Statistical test to estimate genealogical relationship between languages

What is it about?

Between two any languages around the world, hundreds of words can be found that match each other in phonology and meaning. In the majority of language pairs, such matches are due to chance (as, e.g., between German and Sumer: cf. Acker vs. Sumer agar ‘meadow’, Modder vs. Sumer mudur ‘dirt’, etc.). In some language pairs, however, these matches carry a useful signal as they are either the legacy of genealogical relationship between the languages or the result of contacts between them. We developed a mathematical procedure that allows us to estimate the probability of chance coincidence between the lexical lists of two languages. If the probability is low, it should be considered an heuristic indication that the languages in question can be related to each other either genealogically or via intensive contacts.

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Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash

Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Historical linguistics in collaboration with paleogeneticists and archaeologists go deeper and deeper into human prehistory. It requires special tools that allow us to detect and measure relationship between distantly related languages, that is, such languages whose relatedness cannot be easily seen with the naked eye. Since long-range language comparison is traditionally prone to various speculations and amateur approaches, the procedure of establishing distant relationship between languages should be as formalized as possible. We believe the advanced version of the permutation test presented here maintains a reasonable balance between linguistics and mathematics.

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