title: Phonotactic diversity predicts the time depth of the world's language families.
abstract: The ASJP (Automated Similarity Judgment Program) described an automated, lexical similarity-based method for dating the world's language groups using 52 archaeological, epigraphic and historical calibration date points. The present paper describes a new automated dating method, based on phonotactic diversity. Unlike ASJP, our method does not require any information on the internal classification of a language group. Also, the method can use all the available word lists for a language and its dialects eschewing the debate on 'language' vs. 'dialect'. We further combine these dates and provide a new baseline which, to our knowledge, is the best one. We make a systematic comparison of our method, ASJP's dating procedure, and combined dates. We predict time depths for world's language families and sub-families using this new baseline. Finally, we explain our results in the model of language change given by Nettle.
authors.affiliation: Språkbanken, Department of Swedish Language, Göteborg, Sweden. taraka.rama.kasicheyanula@gu.se
authors.forename: Taraka
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Rama
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D003468:Cultural Evolution; D049690:History, Ancient; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language / Q000266:history*; D008037:Linguistics / Q000379:methods*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010699:Phonation; D013997:Time Factors