Meta-typological distributions
Elena L. Maslova · Language Typology and Universals · 2008
Abstract The paper is the first attempt to study the quantitative representation of language type in the world′s languages as a random variable, that is, to describe the a priori probability p(x) of a randomly selected language type being represented by x languages. The major goal of this approach is to understand the general properties of cross-linguistic distributions, which might then be used as the standard of comparison for specific typological studies. Using the WALS database of language types, I show that the number of representatives of a language type can be approximated by a Pareto (power-law) distribution.