Computer Estimation of Vocabulary in a Protolanguage from Word Lists in Four Daughter Languages
Michael Oakes · Journal of Quantitative Linguistics · 2000
Even if no written records of a protolanguage remain, it is possible to estimate what some of the words in that language might have been, by comparison of its reflexes in the more recent daughter languages. This method of protolanguage reconstruction is called the ‘comparative method’, and is described by Crowley (1992, Chapter 5). Although long practiced by human linguists, the comparative method is extremely time consuming, and only a few parts of the process have previously been automated. This paper describes a program which attempts to replicate the methodology described by Crowley almost in its entirety.