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  Phylogenetic signal in phonotactics

Macklin-Cordes, J. L., Bowern, C., & Round, E. (2021). Phylogenetic signal in phonotactics. Diachronica, 20004.mac. doi:10.1075/dia.20004.mac.

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 Creators:
Macklin-Cordes, Jayden L., Author
Bowern, Claire, Author
Round, Erich1, Author           
Affiliations:
1Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Max Planck Society, ou_2074311              

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Free keywords: Australian languages; historical signal; comparative linguistics; historical linguistics; phonology; linguistic phylogenetics; phylogenetic comparative methods; Pama-Nyungan
 Abstract: Phylogenetic methods have broad potential in linguistics beyond tree inference. Here, we show how a phylogenetic approach opens the possibility of gaining historical insights from entirely new kinds of linguistic data – in this instance, statistical phonotactics. We extract phonotactic data from 112 Pama-Nyungan vocabularies and apply tests for phylogenetic signal, quantifying the degree to which the data reflect phylogenetic history. We test three datasets: (1) binary variables recording the presence or absence of biphones (two-segment sequences) in a lexicon (2) frequencies of transitions between segments, and (3) frequencies of transitions between natural sound classes. Australian languages have been characterized as having a high degree of phonotactic homogeneity. Nevertheless, we detect phylogenetic signal in all datasets. Phylogenetic signal is greater in finer-grained frequency data than in binary data, and greatest in natural-class-based data. These results demonstrate the viability of employing a new source of readily extractable data in historical and comparative linguistics.

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Language(s): eng - English
 Dates: 2021-02-02
 Publication Status: Published online
 Pages: 49
 Publishing info: -
 Table of Contents: -
 Rev. Type: Peer
 Identifiers: DOI: 10.1075/dia.20004.mac
 Degree: -

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Title: Diachronica
Source Genre: Journal
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Publ. Info: Hildesheim : Olms
Pages: - Volume / Issue: - Sequence Number: 20004.mac Start / End Page: - Identifier: ISSN: 0176-4225