Phonotactic diversity predicts the time depth of the world's language families.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 23691003.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0063238 and PMC identifier 3656872.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The ASJP (Automated Similarity Judgment Program) described an automated, lexical similarity-based method for dating the world's language groups using 52 archaeological, epigraphic and historical calibration date points. The present paper describes a new automated dating method, based on phonotactic diversity. Unlike ASJP, our method does not require any information on the internal classification of a language group. Also, the method can use all the available word lists for a language and its dialects eschewing the debate on 'language' vs. 'dialect'. We further combine these dates and provide a new baseline which, to our knowledge, is the best one. We make a systematic comparison of our method, ASJP's dating procedure, and combined dates. We predict time depths for world's language families and sub-families using this new baseline. Finally, we explain our results in the model of language change given by Nettle.
Medical subject headings
- Algorithms
- Cultural Evolution
- Language
- Linguistics
- Models, Theoretical
- Phonation