List of publications

Publications of special consideration are marked with *

Peer-reviewed articles/book chapters

accepted

• Skirgård, H. and Mann, S.F. (accepted) An improved metric for estimating morphological information in corpora

2026

• Haynie, H, Graff, A, and Skirgård, H. (2026) Large Databases of Structural Properties of Languages in Ferrer-i-Cancho, R (ed) Reference Module in Social Sciences, International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (3rd edition) https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-95504-1.00918-2 

2025

• * Verkerk, A., Shcherbakova, O., Haynie, H.J., Skirgård, H., Rzymski, C., Atkinson, Q.D., Greenhill, S.J. and Gray, R.D. (2025) Enduring constraints on grammar revealed by Bayesian spatiophylogenetic analyses. Nature Human Behaviour DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02325-z Code: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7740822 Data: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7844558     

• Shcherbakova, O., Gast, V., Greenhill, S.J., Blasi, D., Gray, R.D. and Skirgård, H. (2025) Different models, different assumptions, different findings: commentary on ``Replication and methodological robustness in quantitative typology'' by Becker and Guzmán Naranjo. Linguistic Typology. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2025-0022  

• * Skirgård, H. (2025) A Sea of Languages: predicting the number of languages per island group in Remote Oceania.  Journal of Language Evolution. DOI: https://academic.oup.com/jole/article/10/1/lzae011/8166523 . Code and data:  https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14479692       

• Graff, A., Chousou-Polydouri, N., Inman, D., Skirgård, H., Lischka, M., Zakharko, T., Barbieri, C., and Bickel, B., (2025). Curating global datasets of structural linguistic features for independence. Scientific Data 12:106  DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-04319-4       

2024

• Shcherbakova, O., Blasi, D. E., Gast, V., Skirgård, H., Gray, R. D., and Greenhill, S. J. (2024). The evolutionary dynamics of how languages signal who does what to whom. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 7259. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-51542-5      

• *Skirgård, H. (2024) Disentangling Ancestral State Reconstruction in historical linguistics: Comparing classic approaches and new methods using Oceanic grammar. Diachronica. DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.22022.sk Code and data: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10390885       

2023

• * Shcherbakova, O., Michaelis, S.M., Haynie, H.J., Passmore, S., Gast, V., Gray, R.D., Greenhill, S.J., Blasi, D.E., and Skirgård, H. (2023). Societies of strangers do not speak less complex languages. Science Advances. DOI: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adf7704  Code and data: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10420654       

• Skirgård, H., Haynie H.J., Blasi, D.E., Hammarström, H., Collins, J., Latarche, J., Lesage, J., Weber, T., Witzlack-Makarevich, Alena, Passmore, S., Chira, A., Maurits, L., Dinnage, R., Dunn, M., Reesink, G., Singer, R., Bowern, C., Epps, P., Hill, J., Vesakoski, O., Robbeets, M., Abbas, N. K., Auer, D., Bakker, N.A., Barbos, G., Borges, R.D., Danielsen, S., Dorenbusch, L., Dorn, E., Elliott, J., Falcone, G., Fischer, J., Ghanggo Ate, Y., Gibson, H., Göbel, H., Goodall, J.A., Gruner, V., Harvey, A., Hayes, R., Heer, L., Herrera Miranda, R.E., Hübler, N., Huntington-Rainey, B., Ivani, J.K., Johns, M., Just, E., Kashima, E., Kipf, C., Klingenberg, J.V., König, N., Koti, A., Kowalik, R.G.A., Krasnoukhova, O., Lindvall, N.L.M., Lorenzen, M., Lutzenberger, H., Martins, T.R.A., Mata German, C., van der Meer, S., Montoya Samamé, J., Müller, M., Murado$\breveg$lu, S., Neely, K., Nickel, J., Norvik, M., Oluoch, C.A., Peacock, J., Pearey, I.O.C., Peck, N., Petit, S., Pieper, S., Poblete, M., Prestipino, D., Raabe, L., Raja, A., Reimringer, J., Rey, S.C., Rizaew, J., Ruppert, E., Salmon, K.K., Sammet, J., Schembri, R., Schlabbach, L., Schmidt, F.W.P., Skilton, A., Smith, W.D., de Sousa, H., Sverredal, K., Valle, D., Vera, J., Voß, J., Witte, T., Wu, H., Yam, S., Ye 葉婧婷,  J., Yong, M., Yuditha, T., Zariquiey, R., Forkel, R., Evans, N., Levinson, S.C., Haspelmath, M., Greenhill, S.J., Atkinson, Q.D. and Gray, R.D. (2023). Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss. Science Advances 9(16), eadg6175. DOI: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adg6175      

2022

• Shcherbakova, O.,  Gast, V., Blasi, D.E.,  Skirgård, H.,  Gray, R.D. and Greenhill, S.J. (2022). A quantitative global test of the complexity trade-off hypothesis: the case of nominal and verbal grammatical marking. Linguistics Vanguard. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2021-0011       

