Permutation test applied to lexical reconstructions partially supports the Altaic linguistic macrofamily

Kassian, Alexei; Starostin, George; Egorov, Ilya; Logunova, Ekaterina S.; Дыбо, А.В.

doi:10.1017/ehs.2021.28

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“… Kassian et al (2021) employed the test reported by Turchin et al (2010) , originally inspired by Dolgopolsky (1964) to another dataste of languages from the disputed Altaic family, with the difference that they used reconstructed proto-languages. Their test also failed to provide conclusive evidence for the whole language family, although they argue that rather clear support can be found for a deeper relationship of the families tested by Ceolin (2019) .…”

Section: New and Old Open Problemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Their test also failed to provide conclusive evidence for the whole language family, although they argue that rather clear support can be found for a deeper relationship of the families tested by Ceolin (2019) . While both Ceolin (2019) and Kassian et al (2021) applied methods proposed before to newly compiled datasets, Blevins and Sproat (2021) designed a new workﬂow for to test for supposed deep language relations in order to ﬁnd evidence for the hypothesis that the language isolate Basque is related to Indo-European. In contrast to previous studies, Blevins and Sproat (2021) test their approach on a rather large sample of languages where the language relations are known, showing that their approach is rather conservative, showing a tendency to reject grouping two languages within the same family in case of sparse evidence.…”

Section: New and Old Open Problemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given that Ceolin (2019) and Kassian et al (2021) report contradicting results, both using methods that are supposed to deliver clear mathematical proofs, and given the difﬁculty to compare the evaluation study reported by Blevins and Sproat (2021) with the tests they conducted, I think it is safe to argue that the last word on the problem of ﬁnding a convincing statistical proof for language relatedness has not yet been spoken.…”

Section: New and Old Open Problemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Open Problems in Computational Historical Linguistics

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2023

Open Res Europe

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Problems constitute the starting point of all scientific research. The essay reflects on the different kinds of problems that scientists address in their research and discusses a list of 10 problems for the field of computational historical linguistics, that was proposed throughout 2019 in a series of blog posts. In contrast to problems identified in different contexts, these problems were considered to be solvable, but no solution could be proposed back then. By discussing the problems in the light of developments that have been made in the field during the past five years, a modified list is proposed that takes new insights into account but also finds that the majority of the problems has not yet been solved.

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Section: New and Old Open Problemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: New and Old Open Problemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: New and Old Open Problemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Open Problems in Computational Historical Linguistics

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2023

Open Res Europe

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“…The formation and dispersion of the Oirats is connected with the Altai-Sayan highlands, which were under the influence of several political formations during 13th-18th centuries AD, including the Oirat Khanate [3]. The common history has left traces in the linguistics [18] as well as in the cultural layers of the Oirats and Altaians [3], but their genetic ties have not yet been studied.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gene pool preservation across time and space In Mongolian-speaking Oirats

Balinova,

Hudjašov,

Pankratov

et al. 2024

Eur J Hum Genet

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The Oirats are a group of Mongolian-speaking peoples residing in Russia, China, and Mongolia, who speak Oirat dialects of the Mongolian language. Migrations of nomadic ethnopolitical formations of the Oirats across the Eurasian Steppe during the Late Middle Ages/early Modern times resulted in a wide geographic spread of Oirat ethnic groups from present-day northwestern China in East Asia to the Lower Volga region in Eastern Europe. In this study, we generate new genome-wide and mitochondrial DNA data for present-day Oirat-speaking populations from Kalmykia in Eastern Europe, Western Mongolia, and the Xinjiang region of China, as well as Issyk-Kul Sart-Kalmaks from Central Asia, and historically related ethnic groups from Altai, Tuva, and Northern Mongolia to study the genetic structure and history of the Oirats. Despite their spatial and temporal separation, small current population census, both the Kalmyks of Eastern Europe and the Oirats of Western Mongolia in East Asia are characterized by strong genetic similarity, high effective population size, and low levels of interpopulation structure. This contrasts the fine genetic structure observed today at a smaller geographic scale in traditionally sedentary populations, and is conditioned by high mobility and marriage practices (traditional strict exogamy) in nomadic groups. Conversely, the genetic profile of the Issyk-Kul Sart-Kalmaks suggests a distinct source(s) of genetic ancestry, along with indications of isolation and genetic drift compared to other Oirats. Our results also show that there was limited gene flow between the ancestors of the Oirats and the Altaians during the late Middle Ages.

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Calibrated weighted permutation test detects ancient language connections in the Circumpolar area (Chukotian-Nivkh and Yukaghir-Samoyedic)*

Kassian,

Starostin,

Zhivlov

et al. 2023

JHL

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Relationships between universally recognized language families represent a hotly debated topic in historical linguistics, and the same is true for correlation between signals of genetic and linguistic relatedness. We developed a weighted permutation test which represents the classical permutation tests with weights introduced for individual Swadesh concepts according to their typological stability. Further, the obtained values were calibrated on a negative control group to override non-uniform distribution of phonemes within the Swadesh wordlist. We applied the calibrated permutation test to the basic vocabularies of nine languages and reconstructed proto-languages to show that three groups of circumpolar language families in the Northern Hemisphere show evidence of relationship through common descent or borrowing in the basic vocabulary: [Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Nivkh]; [Yukaghir, Samoyedic]; and [Yeniseian, Na-Dene, Burushaski]. The former two pairs showed the most significant signals of language relationship. Our findings further support some hypotheses on long-distance language relationships previously put forward based on linguistic methods but lacking universal acceptance.

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Permutation test applied to lexical reconstructions partially supports the Altaic linguistic macrofamily

Abstract: Abstract

Cited by 5 publications

References 11 publications

Open Problems in Computational Historical Linguistics

Open Problems in Computational Historical Linguistics

Gene pool preservation across time and space In Mongolian-speaking Oirats

Calibrated weighted permutation test detects ancient language connections in the Circumpolar area (Chukotian-Nivkh and Yukaghir-Samoyedic)*

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