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Journal Article

Assessing the evidence for a Central Solomons Papuan family using the Oswalt Monte Carlo Test

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Dunn,  Michael
Evolutionary processes in language and culture, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;
Language documentation and data mining;
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, External Organizations;
Language and Cognition Department, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons183

Terrill,  Angela
Language and Cognition Department, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;
Radboud University;

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Dunn_Terrill_Diachronica_2012.pdf
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Citation

Dunn, M., & Terrill, A. (2012). Assessing the evidence for a Central Solomons Papuan family using the Oswalt Monte Carlo Test. Diachronica, 29(1), 1-27. doi:10.1075/dia.29.1.01dun.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0013-3B94-8
Abstract
In the absence of comparative method reconstruction, high rate of lexical cognate candidates is often used as evidence for relationships between languages. This paper uses the Oswalt Monte Carlo Shift test (a variant of Oswalt 1970) to explore the statistical basis of the claim that the four Papuan languages of the Solomon Islands have greater than chance levels of lexical similarity. The results of this test initially appear to show that the lexical similarities between the Central Solomons Papuan languages are statistically significant, but the effect disappears when known Oceanic loanwords are removed. The Oswalt Monte Carlo test is a useful technique to test a claim of greater than chance similarity between any two word lists — with the proviso that undetected loanwords strongly increase the chance of spurious identification.