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Statistics 101 and the Detection of Linguistic Relationships
No full text[Introduction] A recurrent theme in the writings of Alexis Manaster Ramer is the use and abuse of
mathematics in linguistic inquiry. A number of his articles deal specifically with the use and abuse
of statistics and probability in historical linguistics, and it is through his work in this area that I
came to develop an interest in historical linguistics. This paper discusses some attempts to apply
statistical methods and arguments to the problem of detecting linguistic relationships -
determining whether two or more languages share a common ancestor. Of course, this particular
problem does not exhaust the field of historical linguistics, but I will say nothing about the
application of statistics and probability to such further problems as the reconstruction of extinct
languages, the processes of language change, and glottochronology.
I will examine three statistical tests for linguistic relationship- or more precisely, two tests
and one argument- that have been proposed in the literature by Robert Oswalt (1970), Donald A.
Ringe, Jr. (1992), and Joseph Greenberg and Merritt Ruhlen (1992). Many reactions to these sorts
of proposals amount to little more than blanket dismissal of statistical methods or, at the opposite
extreme, uncritical kowtowing to the authority of numbers. This is due, in part, to ignorance of
probability and statistics on the part of many historical linguists. I will argue, however, that even a
very basic understanding of some fundamental statistical concepts suffices for a critical
examination of these proposals on their own terms. To this end, I will present an elementary
example of statistical hypothesis testing, and discuss a number of issues that arise. I will then show
how similar issues arise for the three tests of linguistic relationship
Eudeve and Huichol evidence for Proto-uto-Aztecan phonology
No full textThe distribution of accents resp. tones in certain morphological classes in Eudeve and Huichol is shown to support the theory of syllable structure and accent placement in Proto- Uto-Aztecan developed by the author on the basis of ideas found in the early work of Sapir and Whorf.Pour une phonologie proto-uto-aztèque : arguments eudeve et huichol On montre que la distribution respective des accents et des tons dans certaines classes morphologiques de l'eudeve et du huichol vient appuyer la théorie concernant la structure syllabique et la place de l'accent en Proto-uto-aztèque développée par l'auteur sur la base de suggestions rencontrées dans les premiers travaux de Sapir et de Whorf.Fonología proto-uto-azteca : argumentos derivados de los idiomas eudeve y huichol La distribución de los acentos y tonos en algunas clases morfológicas de los idiomas eudeve y huichol confirma la teoría relativa a la estructura silábica y a la ubicación del acento en el Proto-uto-azteca, desarrollada por el autor sobre la base de sugerencias encontradas en los primeros estudios de Sapir y Whorf.Manaster Ramer Alexis. Eudeve and Huichol evidence for Proto-uto-Aztecan phonology. In: Journal de la Société des Américanistes. Tome 82, 1996. pp. 117-127
What about Lisu?
No full textIt is presumably uncontroversial that linguistic theory should enable us to analyze individual languages, and to state how they differ from—or resemble—each other. These questions are interrelated, of course, and, in particular, they both require a typology powerful enough to allow accurate description of disparate languages and subtle enough to do so without forcing them into Procrustean categories. In this paper I am concerned with the taxonomy proposed by Li and Thompson (1976), which defines four linguistic types: topic-prominent, subject-prominent, topic- and subject-prominent, and neither subject- nor topic-prominent. This work, I will argue, fails in a particularly illuminating way to achieve the goals I have outlined.Published versio
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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