About

Hannah Haynie is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Colorado Boulder. She earned her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, and completed postdoctoral fellowships in Linguistics at Yale University and in Cultural Evolution and Biocultural Diversity at Colorado State University before joining CU. Her research generally focuses on linguistic diversity, language prehistory, and language change, with a particular interest in the languages of North America and the linguistic diversity of the California area. Dr. Haynie's work is driven by an interest in understanding how linguistic diversity arises from processes of language change that operate at multiple spatiotemporal scales, as well as the competing pressures that shape language change and language diversity. With an interdisciplinary background, she integrates linguistic analysis with methodological approaches inspired by geography, ecology, and evolutionary biology to investigate these questions.

Research topics

• Geography
• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Linguistics
• Political Science
• Archaeology
• History
• Biology
• Anthropology

Selected publications

• Demographic shifts, inter-group contact and environmental conditions drive language extinction and diversification

  Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · 2026-01-28

  articleOpen access

  Humans collectively use thousands of languages. The number of languages in a region (i.e. 'richness') varies widely. Empirical research has identified social, environmental, geographic and demographic factors associated with language richness. However, our understanding of causal mechanisms and variation in their effects over space has been limited by prior analyses focusing on correlation and assuming stationarity. Here we use process-based, spatially explicit stochastic models to simulate the emergence, expansion, contraction, fragmentation and extinction of language ranges. We varied parameter settings in these computer-simulated experiments to evaluate the extent to which different processes reproduce observed patterns of language richness in North America. We find that the majority of spatial variation in language richness is explained by models in which environmental and social constraints determine population density, random shocks alter population sizes more frequently at higher population densities, and population shocks are more frequently negative than positive. Language diversification occurs when populations split after reaching size limits, and when ranges fragment due to population contractions following negative shocks or due to contact with other groups expanding following positive shocks. These findings support theories arguing that environmental and social conditions, constraints on group sizes, outcomes of contact and shifting demographics all shape language richness.

  PublisherDOI

• Large Databases of Structural Properties of Languages

  Elsevier eBooks · 2026-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• A curated global dataset of social contact between diverse language communities

  Scientific Data · 2025-12-11

  articleOpen access

  The GramAdapt Social Contact Dataset is a curated dataset of 34 language pairs with qualitative and quantifiable data on social interaction and aspects of societal multilingualism. The language pairs were sampled globally to represent the world's linguistic diversity. The dataset can be used to interrogate the social dimensions of language contact independently or in conjunction with appropriate linguistic data. The data were collected by distributing a questionnaire to experts who have experience with either one or both of the language communities of a pair. The data represent subjective expert assessments based on choices from predetermined answers which can be quantified. Authors 1, 2 and 3 manually checked the response to identify possible misjudgments or misunderstandings. This results in a dataset containing 13,493 data points. This dataset is a first of its kind in the field of linguistics, built upon wide findings from sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, psycholinguistics, and linguistic anthropology.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• ECHOing Change: Tracking Statewide Participation in a Substance Use Learning Network

  Research Square · 2025-07-18

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Supplementary material from "Demographic shifts, inter-group contact, and environmental conditions drive language extinction and diversification"

  Figshare · 2025-01-01

  otherOpen access

  Humans collectively use thousands of languages. The number of languages in a region (i.e. “richness”) varies widely. Empirical research has identified social, environmental, geographic, and demographic factors associated with language richness. However, our understanding of causal mechanisms and variation in their effects over space has been limited by prior analyses focusing on correlation and assuming stationarity. Here we use process-based, spatially-explicit stochastic models to simulate the emergence, expansion, contraction, fragmentation, and extinction of language ranges. We varied parameter settings in these computer-simulated experiments to evaluate the extent to which different processes reproduce observed patterns of language richness in North America. We find that the majority of spatial variation in language richness is explained by models in which environmental and social constraints determine population density, random shocks alter population sizes more frequently at higher population densities, and population shocks are more frequently negative than positive. Language diversification occurs when populations split after reaching size limits, and when ranges fragment due to population contractions following negative shocks or due to contact with other groups expanding following positive shocks. These findings support theories arguing that environmental and social conditions, constraints on group sizes, outcomes of contact, and shifting demographics all shape language richness.

  PublisherDOI

• CLDF Dataset accompanying Greenhill et al.'s "Origin of Uto-Aztecan" from 2022

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2025-01-09

  datasetOpen access

  Cite the source of the dataset as: Greenhill, Simon J., Hannah J. Haynie, Robert M. Ross, Angela M. Chira, List, Johann-Mattis, Lyle Campbell, Carlos A. Botero, and Russell D. Gray (2022): A recent northern origin for the Uto-Aztecan family. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

  PublisherDOI

• Code from Demographic shifts, inter-group contact, and environmental conditions drive language extinction and diversification

  Figshare · 2025-01-01

  datasetOpen access

  This program was written in Object Pascal and is used to simulate the geographical spread of languages in the continent of North America

  PublisherDOI

• Supplementary material from "Demographic shifts, inter-group contact, and environmental conditions drive language extinction and diversification"

  Figshare · 2025-01-01

  otherOpen access

  Humans collectively use thousands of languages. The number of languages in a region (i.e. “richness”) varies widely. Empirical research has identified social, environmental, geographic, and demographic factors associated with language richness. However, our understanding of causal mechanisms and variation in their effects over space has been limited by prior analyses focusing on correlation and assuming stationarity. Here we use process-based, spatially-explicit stochastic models to simulate the emergence, expansion, contraction, fragmentation, and extinction of language ranges. We varied parameter settings in these computer-simulated experiments to evaluate the extent to which different processes reproduce observed patterns of language richness in North America. We find that the majority of spatial variation in language richness is explained by models in which environmental and social constraints determine population density, random shocks alter population sizes more frequently at higher population densities, and population shocks are more frequently negative than positive. Language diversification occurs when populations split after reaching size limits, and when ranges fragment due to population contractions following negative shocks or due to contact with other groups expanding following positive shocks. These findings support theories arguing that environmental and social conditions, constraints on group sizes, outcomes of contact, and shifting demographics all shape language richness.

  PublisherDOI

• Author response for "Demographic shifts, inter-group contact, and environmental conditions drive language extinction and diversification"

  2025-10-01

  peer-review
  PublisherDOI

• Author response for "Demographic shifts, inter-group contact, and environmental conditions drive language extinction and diversification"

  2025-12-19

  peer-review
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Simon J. Greenhill

  University of Auckland

  142 shared

• Russell D. Gray

  University of Auckland

  140 shared

• Carlos A. Botero

  123 shared

• Angela M. Chira

  Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

  118 shared

• Lyle Campbell

  112 shared

• Johann‐Mattis List

  112 shared

• Robert M. Ross

  Macquarie University

  76 shared

• Michael C. Gavin

  Colorado State University

  41 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  University of California, Berkeley

• Other, Linguistics

  Yale University

• Other, Cultural Evolution and Biocultural Diversity

  Colorado State University