Is it possible to verify the genetic taxa of world languages by typological methods?

Yuri Tambovtsev yutamb at MAIL.RU
Tue Apr 12 17:36:58 UTC 2005


Dear colleagues in the field of typology, I wonder if it is possible to verify the genetic taxa of world languages by typological methods? For instance, let us take Finno-Ugric language family and analyse it with the help of the total of the distances between its members and then compare this total to the total distance between the Turkic language family. If Finno-Ugric distance total is greater then that of the Turkic one, it means that Finno-Ugric languages are less similar to each other than the Turkic languages. We took nine phonetic features and found out that Turkic language family has a smaller distance total. Thus, we can say that it is more compact on the phonetic level. It means that Turkic languages are more similar phonetically. So, we can say that the genetic taxon of the Turkic languages has been verified by the typological methods. What do you think about that? Looking forward to hearing from you to yutamb at mail.ru  Yours sincerely Yuri Tambovtsev 
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