Geometric Representations of Language Taxonomies
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- Bielefeld University, Postfach 100131, D-33501, Bielefeld, Germany
- Facolta di Economia, Universita di Roma "La Sapienza", Via del Castro Laurenziano 9, 00161 Roma, Italy
- Dipartimento di Matematica, Universita dell'Aquila, I-67010 L'Aquila, Italy
- Center of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology, University of Bielefeld, Postfach 10 01 31, 33501 Bielefeld, Germany
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- Manuscript
- Date:
- Received 20 September 2009 09:35 UTC; Posted 21 September 2009
- Subjects:
- Earth & Environment
- Abstract:
Complex relationships between different languages in a language family encoded in the lexicostatistic data can be subjected to a component analysis and represented geometrically, in terms of distances and angles. The fully automated method for construction of language taxonomy is tested on a sample of fifty languages of the Indo-European language group and applied to a sample of fifty languages of the Austronesian language group. The Anatolian and Kurgan hypotheses of the Indo-European origin and the ‘express train’ model of the Polynesian origin are thoroughly discussed.
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- License:
- This document is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
- How to cite this document:
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Blanchard, Philippe, Petroni, Filippo, Serva, Maurizio, and Volchenkov, Dimitri. Geometric Representations of Language Taxonomies. Available from Nature Precedings <http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/npre.2009.3156.3> (2009)
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