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Topic: Lexicostatistics

	IE Lexicostat: Bibliography (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		The oldest and most widely-used lexicostatistical approach uses the "lexicostatistical percentage" to estimate the degree of relationship between two speech varieties (in the same language family): the higher the percentage, the more recent their divergence from a common ancestor and thus the closer their historical relationship.
		The lexicostatistical percentage is based on some list of "basic meanings", such as the list of 200 meanings selected in Swadesh 1952, and refers to the percentage of the basic meanings for which words in the two varieties are cognate.
		Lexicostatistics in genetic linguistics: Proceedings of the Yale Conference, April 3-4, 1971.
	www.ntu.edu.au /education/langs/ielex/BIBLIOG.html (1326 words)

	SIL Bibliography: Lexicostatistics
		Kotynski, Edward A. "A lexicostatistic survey of the Lease Islands."
		Travis, Edgar W. "A lexicostatistic survey of the languages indigenous to Ambon Island."
		Simons, Gary F. "Recognizing patterns of divergence and convergence in a matrix of lexicostatistic relations."
	www.ethnologue.com /show_subject.asp?code=LXS (434 words)

	Sukur Society
		Historical linguistic (lexicostatistical) studies suggest that the languages of the Higi and Kapsiki diverged around the 13th century AD, and the Bura-Margi group from Higi-Bana around AD 300 (Barreteau and Jungraithmayr 1993:113).
		However, not only is the validity of lexicostatistics disputed, but so too is the degree of differentiation of Higi and Kapsiki, some regarding them as dialects rather than languages (see Language).
		The fact is that Sukur is a language clearly differentiated from those of its neighbors, and, since there are no traditions or other evidence suggesting wholesale migration to Sukur, we may suppose that the Sukur plateau has been occupied by ancestors of the modern Sukur for a very long time.
	www.ucalgary.ca /sukur/Soc/socindex.htm (520 words)

	Unspun (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		Lexicostatistics is likewise limited with respect to the basic assumptions noted above.
		CM, IR, and lexicostatistics are all "comparative" because they make comparisons: CM compares different languages towards hypotheses regarding protolanguages; IR compares forms within one language to reconstruct earlier stages; and lexicostatistics compares lists of words, usually for glottochronological determinations.
		Concerning the continuum from the unconscious to the conscious, some are nearly explicit, e.g., Heath, but Whinnom (1971) is typical of the confusion even whree he should note a distinction: with respect to an "ethological barrier" to linguistic diffusion.
	www.legal-mail.com /writings/langcon.html (3235 words)

	Alpher & Nash
		Lexicostatistics away from the armchair: handling people, props and problems.
		We demonstrate that this rate is crucial in the prediction of what fraction of vocabulary might in the long term be common to two neighbouring languages (the 'equilibrium percentage') in a model of lexical similarity that does not distinguish borrowings from common retentions.
		We then apply these findings to the case study, and compare the methods of lexicostatistical subgrouping (with and without recognition of loans), to results from classification by classic means.
	www.anu.edu.au /linguistics/nash/papers/lexstat (669 words)

	GLOTTOCHRONOLOGY (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		The result would be gibberish, and the same is true of any attempts to use lexicostatistics or glottochronology to establish historical relationships not already known to exist.
		What lex attempts to do is to provide a rough measure of the degree of linguistic distance between languages already known to be related; what glotto tries to do, very dubiously, is to convert the result into a time depth for separation.
		I am here talking only about the traditional, and simple, version of lexicostatistics, in which words from two languages are compared only pairwise; for this case, I stand by my statements (though a few of my colleagues would take issue with me).
	www.mega.nu:8080 /protolanguage/comment-Glottochronology.htm (348 words)

	Public Anthropology
		This article provides an extensive and comprehensive survey of the field of lexicostatistics as of 1960.
		Apart from glottochronology, lexicostatistics may be further developed to examine sub-groupings in language families, determine genetic relationships among languages, and analyze rates of lexical change.
		Dyen discusses the use of lexicostatistics in quantitative analysis of the classification of languages and change.
	www.publicanthropology.org /Archive/Ca1960.htm (4381 words)

