Phylogenetics of Indo-European Language Families via an Algebro-Geometric Analysis of Their Syntactic Structures

Using Phylogenetic Algebraic Geometry, we analyze computationally the phylogenetic tree of subfamilies of the Indo-European language family, using data of syntactic structures. The two main sources of syntactic data are the SSWL database and Longobardi’s recent data of syntactic parameters. We compu...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Shu, Kevin, Ortegaray, Andrew, Berwick, Robert C., Marcolli, Matilde
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Data, Systems, and Society
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Springer International Publishing 2021
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/132955
Description
Summary:Using Phylogenetic Algebraic Geometry, we analyze computationally the phylogenetic tree of subfamilies of the Indo-European language family, using data of syntactic structures. The two main sources of syntactic data are the SSWL database and Longobardi’s recent data of syntactic parameters. We compute phylogenetic invariants and estimates of the Euclidean distance functions for two sets of Germanic languages, a set of Romance languages, a set of Slavic languages and a set of early Indo-European languages, and we compare the results with what is known through historical linguistics.