Towards a history and geography of human syntax

In addition to its theoretical impact, the development of molecular biology has brought about the possibility of extraordinaryhistorical progress in the study of phylogenetic classification of different species and human populations (especially cf. CavalliSforza et al., 1994, among others).We argue that parametric analyses of grammatical diversity in theoretical linguistics, stemmingfrom Chomsky (1981), can prompt analogous progress in the historical classification of language families, by showing that abstractsyntactic properties are reliable indicators of phylogenetic relations. The pursuit of this approach radically questions thetraditional belief in the orthogonality of grammatical typology and language genealogy, broadly supporting Nichols’ (1992)program, and ultimately contributes to establishing formal grammar as a population science and historical linguistics as animportant part of cognitive inquiry.