	Lexicostatistics
		"Lexicostatistics" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: lexiconstatistics.
		Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).
		The larger the percentage of cognates, the more recently the two languages being compared are presumed to have separated.
	www.websters-online-dictionary.org /le/lexicostatistics.html (275 words)

	Language Log: The Emperor's Clothes
		Other approaches, which fall generally under the heading of "lexicostatistics", are based entirely on lexical replacement.
		What all of these approaches have in common is that they provide an objective basis for claiming that language A is more closely related to language B than to language C. These techniques also have in common the fact that they all depend on establishing phonological correspondences among the languages.
		You can't use any of the usual techniques, even lexicostatistics, since they all rely on phonological correspondences, so there must be some other technique that proponents of SLJ use for subgrouping.
	itre.cis.upenn.edu /~myl/languagelog/archives/003036.html (1047 words)

	Intelligibility Testing and Lexicostatistics of Buwal and Gavar (Mayo-Tsanaga Division, Far North Province)
		One of the 11 comprehension questions of the Buwal text was eventually omitted for lack of correct response from Buwal speakers themselves and, likewise, one of the nine comprehension questions of the Gavar text also was omitted for incorrect response from Gavar speakers.
		The lexicostatistical comparison of the word lists from the Gavar-speaking village of Kortchi and the Buwal-speaking village of Gadala revealed approximately a 90% lexical similarity based on “apparent cognates”;.
		Although lexicostatistics between the Buwal and Gavar do not indicate what other linguistic similarities might exist—such as of grammatical structures, for example—the word list comparisons do serve as one indicator of the linguistic relationship that exists between speech forms (Grimes 1989:4.1.9).
	www.sil.org /silesr/2002/018/SILESR2002-018.htm (3514 words)

	Linguist List - Dissertation Abstracts
		Even though lexicostatistics dates back over fifty years, and is currently undergoing a significant revival, the issue of how to obtain the words for the meanings on a meaning list has been curiously neglected in the literature.
		An attempt is made here to remedy this, by placing the process of lexicostatistical data collection at the centre of the thesis.
		Such variation, it is argued, should be incorporated in lexicostatistical studies, as it provides a more faithful depiction of the language than the traditional ‘one-word-per-meaning’ approach, and thus a more reliable basis from which to draw lexicostatistical conclusions.
	linguistlist.org /pubs/diss/browse-diss-action.cfm?DissID=12760 (338 words)

	Language Log: Good glottochronology
		In particular, it's not as well known as it should be that some ethnohistorians routinely use a variety of linguistic methods, including lexicostatistics and glottochronology, and that professional linguists by and large approve and even collaborate.
		I think this is terrific work, and would argue that its application of lexicostatistics and glottochronology is entirely appropriate, given the usual caveats about interpretation of the results (which Edda is careful to express).
		I should also mention that this work has a vital connection to American history, because of the key role of West African slaves in adapting their wet rice farming methods to the plantations of coastal Carolina in the late 17th century.
	itre.cis.upenn.edu /~myl/languagelog/archives/000211.html (476 words)

	English Language & Linguistics: (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		Moreover, lexicostatisticians have taken cavalier and highly inconsistent approaches to borrowing; indeed the reliance on agreed common origin and dubious cognacy judgements simply invalidates lexicostatistics as currently formulated in many cases like the Andes, where convergence alone remains a plausible alternative scenario.
		We propose a range of refinements to make lexicostatistics more sensitive, objective and reliable, not least ending the insistence on all-or-nothing judgements of ‘cognate or not’.
		Its much enhanced precision enables this method to quantify much finer degrees of difference between language varieties (not least at the dialect level), to which techniques such as lexicostatistics are all but blind.
	www.shef.ac.uk /language/quantling/papers.html (8869 words)

