Of Trees, nodes, and minimal paths (was Re: Urheimat in Lithuania?)

[Eduard Selleslagh]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Whiting" <whiting at cc.helsinki.fi>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 5:13 PM

[snip]

> Personally, I think we do a disservice to linguistics when we say that
> linguistic data can't be quantified so there is no point in trying.  It
> gives the people who turn to linguists for guidance the idea that
> linguists are simply innumerate.  While I feel that there are some
> categories of linguistic data that are not readily subject to
> quantification (particularly semantic change), there are others that are
> (particularly phonological change), and what can be learned from these
> quantifications should be pursued for what it may teach us about some of
> the conclusions that have been arrived at by intuition.  Our tools aren't
> that good yet that we can afford to ignore potential improvements.

> Bob Whiting
> whiting at cc.helsinki.fi

[Ed]

The problems is of course the near-absence of people with advanced statistics
skills in linguistics (fortunately there are some exceptions on this list - I'm
NOT one of them).

I think programs based on fuzzy-set theory that are used to do multidimensional
statistical analysis on things that are as difficult to quantify as political
tendencies or market analysis (locating 'cliques' in the jargon) could be very
useful in detecting clusters of linguistic traits and quantify their closeness/
distance. Apparently some research has been done in this direction (e.g. on
Chinese dialects), but I'm not aware of the use of existing marketing research
tools (software) in linguistics. Does anyone know more?

Ed. Selleslagh