quantitative

Automated dating of the world’s language families based on lexical similarity

This paper describes a computerized alternative to glottochronology for estimating elapsed time since parent languages diverged into daughter languages. The method, developed by the Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) consortium, is …

Glottochronology as a heuristic for genealogical language relationships

This paper applies a computerized method related to that of glottochronology and addresses the question whether such a method is useful as a heuristic for identifying deep genealogical relations among languages. We first measure lexical similarities …