2001/03/08 by Damian H. Zanette, Zanette, Damian H.
Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems (nlin.AO) #Condensed Matter (cond-mat) #FOS: Physical sciences #cond-mat #nlin.AO
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.nlin/0103005
final version, to appear in Adv. Complex Systems
arxiv created 2001/09/19 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30
Statistical properties of the taxonomic classification of human languages are studied. It is shown that, at the highest levels of the taxonomic hierarchy, the frequency of taxon members as a function of the number of languages belonging to each member decays as a power law. This feature reveals that a self-similar structure underlies the taxonomy of languages, exactly as observed in the taxonomic classification of biological species. Such an analogy is a clue to the evolutionary foundation of language classification based on long-range comparison.