Comparison of American Languages Detects Waves of Migration

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA—According to a Live Science report, historical linguist Johanna Nichols of the University of California, Berkeley, and her colleagues analyzed the structures of 60 languages found in the United States and Canada, and determined that they derived from two main language groups that left Siberia and entered North America in at least four distinct waves of migration. The analysis focuses on 16 features of the languages, including syllable structure, the gender of nouns, an