Method evidence record

Lexicostatistics

Lexicostatistics is a quantitative method in historical linguistics that gauges how closely two or more languages are genealogically related by measuring the percentage of cognates they share within a fixed list of basic, culture-neutral vocabulary — classically Morris Swadesh's 100- or 200-word list. By converting word comparisons into similarity percentages, it produces a matrix of pairwise scores from which subgroupings within a language family can be inferred. It is the statistical core that underlies glottochronology, but on its own it makes no claim about absolute dates — it speaks only to degree of relatedness.

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Lexicostatistics

Taxonomic method record · process-pipeline / linguistics

Swadesh, M. (1952). Lexico-statistic dating of prehistoric ethnic contacts. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 96(4), 452–463. · URL
Campbell, L. (2013). Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (3rd ed.). Edinburgh University Press. · ISBN 9780748675593

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Related methods

Generated from the method graph and shown as machine-suggested relations — no evidence claim is inferred.

Same method familyComparative Methodmachine-suggested · Relational suggestion, not evidence.Same method familyComparative Method (Historical Linguistics)machine-suggested · Relational suggestion, not evidence.Taxonomic bucketGlottochronology (Lexical Dating)machine-suggested · Relational suggestion, not evidence.Same method familyPhylogenetic Linguisticsmachine-suggested · Relational suggestion, not evidence.