The <i>stability hyper-cube</i> for two features and , the <i>stability profiles</i> of three language families , and and the <i>stability distances</i> between language families (shown for and ).

<p>Please note that and are very close in this space.</p

Statistical robustness of sets of language families.

<p>The most <i>conservative</i> combined <i>p</i>-value and the <i>number</i> of combined <i>p</i>-values significant at -level = 0.05 for the five methods (Fisher, Z-transform, Hartung, Simes and Makambi) as applied to all 12 datasets for raw and geography-corrected stability distances. The combined <i>p</i>-values significant at -level = 0.05 are in <b>bold</b>). The sets with at least 4 significant combined <i>p</i>-values in both the raw and geography-corrected columns are also in <b>bold</b>. See <b><a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0045198#pone.0045198.s001" target="_blank">Materials S1</a></b> for full details.</p>†<p>See <b><a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0045198#pone.0045198.s001" target="_blank">Materials S1</a></b> for the exact composition of these sets. <b>(vs America)</b>: randomization only within the Americas. <b>(vs world)</b>: randomization not restricted.</p>‡<p>Here we report the results for the maximal composition of “Siberia”, namely <i>Chukotko-Kamchatkan</i>, <i>Tungusic</i> and <i>Yukaghir</i> (the results are very similar when excluding <i>Tungusic</i>). See text and <b><a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0045198#pone.0045198.s001" target="_blank">Materials S1</a></b> for details.</p

Top and bottom 15 most stable features.

<p>This ranking represents the consensus among all 12 datasets as given by the first principal component () of a Principal Component Analysis run on all polymorphic ranks, explaining of the variance and representing the agreement. See <b><a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0045198#pone.0045198.s001" target="_blank">Materials S1</a></b> for details and WALS <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0045198#pone.0045198-Haspelmath2" target="_blank">[31]</a>, <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0045198#pone.0045198-Dryer1" target="_blank">[32]</a> for the description of the features.</p

Multidimensional scaling (MDS) plot of the relationships between the stability profiles of the language families for the MBE dataset.

<p>Shown are the first (horizontal) and second (vertical) dimensions. We distinguished ten geographical regions represented by a distinct color and single digits, as follows: <i>South America</i> (<b>0</b>, dark blue), <i>Central America</i> (<b>1</b>, blue), <i>South America</i> (<b>2</b>, light blue), <i>Southern Africa</i> (<b>3</b>, black), <i>Northern Africa</i> (<b>4</b>, red), <i>Eurasia</i> (<b>5</b>, pink), <i>South Asia</i> (<b>6</b>, orange), <i>Oceania</i> (<b>7</b>, green), <i>Papua-New Guinea</i> (<b>8</b>, dark green) and <i>Australia</i> (<b>9</b>, cyan). The language families are represented by single lower case letters allocated in alphabetical order per geographical region, as follows: <i>Arawakan</i> (<b>0a</b>), <i>Carib</i> (<b>0b</b>), <i>Macro-Ge</i> (<b>0c</b>), <i>Tucanoan</i> (<b>0d</b>), <i>Tupi</i> (<b>0e</b>), <i>Chibchan</i> (<b>1a</b>), <i>Mayan</i> (<b>1b</b>), <i>Oto-Manguean</i> (<b>1c</b>), <i>Uto-Aztecan</i> (<b>1d</b>), <i>Algic</i> (<b>2a</b>), <i>Hokan</i> (<b>2b</b>), <i>Na-Dene</i> (<b>2c</b>), <i>Penutian</i> (<b>2d</b>), <i>Salishan</i> (<b>2e</b>), <i>Wakashan</i> (<b>2f</b>), <i>Khoisan</i> (<b>3a</b>), <i>Niger-Congo</i> (<b>3b</b>), <i>Afro-Asiatic</i> (<b>4a</b>), <i>Nilo-Saharan</i> (<b>4b</b>), <i>Altaic</i> (<b>5a</b>), <i>Chukotko-Kamchatkan</i> (<b>5b</b>), <i>Dravidian</i> (<b>5c</b>), <i>Indo-European</i> (<b>5d</b>), <i>North-Caucasian</i> (<b>5e</b>), <i>Uralic</i> (<b>5f</b>), <i>Austro-Asiatic</i> (<b>6a</b>), <i>Sino-Tibetan</i> (<b>6b</b>), <i>Tai-Kadai</i> (<b>6c</b>), <i>Austronesian</i> (<b>7a</b>), <i>Sepik</i> (<b>8a</b>), <i>Trans-New-Guinea</i> (<b>8b</b>), <i>West-Papuan</i> (<b>8c</b>) and <i>Australian</i> (<b>9a</b>). It can be seen that most of the American language families are distinguished from the others by the first dimension (left side) respecting the north (bottom) - south (top) geographic direction as well (second dimension). <i>Eurasia</i> occupies the bottom-right quadrant while <i>South Asia</i> and <i>Oceania</i> group together as well. Interestingly, <i>Chukotko-Kamchatkan</i> (<b>5b</b>; marked with a black arrow) clusters with the (Central and North) American language families. See supplementary figures in <b><a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0045198#pone.0045198.s001" target="_blank">Materials S1</a></b> for all 12 datasets.</p

Grand average waveforms for the 'yes' response (black dashed line) and the 'no' response (red solid line) after a 300 ms gap, time-locked to response onset.

<p>A representative subset of 15 electrodes is shown, the locations of which are indicated on the head at the bottom.</p

Timeline.

<p>Mean onset of the first word, verb and final word in target utterances and a rough timeline for the early and late utterance time-windows.</p

Grand average waveforms for the 'yes' response (black dashed line) and the 'no' response (red solid line) after a 1000 ms gap, time-locked to response onset.

<p>A representative subset of 15 electrodes is shown, whose locations are indicated on the head at the bottom.</p

Increased brain activity for relative conditions C1–C4 vs. relative baseline C5.

<p><i>P</i><0.001 (cluster-size corrected).</p

Early utterance time-window.

<p>A) Grand-averaged ERPs time-locked to the onset of the first word. Representative electrodes showing the relevant effects are highlighted in dashed boxes. B) Scalp distribution of the ERP effects in the early utterance time-window. All waveforms were low-pass filtered (10 Hz) for illustration purposes only. Negativity is plotted upwards.</p

Behavioural results.

<p>Mean accuracy (and standard deviation) in the categorization task for all items (overall) and for each stimulus Set.</p><p>Behavioural results.</p