Geometric Representations of Language Taxonomies

Abstract

Complex relationships between different languages in a language family encoded in the lexicostatistic data can be subjected to a component analysis and represented geometrically, in terms of distances and angles. The fully automated method for construction of language taxonomy is tested on a sample of fifty languages of the Indo-European language group and applied to a sample of fifty languages of the Austronesian language group. The Anatolian and Kurgan hypotheses of the Indo-European origin and the 'express train' model of the Polynesian origin are thoroughly discussed.