	SPEAKPOST.COM: Evolutionary Linguistics
		The comparative method (in linguistics) is a method used to detect genetic relationships between languages and to establish a consistent relationship hypothesis by reconstructing: the common ancestor of the languages in question, a plausible sequence of regular changes by which the historically known languages can be derived from that common ancestor.
		Today, Lexicostatistics is comprised as a subfield of Quantitative Linguistics.
		Of lexicostatistics, Glottochronology is a method used to estimate the time of divergence of two or more related languages under the assumption of constant rates of change among said languages' basic vocabulary.
	www.speakpost.com /evolutionary.html (640 words)

	Archaeology Wordsmith (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		By studying the rate of change, the length of time (time depth) during which two related languages developed independently may be calculated.
		lexicostatistics relies on statistical comparison of the basic vocabulary shared by two or more related languages and on the assumption that the rate of vocabulary replacement is constant over sufficiently long periods of time.
		It is a way of arriving at a date of separation between two languages that have a common origin by studying the extent to which they have diverged from each other and provides archaeologists with approximate dates for the origination of subcultures diverging from each other.
	www.reference-wordsmith.com /cgi-bin/lookup.cgi?exact=1&terms=statistics (485 words)

	Tom Hinnebusch's Homepage
		For a long time I have been interested in questions concerning the classification of African languages and especially methodologies of classification; for example, I have recently explored the value of lexicostatistics in Comparative Bantu studies.
		I am currently amassing the data necessary to do a comparative/historical treatment of Southern Bantu languages akin to the Nurse and Hinnebusch study of a group of Northeastern Bantu languages.
		Hinnebusch, Thomas J., "Contact and Lexicostatistics in Comparative Bantu Studies." To be published in the proceedings of the 1st World Conference on African Linguistics.
	www.humnet.ucla.edu /humnet/linguistics/people/hinnebus/hinnebus.htm (771 words)

	LINGUIST List 13.2622: Swadesh query (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		Pages 30-55, in I. Dyen (Ed.), Lexicostatistics in genetic linguistics.
		The adaptation to Australia is argued in: O'Grady, G.N. In 'More on lexicostatistics'.
		Max Wheeler : Swadesh's 200-word list is reproduced in S. Gudschinsky, The ABC's of lexicostatistics (glottochronology), Word 12.2, 1956, 175-210.
	www.ling.ed.ac.uk /linguist/issues/13/13-2622.html (372 words)

	graduate program
		Introduction to the study of language as it changes over time including phonetic, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and lexical change.
		Topics include comparative and internal reconstruction, language classification, language contact, lexicostatistics, and distant genetic relationships.
		Prerequisite: LING 4040, LING 5040 or consent of instructor
	www.engl.unt.edu /grad/grad_coursesLG.htm (1320 words)

	Morris Swadesh - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		He proposed a number of distant genetic links among languages that are not generally regarded as valid today.
		He was also one of the pioneers of lexicostatistics, which attempts to classify languages on the basis of the extent to which they have replaced basic words reconstructible to the proto-language, and glottochronology, which extends lexicostatistics by computing divergence dates from the lexical retention rate.
		He originated the lists of 100 and 200 basic vocabulary items used (with some variation) in lexicostatistics and glottochronology, as a result of which they are known as Swadesh lists.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Morris_Swadesh (396 words)

	IE Lexicostat: Head Page (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		This is one of three hypertext pages introducing a data corpus consisting of lexicostatistical data on 95 Indo-European speech varieties (languages or dialects) prepared by Prof.
		To put the data and these publications in context, a third page presents a brief history and bibliography of comparative lexicostatistics.
		The remaining 11 essentially represent less desirable sources of data for speech varieties already included among the 84, as explained further in the prologue and (in large part) in a footnote on page 19 of the monograph.
	www.ntu.edu.au /education/langs/ielex/HEADPAGE.html (1041 words)

