Simon J. Greenhill

10.7k total citations · 5 hit papers
85 papers, 4.1k citations indexed

About

Simon J. Greenhill is a scholar working on Cultural Studies, Linguistics and Language and Sociology and Political Science. According to data from OpenAlex, Simon J. Greenhill has authored 85 papers receiving a total of 4.1k indexed citations (citations by other indexed papers that have themselves been cited), including 67 papers in Cultural Studies, 25 papers in Linguistics and Language and 24 papers in Sociology and Political Science. Recurrent topics in Simon J. Greenhill's work include Language and cultural evolution (67 papers), Linguistic Variation and Morphology (25 papers) and Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (23 papers). Simon J. Greenhill is often cited by papers focused on Language and cultural evolution (67 papers), Linguistic Variation and Morphology (25 papers) and Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (23 papers). Simon J. Greenhill collaborates with scholars based in Germany, New Zealand and Australia. Simon J. Greenhill's co-authors include Russell D. Gray, Alexei J. Drummond, Quentin D. Atkinson, Michael Dunn, Thomas E. Currie, Johann‐Mattis List, Stephen C. Levinson, Ruth Mace, Xia Hua and Fiona M. Jordan and has published in prestigious journals such as Nature, Science and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In The Last Decade

Simon J. Greenhill

80 papers receiving 3.9k citations

Hit Papers

5 papers align trajectories

What are hit papers?

Hit papers significantly outperform the citation benchmark for their cohort. A paper qualifies if it has ≥500 total citations, achieves ≥1.5× the top-1% citation threshold for papers in the same subfield and year (this is the minimum needed to enter the top 1%, not the average within it), or reaches the top citation threshold in at least one of its specific research topics.

Language Phylogenies Reveal Expansion Pulses and Pauses in Pacific Settlement

2009 435 citations Russell D. Gray, Simon J. Greenhill et al. Science profile →
Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family

2012 347 citations Remco Bouckaert, Simon J. Greenhill et al. Science profile →
Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals

2011 300 citations Simon J. Greenhill, Russell D. Gray et al. profile →
Emotion semantics show both cultural variation and universal structure

2019 229 citations Joshua Conrad Jackson, Joseph Watts et al. Science profile →
Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan

2019 137 citations Simon J. Greenhill, Johann‐Mattis List et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences profile →

Peers

Simon J. Greenhill

SPS

Quentin D. Atkinson New Zealand

Søren Wichmann Germany

Robert Blust United States

Claire Bowern United States

Nicholas Evans Australia

Johann‐Mattis List Germany

Jane H. Hill United States

Derek Bickerton United States

Charles F. Hockett United States

Lyle Campbell United States

Quentin D. Atkinson New Zealand

Simon J. Greenhill

1.7k ×0.7

604 ×0.6

1.5k ×1.7

SPS

570 ×0.7

439 ×0.7

Citations per year, relative to Simon J. Greenhill Simon J. Greenhill (= 1×) peers Quentin D. Atkinson

Countries citing papers authored by Simon J. Greenhill

Since Specialization

Citations

This map shows the geographic impact of Simon J. Greenhill's research. It shows the number of citations coming from papers published by authors working in each country. You can also color the map by specialization and compare the number of citations received by Simon J. Greenhill with the expected number of citations based on a country's size and research output (numbers larger than one mean the country cites Simon J. Greenhill more than expected).

Fields of papers citing papers by Simon J. Greenhill

Since Specialization

Physical SciencesHealth SciencesLife SciencesSocial Sciences

This network shows the impact of papers produced by Simon J. Greenhill. Nodes represent research fields, and links connect fields that are likely to share authors. Colored nodes show fields that tend to cite the papers produced by Simon J. Greenhill. The network helps show where Simon J. Greenhill may publish in the future.

Co-authorship network of co-authors of Simon J. Greenhill

This figure shows the co-authorship network connecting the top 25 collaborators of Simon J. Greenhill. A scholar is included among the top collaborators of Simon J. Greenhill based on the total number of citations received by their joint publications. Widths of edges represent the number of papers authors have co-authored together. Node borders signify the number of papers an author published with Simon J. Greenhill. Simon J. Greenhill is excluded from the visualization to improve readability, since they are connected to all nodes in the network.

All Works

Sort: Min cites: Since: Top N: Style:

20 of 20 papers shown

Verkerk, Annemarie, Hannah J. Haynie, Hedvig Skirgård, et al.. (2025). Enduring constraints on grammar revealed by Bayesian spatiophylogenetic analyses. Nature Human Behaviour. 10(1). 126–136.

