TY - JOUR
T1 - Comparing Germanic, Romance and Slavic
T2 - Relationships among linguistic distances
AU - Heeringa, Wilbert
AU - Gooskens, Charlotte
AU - van Heuven, Vincent
PY - 2023/5
Y1 - 2023/5
N2 - Languages differ along multiple dimensions (lexis, phonology, morphology, syntax). Related languages descend from a common ancestor language but have diverged over time. This paper asks whether languages diverge equally along all dimensions, and, to the extent that they do not, which dimension reflects the traditional language family tree best. We computed measures of (i) lexical distance (ii) phonetic distance, and (iii) syntactic distance. The measures were computed on all words and sentences extracted from a corpus of translations of four relatively short English texts into another four Germanic languages (Danish, Dutch, German, Swedish), five Romance languages (French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish) and six Slavic languages (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Polish, Slovakian, Slovenian). We examined the correlation structure of the distances for all pairs of Germanic (10), Romance (10) and Slavic (15) languages (i.e., within-family comparisons only). The results indicate that the linguistic dimensions are generally correlated (weakly but significantly), and that the correlations are stronger for pairs within families than when all 35 pairs are examined together. Cladistic family trees correlate best with the lexical distance (0.851
AB - Languages differ along multiple dimensions (lexis, phonology, morphology, syntax). Related languages descend from a common ancestor language but have diverged over time. This paper asks whether languages diverge equally along all dimensions, and, to the extent that they do not, which dimension reflects the traditional language family tree best. We computed measures of (i) lexical distance (ii) phonetic distance, and (iii) syntactic distance. The measures were computed on all words and sentences extracted from a corpus of translations of four relatively short English texts into another four Germanic languages (Danish, Dutch, German, Swedish), five Romance languages (French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish) and six Slavic languages (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Polish, Slovakian, Slovenian). We examined the correlation structure of the distances for all pairs of Germanic (10), Romance (10) and Slavic (15) languages (i.e., within-family comparisons only). The results indicate that the linguistic dimensions are generally correlated (weakly but significantly), and that the correlations are stronger for pairs within families than when all 35 pairs are examined together. Cladistic family trees correlate best with the lexical distance (0.851
U2 - 10.1016/j.lingua.2023.103512
DO - 10.1016/j.lingua.2023.103512
M3 - Article
SN - 0024-3841
VL - 287
JO - Lingua
JF - Lingua
M1 - 103512
ER -