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My thanks to those who responded to my query about percentage cognate
vocabulary as a measure of relatedness between languages, and about
%'ages for English with other languages: <br>
<br>
To David Mead, Andy Pawley & Ross Clark, whose comments have already
been posted on this list, <br>
<br>
Also to David Nash (& Nick Thieberger for passing on the query to
David), Paul Kroeger, Bob Blust, and Gillian Sankoff, whose comments were
sent direct to me, and are attached below. <br>
<br>
The original query is right at the end of this message<br>
<br>
My thanks again, <br>
Adrian Clynes<br>
<br>
Here are the messages not yet posted on AN-LANG: <br>
<br>
1) from Paul Kroeger:<br>
<br>
"[SIL] often use 80% cognate as a rough boundary below which
speakers of different varieties are likely to have problems
communicating. Gary Simons' PhD dissertation at Cornell discussed the
correlations between lexical similarity and intelligibility. I'm sure
there has been more recent work on these issues, but I haven't kept up
with it."<br>
<br>
2) from David Nash<br>
<br>
"The answers to most if not all your questions are in Kruskal, Dyen
& <br>
Black 1973, ref at <br>
<font color="#0000FF"><u><a href="http://www.anu.edu.au/linguistics/nash/aust/wl.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.anu.edu.au/linguistics/nash/aust/wl.</a><a href="http://www.anu.edu.au/linguistics/nash/aust/wl.html" eudora="autourl">html</a></u></font>
<br>
Their data is at <br>
<font color="#0000FF"><u><a href="http://www.ntu.edu.au/education/langs/ielex/HEADPAGE.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.ntu.edu.au/education/langs/ielex/HEADPAGE.</a><a href="http://www.ntu.edu.au/education/langs/ielex/HEADPAGE.html" eudora="autourl">html</a></u> </font>" [AC: the latter is a useful source for Indoeuropean languages]<br>
<br>
[AC: see also Alpher & Nash 1999 "Lexical replacement and cognate equilibrium in Australia" Australian Journal of Linguistics 19,1 5-56]<br>
<br>
3) from Bob Blust<br>
<br>
"English and German score 60-65%, English and French about 20%. More exact figures are available in the <br>
lexicostatistical literature. Isidore Dyen did a book a few years ago on Indo-European subgrouping using <br>
lexicostatistics in which you can probably find the figures he uses.<br>
<br>
Dyen in his 'Lexicostatistical classification of the Austronesian languages', and in other publications <br>
from that era, uses 70% basic vocabulary cognation as the 'language limit' (viz. the point at which related <br>
language communities cease being dialects of one language and become distinct languages). Obviously, <br>
it is absurd to adhere to a number like this in any rigid way (two phonologically conservative languages <br>
sharing 69% of their basic vocabulary may have greater mutual intelligibility than two which share 80%, but <br>
one or both of which have undergone extensive sound changes). Stephen Wurm in much of his New Guinea work <br>
used 81% rather than 70% as the cut-off point. <br>
<br>
Darrell Tryon followed Wurm in this respect when he did his 'New Hebrides languages' book (PL) in 1976 or <br>
so. A recent conference organized by the archaeologist Colin Renfrew at the MacDonald Institute for <br>
Archaeological Research in Cambridge, England focused on archaeological and linguistic approaches to issues <br>
of time-depth, and resulted in a published volume (I'm on sabbatical in Taiwan and don't have direct access <br>
to it, so can't give you the exact title now)."<br>
<br>
4) From Gilllian Sankoff<br>
<br>
"In 1969 David Sankoff used C.D.Buck's "Dictionary of selected synonyms in . . . . Indo-European languages" to make such a calculation and create a family tree based on this grouping method which was then compared to the groupings derived from the comparative method. I THINK the results are to be found in the following article which I don't have to hand: <br>
<br>
"On the rate of replacement of word-meaning relationships " Language 46(3), September, 1970: 564-569. <br>
It has the basic figures for French-English, English-German, etc. You might be able to get some more info directly from David Sankoff: sankoff@ERE.UMontreal.CA. <br>
<br>
If I remember correctly, below 75% - 80% in common pretty much gives you a situation of mutual unintelligibility; 80-85% gets you into the range of Scandinavian languages I think. [...]<br>
<br>
p.s. there is more recent work by Donald Ringe (dringe@unagi.cis.upenn.edu) and Tandy Warnow, developing more sophisticated algorithms if you are interested." <br>
<br>
<br>
Original query: <br>
I would be grateful for a quick answer or answers to one or more of the <br>
following: <br>
1) What percentage of basic vocabulary is cognate in English and German, <br>
using (say) a 200-item Swadesh list? <br>
2) Ditto, for English and French? <br>
3) Is there a commonly accepted percentage of cognate basic vocabulary, at <br>
or below which one might expect two varieties to be considered distinct <br>
languages, rather than dialects of the same language? <br>
4) Can you recommend a reference discussing this kind of approach?<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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