Abstract
The aim of the present study is to show that similarity of human natural languages can be conveyed not only by phonetic data, but also by grammar. The paper regards the largest typological database WALS and its possibilities in the sphere of genealogic relationship of languages. Using the method of two-objective optimization and data mining, which is new for linguistic studies, we show that grammatical (structural) data, as well as phonetic data, can deliver information on the similarity of languages. Language isolates and micro-families do not have genealogic relatives based on phonetic information, but they do have genealogic relatives based on grammar information.
Highlights
The main source of information for the present study is World Atlas of Language Structures-WALS (Haspelmath et al, 2005)
We suggest using the methods of two-objective optimization (Ehrgott, 2000; Izraylevich and Tsudikman, 2012) for pair-wise comparison of typological language profiles
Language isolates and micro-families do not have genealogic relatives based on phonetic information (P-pairs), but they do have genealogic relatives based on grammar information (G-pairs)
Summary
The main source of information for the present study is World Atlas of Language Structures-WALS (Haspelmath et al, 2005). It is the world’s biggest database describing structural properties of languages. WALS Program contains description for 2,560 languages according to 142 features. The online version of the database (Dryer and Haspelmath, 2013) was published in 2011. It describes 2,679 languages according to 144 features (Comrie et al, 2013) and some of the features are divided into several parts each including a separate map and set of languages
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