Basic vocabulary and Bayesian phylolinguistics: issues of understanding and representation

• Simon J. Greenhill ^[1] ; Russell D. Gray ^[2]
  1. [1] Australian National University

     Australian National University

     Australia

     
  2. [2] University of Auckland

     University of Auckland

     Nueva Zelanda

     
• Localización: Diachronica: International Journal for Historical Linguistics = Revue Internationale pour la Linguistique Historique = Internationale Zeitschrift für Historische Sprachwissenschaft, ISSN 0176-4225, Vol. 29, Nº 4, 2012, págs. 523-537
• Idioma: inglés
• DOI: 10.1075/dia.29.4.05gre
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• Resumen

  • Donohue et al.’s critique of our work on the origins and spread of the Austronesian language family is marred by misunderstandings. We respond to these by noting that our Bayesian phylogenetic approach: (1) distinguishes between retentions and innovations probabilistically, (2) focuses on basic vocabulary not ‘the lexicon’, (3) eliminates known loanwords, (4) produces results that are congruent with the results of the comparative method and conflict with the scenarios requiring unprecedented amounts of language shift postulated by Donohue et al.