• Norder, S., Becker, L., Skirgård, H., Arias, L., Witzlack-Makarevich, A., and van Gijn, R. (2022). glottospace: R package for language mapping and geospatial analysis of linguistic and cultural data. Journal of Open Source Software. 7(77): 4303. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.04303        

2021

• Bromham, L., Dinnage, R., Skirgård, H., Ritchie, A., Cardillo, M., Meakins, F., Greenhill, S.J. and Hua, X. (2021). Global predictors of language endangerment and the future of linguistic diversity. Nature Ecology & Evolution. 6: 163–173. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01604-y  

2020

• Roberts, S. G., Killin, A., Deb, A., Sheard, C., Greenhill, S. J., Sinnemäki, K., Segovia-Martín, J., Nölle, J., Berdicevskis, A., Humphreys-Balkwill, A., Little, H., Opie, C., Jacques, G., Bromham, L., Tinits, P., Ross, R. M., Lee, S., Gasser, E., Calladine, J., Spike, M., Mann, S. F., Shcherbakova, O., Singer, R., Zhang, S., Benítez-Burraco, A., Kliesch, C., Thomas-Colquhoun, E., Skirgård, H., Tamariz, M., Passmore, S., Pellard, T., and Jordan, F. (2020) CHIELD: the causal hypotheses in evolutionary linguistics database. Journal of Language Evolution. 5(2): 101–120 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jole/lzaa001 

2017

• Skirgård, H., Roberts, S.G., and Yencken, L. (2017). Why are some languages confused for others? Investigating data from the Great Language Game. PLOS One. 12(4): e0165934. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0165934    

Theses

2021 (PhD)

• Skirgård, H. (2021) Multilevel dynamics of language diversity and disparity in Oceania. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Department of Linguistics; School of Culture, History and Language; Australian National University. PDF: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/218982  

2013 (master)

• Skirgård, H. (2013) Français Tirailleur: - A Corpus Study. (Unpublished masters' thesis) Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University. PDF: https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-93933 

2011 (bachelor)

• Skirgård, H. (2011) Finns det dubbelnegation i svenska dialekter?: -inte...e i två Hälsingemål. [Eng: Is there double negation in Swedish dialects? -inte...e in two Hälsingland dialects] (Unpublished bachelor thesis) Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University. PDF: https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-43367 

Conference proceedings

2026

• Skirgård, H., Michaud, J. and Jon-And, A. (2026) Modelling shared context in language emergence. Proceedings of Evolang XVI. Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

2022

• Lesage, J., Haynie, H.J., Skirgård, H., Weber, T. & Alena Witzlack-Makarevich (2022) Overlooked Data in Typological Databases: What Grambank Teaches Us About Gaps in Grammars. In Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2022), Marseille, 20-25 June 2022, 2884–2890. Marseille. PDF: http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2022/pdf/2022.lrec-1.309.pdf Code: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8058988 

2017

• Skirgård, H. (2017). Variation – where does it come from? a corpus to investigate variation in Samoan. In Measina Conference Proceedings. 7: 257-284. Editors Fui Le'apai Tu'ua Ilaoa Asofou So'o et al. Le Papaigalagala, Apia, S\=amoa: Centre for Samoan Studies. National University of Samoa. 

Other research (not peer-reviewed)

2025

• Russell, N. J., Davies, R. J., Skirgård, H., Wiegand, A. C., and Samwald, S. (2025). The 2024 PostdocNet General Survey. DOI: 10.17617/2.3658330. PDF:

https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0011-81C2-F 

Data sets (not included above)

2021

• Hammarström, H. Reesink, G., Dunn, M., Singer, R., Skirgård, H., van der Meer, S. and Levinson, S.C. (2021). Nijmegen Typological Survey (v1.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4486318 

• Skirgård, H., Haynie, H.J., Hammarström, H., Barlow, R., Blasi, D.E. Collins, J., Latarche, J., Lesage, J., Weber, T., Witzlack-Makarevich, A., Dunn, M., Reesink, G., Singer, R., Englisch, J., Chira, A., Verkerk, A., Dinnage, R., Maurits, L., Passmore, S., … Gray, R.D. (2023). Grambank v1.0 (v1.0.3) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7844558 

• Skirgård, H. (collector), 2021. Samoan sociolinguistic interviews, wordlists and conversation. Collection HSS01 at catalog.paradisec.org.au. https://dx.doi.org/10.26278/GJ2B-EX63 

Popular science contributions

2023

Skirgård, H. & S. J. Greenhill. (2023) The Conversation article: Research on 2,400 languages shows nearly half the world's language diversity is at risk. Link: https://theconversation.com/research-on-2-400-languages-shows-nearly-half-the-worlds-language-diversity-is-at-risk-204014 

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