STATISTICS IN LINGUISTICS

[Patrick C. Ryan]

Dear Lars and IEists:

-----Original Message-----
From: Lars Henrik Mathiesen <thorinn at diku.dk>
Date: Monday, March 15, 1999 3:16 AM

[ moderator snip ]

>I'll tell you what would be needed for a probabilistic test of
>language relatedness to be valid.

>First, you must decide on a protocol to follow which will provide an
>objective measure of the similarity between two languages. The
>important thing is that this measurement must not depend on the
>researcher's knowledge of the languages --- on the contrary, it should
>be repeatable with consistent results by different people. NOTE: this
>measure of similarity is your experimental result --- any conclusions
>about relatedness would only follow after statistical analysis.

I could not agree more. No one attempting comparison among very disparate
language families is ever going to be able to achieve the expertness of a
Larry Trask in Basque or a Sasha Vovin in Altaic, men who have devoted their
lives to such study, and, as a consequence, the depth of knowledge of whom
cannot be matched in *multiple* disciplines.

 <snip>

>But, to borrow a phrase, you must surely agree that this is not the
>way historical linguistics are done today, by you or anybody else, and
>therefore any attempt to use statistics to defend your hypotheses is
>just so much hot air.

I have never tried to use statistics to "defend" my hypothesis but perhaps I
should.

Excellent contribution!

Pat