aztecan language families. The authors consider 18 theories in the anthropological record that suggests that change in kinship terminologies is predicted by some social structures: marriage, residence, and descent. Only 19 of the 29 statistical hypotheses are supported, while none of the theories are supported in all three language families. This statistical irregularity means that the results are lineage-specific, instead of showing a universal driver of change in kinship terminology types.

How do subsystems of language evolve over time? It is commonly assumed that grammatical changes of language are slower than vocabulary changes. Using a Dirichlet process mixture model to analyze rates of language evolution in 81 Austronesian languages, the authors find that to the contrary, the grammatical features of language tend to change at a faster rate than basic vocabulary. Furthermore, their results show that grammatical features have higher rates of homoplasy, more frequent contact-induced change, and less deliberate differentiation than basic vocabulary.

In this study, the authors analyze the evolutionary history of female and male marital dispersal norms in Sino-Tibetan ethnic groups. They also test for the coevolution of agriculture, domesticated cattle pastoralism, and unilineal descent with these dispersal norms. Results indicate that early Sino-Tibetans were likely patrilocal, agriculture and unilineal descent coevolved with female dispersal norms, and cattle domestication did not coevolve with dispersal norms in Sino-Tibetan ethnic groups.