	Minett, J. W. and Wang, W. S-Y. (2004) An analysis of the lexical skewing method for detecting language contact.
		"Why lexicostatistics doesn't work: the `universal' constant hypothesis and the Austronesian languages".
		Hinnebusch, Thomas J. "Skewing in lexicostatistic tables as an indicator of contact".
		Hinnebusch, Thomas J. In press, "Contact and lexicostatistics in comparative Bantu studies." Proceedings of the 1st World Congress on African Linguistics.
	www.isrl.uiuc.edu /~amag/langev/ref/minett04lexicalSkewing.html (386 words)

	Language and Linguistics
		In February 2006 I completed my PhD thesis entitled 'Meaning lists in lexicostatistical studies: evaluation, application, ramifications', which was supervised by Professor April McMahon and examined by Professor Joan Beal and Professor Sheila Embleton.
		My thesis explores meaning lists in the context of lexicostatistical studies.
		Meaning lists, usually comprising around 200 'basic' concepts, are employed in historical linguistics to compare and classify languages – applying the technique known as lexicostatistics.
	www.shef.ac.uk /english/research/langling/natalia.html (357 words)

	LISTSERV 14.4
		For those of you who have tried lexicostatistics before and found it wanting, I must emphasize now that the tree reconstruction method implemented in this package has nothing in common with glottochronology or lexicostatistics as you remember it.
		On the very contrary, it expects vocabulary retention to vary wildly from language to language and from time to time.
		Running GLOTSIM with VANUATU.SIM as input generates a language family with lexicostatistical properties mimicking those of the real languages in VANUATU.PC.
	listserv.linguistlist.org /cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9310C&L=linguist&D=0&P=3674 (444 words)

	LINGUIST List 14.3453: Re: Are new language classifications necessary? (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		So first I thought that method would be superior to lexicostatistics, but later I realized it can have the same weaknesses as lexicostatistics, like different rates of change, and difficulty of determining if words are cognate, or sufficiently similar.
		Anyway, her result, for lexicon, was that the Uralic groups, like Samoyed, Balto- Finnic, Permian, Ob-Ugric, and Saami are just slightly more similar to each other than what would be expected with randomly generated words.
		So consequently, since I found her results so surprising, I decided to try the simple lexicostatistical method.
	www.ling.ed.ac.uk /linguist/issues/14/14-3453.html (504 words)

	A possible Homeland of the Indo-European Languages
		That in a so-called "basic vocabulary" the amount of changes is gradually lower, does not at all change the reasons and causes.
		Chapt.45 in 'QUANTITATIVE 100 years of lexicostatistical attempts in language subgrouping.
		To appear in: Update for the last 10 years in lexicostatistical subgrouping.
	www.hjholm.de (1429 words)

	Television Point \| Dictionary \| Meaning of etymology (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		account, chronicle, folk etymology, history, lexicostatistics, linguistics, story
		That part of grammar which relates to the changes in the form of the words in a language; inflection.
		bowwow theory, comparative linguistics, derivation, descriptive linguistics, dialectology, dingdong theory, eponymy, folk etymology, glossematics, glossology, glottochronology, glottology, grammar, graphemics, historical linguistics, language study, lexicology, lexicostatistics, linguistic geography, linguistic science, linguistics, mathematical linguistics, morphology, morphophonemics, origin, paleography, philology, phonetics, phonology, psycholinguistics, semantic history, semantics, sociolinguistics, structuralism, syntactics, transformational linguistics, word history
	www.televisionpoint.com /dictionary/default.asp?define=etymology (119 words)

	Books by Isidore Dyen, compare prices
		Lexicostatistics in Genetic Linguistics : Proceedings of the Yale Conference, Yale University, April 3-4, 1971
		Lexicostatistics in Genetic Linguistics II : Proceedings of the Montreal Conference, Centre De Recherches Mathematiques, Universite De Montreal, May 19-20, 1973
		Reconstruction, Classification, Description : Festschrift in Honor of Isidore Dyen
	www.allbookstores.com /author/Isidore_Dyen_st.html (100 words)

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