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Article published In: Diachronica
Vol. 38:4 (2021) ► pp.506–564

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Statistical evidence for the Proto-Indo-European-Euskarian hypothesis

A word-list approach integrating phonotactics

 | The Graduate Center, CUNY
 | Google (Japan)
Published online: 6 May 2021
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https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.19014.ble
Abstract
Based on a new reconstruction of Proto-Basque, and regular sound correspondences between this Proto-Basque and Proto-Indo-European as standardly reconstructed, Blevins, Juliette. 2018. Advances in Proto-Basque reconstruction with evidence for the Proto-Indo-European-Euskarian hypothesis. London & New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar argues that Proto-Basque and Proto-Indo-European have a common ancestor that pre-dates the two proto-languages. Part of this argument is based on proposed Proto-Indo-European/Proto-Basque cognate sets that include basic vocabulary items. In this study we offer statistical support for Blevins’ conclusions by using a Monte Carlo simulation that allows us to estimate the probability that the proposed lexical correspondences could have arisen by chance. The method makes use of phonotactic language models to generate possible words in a pair of languages, and then attempts to discover consistent correspondences between the words, producing a list of possible “cognates”. The method differs from some previous approaches by considering matches between all segments in the word pairs. By running such a simulation a large number of times, we can estimate the probability that two languages with the given phonotactics could have produced the number of cognate pairs observed in the actual data. The method is independently assessed by comparing wordlists from 100 pairs of languages, related and unrelated, where relations are known. Our conclusion is that the proposed correspondences are unlikely to have arisen by chance, supporting a distant relationship between Proto-Basque as reconstructed by Blevins, Juliette. 2018. Advances in Proto-Basque reconstruction with evidence for the Proto-Indo-European-Euskarian hypothesis. London & New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar and Proto-Indo-European.
Résumé
À partir d’une nouvelle reconstruction du proto-basque et de correspondances régulières entre les phonèmes de cette proto-langue et de la reconstruction établie du proto-européen, Blevins, Juliette. 2018. Advances in Proto-Basque reconstruction with evidence for the Proto-Indo-European-Euskarian hypothesis. London & New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar soutient que le proto-basque et le proto-indo-européen descendent d’un ancêtre commun qui serait antérieur aux deux proto-langues. Dans cette étude, nous introduisons de nouveaux arguments statistiques venant à l’appui des conclusions de Blevins. Nous proposons une simulation de Monte Carlo qui nous permet d’estimer la probabilité d’une apparition par hasard des correspondances lexicales avancées par Blevins. Notre méthode s’appuie sur des modèles de langage phonotactiques. Elle génère d’abord un ensemble de mots possibles, puis tente de découvrir les correspondances cohérentes entre ces mots. Notre méthode diffère des approches précédentes en ce qu’elle considère d’emblée toutes les correspondances possibles entre tous les segments de toutes les paires de mots. L’exécution répétée un très grand nombre de fois d’une telle simulation permet d’estimer la probabilité selon laquelle deux langues auraient pu produire le nombre de paires apparentées observées dans les données existantes. Nous en concluons qu’il est invraisemblable que les correspondances proposées par Blevins aient pu apparaître par hasard.
Zusammenfassung
Basierend auf einer neuen Rekonstruktion des Proto-Baskischen und regelmäßigen Lautkorrespondenzen zwischen dieser Protosprache und dem proto-indogermanischen Rekonstruktionsstandard erörtert Blevins, Juliette. 2018. Advances in Proto-Basque reconstruction with evidence for the Proto-Indo-European-Euskarian hypothesis. London & New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, dass Proto-Baskisch und Proto-Indogermanisch von einer gemeinsamen Protosprache abstammen, die beiden Sprachen zeitlich vorrausgeht. In dieser Studie stützen wir Blevins Schlussfolgerungen statistisch mittels einer Monte-Carlo Simulation. Unsere Methode erlaubt es, die Wahrscheinlichkeit abzuschätzen, dass die vorgeschlagenen lexikalischen Entsprechungen zufällig hätten entstehen können. Die Methode beruht auf phonotaktischen Sprachmodellen, welche potentielle Wörter generieren und dann mögliche konsistente Entsprechungen zwischen diesen Wörtern erkennen. Unsere Methode unterscheidet sich dadurch von existierenden Ansätzen, dass sie Entsprechungen zwischen allen Segmenten der Wortpaare in Betracht zieht. Die mehrfache Wiederholung einer solchen Simulation erlaubt eine Einschätzung der Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass zwei Sprachen die Anzahl an Wortpaarentsprechungen erzeugt, die in den Daten beobachtet werden. Daraus schließen wir, dass die von Blevins vorgeschlagenen Korrespondenzen nur unwahrscheinlich zufällig entstanden sind.
Article outline
  • 1.The Proto-Indo-European-Euskarian hypothesis
    • 1.1Eliminating potential loans
    • 1.2Comparing basic vocabulary
  • 2.Cognate sets and semantic lumping
  • 3.Computational methods for lexically based assessments of genetic relatedness
    • 3.1Computing probabilities of chance similarities
    • 3.2Earlier modeling of cognate detection, and the significance of cognates
    • 3.3A synopsis of our proposed method
  • 4.The experiment
    • 4.1Language pairs and word lists
    • 4.2Language model training
    • 4.3Language models
    • 4.4Alignment and potential cognates
    • 4.5Simulations
  • 5.Results
  • 6.Verifying the method with a large list of language pairs
  • 7.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
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