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Measures of lexical distance between languages

Author

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  • Petroni, Filippo
  • Serva, Maurizio

Abstract

The idea of measuring distance between languages seems to have its roots in the work of the French explorer Dumont D’Urville (1832) [13]. He collected comparative word lists for various languages during his voyages aboard the Astrolabe from 1826 to 1829 and, in his work concerning the geographical division of the Pacific, he proposed a method for measuring the degree of relation among languages. The method used by modern glottochronology, developed by Morris Swadesh in the 1950s, measures distances from the percentage of shared cognates, which are words with a common historical origin. Recently, we proposed a new automated method which uses the normalized Levenshtein distances among words with the same meaning and averages on the words contained in a list. Recently another group of scholars, Bakker et al. (2009) [8] and Holman et al. (2008) [9], proposed a refined version of our definition including a second normalization. In this paper we compare the information content of our definition with the refined version in order to decide which of the two can be applied with greater success to resolve relationships among languages.

Suggested Citation

  • Petroni, Filippo & Serva, Maurizio, 2010. "Measures of lexical distance between languages," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(11), pages 2280-2283.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:389:y:2010:i:11:p:2280-2283
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2010.02.004
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Russell D. Gray & Quentin D. Atkinson, 2003. "Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin," Nature, Nature, vol. 426(6965), pages 435-439, November.
    2. Russell D. Gray & Fiona M. Jordan, 2000. "Language trees support the express-train sequence of Austronesian expansion," Nature, Nature, vol. 405(6790), pages 1052-1055, June.
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    Cited by:

    1. Isphording, Ingo E. & Piopiunik, Marc & Rodríguez-Planas, Núria, 2016. "Speaking in numbers: The effect of reading performance on math performance among immigrants," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 52-56.
    2. repec:zbw:hohpro:352 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Isphording, Ingo E. & Otten, Sebastian, 2014. "Linguistic barriers in the destination language acquisition of immigrants," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 30-50.
    4. Ingo Eduard Isphording & Sebastian Otten, 2013. "The Costs of Babylon—Linguistic Distance in Applied Economics," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(2), pages 354-369, May.
    5. repec:zbw:rwirep:0337 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Espitia, Diego & Larralde, Hernán, 2020. "Universal and non-universal text statistics: Clustering coefficient for language identification," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 553(C).
    7. Gamallo, Pablo & Pichel, José Ramom & Alegria, Iñaki, 2017. "From language identification to language distance," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 484(C), pages 152-162.
    8. repec:old:wpaper:352 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Ibrahim Bousmah & Gilles Grenier & David M. Gray, 2021. "Linguistic Distance, Languages of Work and Wages of Immigrants in Montreal," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 42(1), pages 1-28, March.
    10. Erkan Gören, 2013. "Economic Effects of Domestic and Neighbouring Countries’ Cultural Diversity," Working Papers V-352-13, University of Oldenburg, Department of Economics, revised Mar 2013.
    11. Ingo Eduard Isphording & Sebastian Otten, 2013. "The Costs of Babylon—Linguistic Distance in Applied Economics," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(2), pages 354-369, 05.
    12. Lorraine Wong, 2023. "The effect of linguistic proximity on the labour market outcomes of the asylum population," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 36(2), pages 609-652, April.
    13. Mehri, Ali & Jamaati, Maryam, 2021. "Statistical metrics for languages classification: A case study of the Bible translations," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).

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