{"title":"Likelihood calculation in a multistate model of vocabulary evolution for linguistic dating","authors":"Philipp Rönchen, Tilo Wiklund, Harald Hammarström","doi":"10.1163/22105832-bja10032","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Computational methods of language dating make inferences about the divergence times of protolanguages by evaluating the patterns of inheritance in the vocabulary of modern languages, given the specification of a model of vocabulary evolution. We consider a model that describes vocabulary evolution as the replacement of traits by new traits from an infinite state space along a tree. This model has been introduced in previous literature but so far it has not been used in many applications. We give a general recursive algorithm for calculating likelihoods and argue that the model gives a more realistic representation of vocabulary evolution over time, compared to existing models like the Stochastic Dollo model. We also provide a case study demonstrating the model’s potential applications.</p>","PeriodicalId":43113,"journal":{"name":"Language Dynamics and Change","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Language Dynamics and Change","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22105832-bja10032","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Computational methods of language dating make inferences about the divergence times of protolanguages by evaluating the patterns of inheritance in the vocabulary of modern languages, given the specification of a model of vocabulary evolution. We consider a model that describes vocabulary evolution as the replacement of traits by new traits from an infinite state space along a tree. This model has been introduced in previous literature but so far it has not been used in many applications. We give a general recursive algorithm for calculating likelihoods and argue that the model gives a more realistic representation of vocabulary evolution over time, compared to existing models like the Stochastic Dollo model. We also provide a case study demonstrating the model’s potential applications.
期刊介绍：
Language Dynamics and Change (LDC) is an international peer-reviewed journal that covers both new and traditional aspects of the study of language change. Work on any language or language family is welcomed, as long as it bears on topics that are also of theoretical interest. A particular focus is on new developments in the field arising from the accumulation of extensive databases of dialect variation and typological distributions, spoken corpora, parallel texts, and comparative lexicons, which allow for the application of new types of quantitative approaches to diachronic linguistics. Moreover, the journal will serve as an outlet for increasingly important interdisciplinary work on such topics as the evolution of language, archaeology and linguistics (‘archaeolinguistics’), human genetic and linguistic prehistory, and the computational modeling of language dynamics.
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