To Clarify the Role of Historical Semantics in Lexicostatistical Substantiations of Hypotheses Distant Linguistic Affinity

К уточнению роли исторической семантики в лексикостатистических обоснованиях гипотез дальнего языкового родства

Starostin, Georgiy (Старостин, Георгий) (gstarst@ranepa.ru) and Trofimov, Artem (Трофимов, Артем) (atrofimov@ranepa.ru)
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Starostin, Georgiy (Старостин, Георгий): Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA)
Trofimov, Artem (Трофимов, Артем): Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA)

Working Papers from Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration

Abstract: This preprint examines the role of historical semantics to substantiate hypotheses related to the postulation and verification of the so-called "macrofamilies" - taxonomic language units of a deep and super-deep chronological level. It is shown that, although one of the most formalized and reliable methods of such verification is usually lexicostatistics (the analysis of etymological coincidences between languages or language families at the level of "nuclear" basic vocabulary), at chronological levels exceeding 6-8 thousand years, the number of interlanguage parallels with completely coinciding semantics begins to decrease catastrophically, and in order to obtain more complete results for comparison, it is required to involve words with similar, and not coincident semantics - that is fraught with the discovery of "pseudo-castors" (random coincidences), if the semantic similarity is established intuitively and subjectively. The paper gives several examples of how to successfully circumvent the "semantic trap" by limiting the comparison to a formalized and strictly computed list of so-called. "Trivial" semantic transitions, widespread in different regions of the world.

Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2018-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
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