2018/02/20 by Michele Pasquini, Maurizio Serva, Pasquini, Michele +1 · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Computation and Language (cs.CL) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #Spanish Linguistics and Language Studies #Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1802.06764
openalex publication_date 2018/02/20 · openalex created_date 2022/10/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The words of a language are randomly replaced in time by new ones, but it has\nlong been known that words corresponding to some items (meanings) are less\nfrequently replaced than others. Usually, the rate of replacement for a given\nitem is not directly observable, but it is inferred by the estimated stability\nwhich, on the contrary, is observable. This idea goes back a long way in the\nlexicostatistical literature, nevertheless nothing ensures that it gives the\ncorrect answer. The family of Romance languages allows for a direct test of the\nestimated stabilities against the replacement rates since the proto-language\n(Latin) is known and the replacement rates can be explicitly computed. The\noutput of the test is threefold:first, we prove that the standard approach\nwhich tries to infer the replacement rates trough the estimated stabilities is\nsound; second, we are able to rewrite the fundamental formula of\nGlottochronology for a non universal replacement rate (a rate which depends on\nthe item); third, we give indisputable evidence that the stability ranking is\nfar from being the same for different families of languages. This last result\nis also supported by comparison with the Malagasy family of dialects. As a side\nresult we also provide some evidence that Vulgar Latin and not Late Classical\nLatin is at the root of modern Romance languages.\n