Dear List,
A file I have just uploaded in the Files section (which can be also accessed through the link being provided in the announcement message at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/65117 ),
contains a paper entitled "Automated Glottochronology: Dating the World's Language Families." Most of the dates they arrive at are about what one would expect (e.g., Indo-European, Indo-Aryan, Indo-Iranian, Iranian, Balto-Slavic), though many (e.g., Hungarian, Germanic) are lower than is generally thought. Note the low dates for languages that are often given very early dates (e.g., Turkic, Mogolic, Sinitic). In any event, a lot of people contributed to this research, and it should generate considerable discussion.
Here is the astract of the paper:
Automated Glottochronology:
Dating the World's Language Families
Eric W. Holman, Cecil H. Brown, Søren Wichmann, André Müller, Viveka Velupillai, Hagen Jung, Dik Bakker, Pamela Brown, Oleg Belyaev, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Johann-Mattis List, and Dmitry Egorov
"This paper describes a computerized version of glottochronology developed by the Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP), which comprises a database of computer-readable core vocabulary lists for nearly one-half of the world's languages, and a new computational method for judging lexical similarity. Developed in the 1950s, glottochronology is a method for estimating the time elapsed since a parent language diverged into daughter languages. Major advantages of ASJP glottochronology are: (1) It is almost entirely computer automated and, thus, achieves near-total objectivity; (2) it applies a uniform analytical approach to a single very large world-language database; and (3) it improves the standard formula of glottochronology for calculating dates, by recognizing that all languages are lexically heterogeneous, including parent languages just before their breakup into daughter languages. Automated judgments of lexical similarity for groups of related languages are calibrated with historical, epigraphic, and archaeological dates for 44 language groups to yield an empirical estimate of date accuracy obtained through ASJP glottochronology. Glottochronological dates are found to be on the average within 484 years of actual dates. A major conclusion is that while basic vocabulary does not necessarily change at a constant rate, as assumed in traditional glottochronology, lexical change is sufficiently regular to produce on average reasonably accurate and useful estimates of chronological depth of ancestral languages based on observed similarities among daughter languages. As a resource for further research, we offer a list of time depths estimated for close to all the world's recognized language families."
Best wishes,
Francesco Brighenti