Abstract
Lexicostatistics has been applied in linguistics to inform phylogenetic relations among languages. There are two important yet not well-studied parameters in this approach: the conventional size of vocabulary list to collect potentially true cognates and the minimum matching instances required to confirm a recurrent sound correspondence. Here, we derive two statistical principles from stochastic theorems to quantify these parameters. These principles validate the practice of using the Swadesh 100- and 200-word lists to indicate degree of relatedness between languages, and enable a frequency-based, dynamic threshold to detect recurrent sound correspondences. Using statistical tests, we further evaluate the generality of the Swadesh 100-word list compared to the Swadesh 200-word list and other 100-word lists sampled randomly from the Swadesh 200-word list. All these provide mathematical support for applying lexicostatistics in historical and comparative linguistics.
Highlights
In linguistics, quantitative approaches such as lexicostatistics and glottochronology have been widely applied to detect hypothetical genetic relations among languages (McMahon and McMahon, 2005; Campbell, 2013)
We model the task of setting a conventional size of the basic vocabulary list for collecting potentially true cognates as a statistical task of constructing an exemplar set by sampling from a total set
Linguistic intuitions and subjective experiences have been the primary factors determining (1) which words should be collected for comparison, (2) how many words are needed for comparison, and (3) whether a specific number of matching instances is sufficient to confirm a “recurrent” correspondence for identifying cognates (Hock and Joseph, 1996; Baxter and Ramer, 2000; Brown et al, 2013)
Summary
Quantitative approaches such as lexicostatistics and glottochronology have been widely applied to detect hypothetical genetic relations among languages (McMahon and McMahon, 2005; Campbell, 2013). Lexicostatistics compares languages for phylogenetic affinity based on proportion of cognates in a standard basic vocabulary list. Each slot in the list is a concept (meaning), and collected items (words) occupying the same slot are compared cross-linguistically. We do not make distinction between the terms vocabulary list and meaning list. Glottochronology deals in particular with phylogenetic relationships among languages (Campbell, 2013). (1) Assemble a set of word forms from languages being compared based on a list of basic vocabulary. Linguists usually conduct basic word assembly based on small-scale meaning lists. Two widely-adopted lists for this purpose are the Swadesh lists
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