Michaelis, Susanne Maria, Hannah J. Haynie, Sam Passmore, et al.. (2023). Societies of strangers do not speak less complex languages. Science Advances. 9(33). eadf7704–eadf7704. 19 indexed citations

Tresoldi, Tiago, et al.. (2023). Variation in phoneme inventories: quantifying the problem and improving comparability. KTH Publication Database DiVA (KTH Royal Institute of Technology). 8(2). 149–168. 2 indexed citations

Greenhill, Simon J.. (2023). A shared foundation of language change. Science. 381(6656). 374–375.

Haynie, Hannah J., Damián E. Blasí, Hedvig Skirgård, et al.. (2023). Grambank’s Typological Advances Support Computational Research on Diverse Languages. 147–149. 1 indexed citations

Zariquiey, Roberto, et al.. (2022). Untangling the evolution of body-part terminology in Pano: conservative versus innovative traits in body-part lexicalization. Interface Focus. 13(1). 20220053–20220053. 5 indexed citations

Hübler, Nataliia & Simon J. Greenhill. (2022). Modelling admixture across language levels to evaluate deep history claims. ResearchSpace (University of Auckland). 7(2). 166–183. 1 indexed citations

Koile, Ezequiel, Simon J. Greenhill, Damián E. Blasí, Remco Bouckaert, & Russell D. Gray. (2022). Phylogeographic analysis of the Bantu language expansion supports a rainforest route. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 119(32). e2112853119–e2112853119. 25 indexed citations

List, Johann‐Mattis, et al.. (2022). Lexibank, a public repository of standardized wordlists with computed phonological and lexical features. Scientific Data. 9(1). 33 indexed citations

10.

Barbieri, Chiara, Damián E. Blasí, Alexandros G. Sotiropoulos, et al.. (2022). A global analysis of matches and mismatches between human genetic and linguistic histories. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 119(47). e2122084119–e2122084119. 14 indexed citations

11.

Watts, Joseph, et al.. (2021). The Austronesian Game Taxonomy: A cross-cultural dataset of historical games. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. 8(1). 1 indexed citations

12.

Evans, Cara L., Simon J. Greenhill, Joseph Watts, et al.. (2021). The uses and abuses of tree thinking in cultural evolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences. 376(1828). 20200056–20200056. 28 indexed citations

13.

Teixidor‐Toneu, Irene, et al.. (2021). Historical, archaeological and linguistic evidence test the phylogenetic inference of Viking-Age plant use. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences. 376(1828). 20200086–20200086. 9 indexed citations

14.

Bromham, Lindell, Russell Dinnage, Hedvig Skirgård, et al.. (2021). Global predictors of language endangerment and the future of linguistic diversity. Nature Ecology & Evolution. 6(2). 163–173. 65 indexed citations

15.

Hua, Xia, Simon J. Greenhill, Marcel Cardillo, Hilde Schneemann, & Lindell Bromham. (2019). The ecological drivers of variation in global language diversity. Nature Communications. 10(1). 2047–2047. 48 indexed citations

16.

Jackson, Joshua Conrad, Joseph Watts, Teague R. Henry, et al.. (2019). Emotion semantics show both cultural variation and universal structure. Science. 366(6472). 1517–1522. 229 indexed citations breakdown →

17.

List, Johann‐Mattis, Simon J. Greenhill, Tiago Tresoldi, & Robert Forkel. (2018). LingPy. A Python library for quantitative tasks in historical linguistics. Version 2.6.4. Figshare. 4 indexed citations

18.

Forkel, Robert, Johann‐Mattis List, Simon J. Greenhill, et al.. (2018). Cross-Linguistic Data Formats, advancing data sharing and re-use in comparative linguistics. Scientific Data. 5(1). 180205–180205. 89 indexed citations

19.

Watts, Joseph, Simon J. Greenhill, Quentin D. Atkinson, et al.. (2015). Broad supernatural punishment but not moralizing high gods precede the evolution of political complexity in Austronesia. Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences. 282(1804). 20142556–20142556. 129 indexed citations

20.

Jordan, Fiona M., Russell D. Gray, Simon J. Greenhill, & Ruth Mace. (2009). Matrilocal residence is ancestral in Austronesian societies. Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences. 276(1664). 1957–1964. 134 indexed citations

Rankless uses publication and citation data sourced from OpenAlex, an open and comprehensive bibliographic database. While OpenAlex provides broad and valuable coverage of the global research landscape, it—like all bibliographic datasets—has inherent limitations. These include incomplete records, variations in author disambiguation, differences in journal indexing, and delays in data updates. As a result, some metrics and network relationships displayed in Rankless may not fully capture the entirety of a scholar's output or impact.

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