A Likelihood Ratio Test of Genetic Relationship among Languages

arXiv:2404.00284v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Lexical resemblances among a group of languages indicate that the languages could be genetically related, i.e., they could have descended from a common ancestral language. However, such resemblances can arise by chance and, hence, need not always imply an underlying genetic relationship. Many tests of significance based on permutation of wordlists and word similarity measures appeared in the past to determine the statistical significance of such relationships. We demonstrate that although existing tests may work …

abstract arxiv chance cs.cl however imply language languages likelihood relationship significance test tests type